Clive Dickens has launched a new AI focused strategic advisory company called Meliora, with 9 other experienced technology and business associates. The company’s mission is to help businesses shape AI in a positive and profitable manner.
“We have to shape the sort of AI that we want. It is about humans and machine intelligence coming together. AI can make a better humanity, a better planet and better business outcomes, but you really got to get in there and shape it.
“So many people are either letting it happen to them or putting their head in the sand… this is the industrial revolution of our time. The last time we had anything like this was in 2007 with the invention of the smartphone and the App Store, but this is orders of magnitude more important to humanity than even that big shift that happened then…
“At the moment we’re seeing a lot of quite poor AI content. That’s not the solution. The solution will be found in using these amazing tools to enhance what we’re doing,” Dickens told radioinfo’s Steve Ahern.
Clive Dickens’ career spans more than three decades across a range of roles in radio, television, and digital innovation in the UK and Australia.
He served as Group Head of Programmes for Global, one of the UK’s largest commercial radio groups and was a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Absolute Radio. Under his leadership, Absolute Radio became renowned for its digital, social, and mobile innovation. Dickens was instrumental in pioneering in-stream advertising and was a founding director of UK Radioplayer. He also played a key advisory role in the early days of Shazam, helping to shape the music discovery app that would later be acquired by Apple.
In 2013, Dickens relocated to Australia to become Director of Digital and Innovation at Southern Cross Austereo, overseeing both radio and free-to-air television platforms and driving a 700% increase in digital traffic and a 50% boost in digital revenue.
He left SCA to become Chief Digital Officer at Seven West Media, where he oversaw the strategic and operational aspects of digital content and revenue. In 2016, Dickens joined Optus, as Vice President of TV, Audio, Content, and Product Development and left at the beginning of this year to put together the Meliora Company which has just launched today
The company has three key pillars to offer clients:
Meliora Advisory: “Strategy that always starts with the customer and ends with results. We combine human-centred design, Gen AI navigation and deep technical engineering capability.”
Meliora Ventures: “We incubate ideas and invest in CTO lead founders who dare to do better. Our track record in spotting, scaling, and supporting future-fit softwares is world class.”
Meliora Creative: “We champion rising talent from the creative industries, that are artists of every kind. We tell human stories that shift culture. We invest in and help creators to evolve, execute and scale.”
In Latin, Meliora means ‘the pursuit of better.’
Dickens and his associates believe the world doesn’t need more consultants. “It needs a catalyst, a change agent and a growth partner that diagnoses what’s broken and dares to rebuild it. A partner who has enough strategic, operational and real-world focus to navigate the fast evolving AI landscape to make it meaningful.”
Technology, creativity, and tangible commercial outcomes are the company’s focus.
Clive and the Meliora founding team have spent decades rewriting the rules across telco, media, eCommerce and entertainment.
Clive Dickens discussed how AI will shape the future with Steve Ahern.
Clive: I’ve been 12 years in Australia, three fantastic jobs… the time is now with all this massive investment in AI. I decided that I really wanted to go back to my roots Steve.
I thought to myself there is so much opportunity in the TMT space – Telcos, Media and Technology. We’re building a new business which tries to fuse what we call human intelligence with artificial intelligence, the intersection where the sweet spot is. We’re building this boutique advisory business to take on the big 10. We’ve got a really different set of products and services and a different approach. We’re from the digital space, sitting very firmly in the media section, so we’re really excited about being able to bring some ideas to radio, across international markets.
Steve: I like that you said there’s a sweet spot between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. I agree with you. On one side there’s the ‘forget AI stay human’ extreme, then there’s the ‘AI will take over the world’ side. In fact, reality is in the middle. AI can make our tools more effective if we combine them with human intelligence, that seems to me to be the sweet spot. Is that what you’re talking about?
Clive: Totally Steve, you’re nailed it. We have to shape the sort of AI that we want. It is about humans and artificial intelligence coming together.
We believe the AI can make a better humanity. Make a better planet, better business and better outcomes, but you’ve got to get in there and shape it. There are so many people either letting it happen to them, or putting their head in the sand.
This is the industrial revolution of our time. The last time we had anything like this was in 2007 with the invention of the smartphone and the App Store, but this is orders of magnitude more important to humanity than even that big shift. We’ve had lots of false dawns but now there’s the opportunity to go out there and export some incredible Australian know-how to the world, with the opportunity to leverage adventurous business and creative.
With our IP fund around rising talent in the creative industries, we think there’s a human aspect to this that will give us a real point of difference to the big 10 consultants. They are, from my perception, just looking to make businesses more efficient, they’re not focusing on the growth potential for the economy that can come out of deploying AI in the workplace
In November 2022, ChatGPT went live on a Friday morning… since then we’ve had Gemini, Claude, Deep Seek and all of the other LLM’s but it was ChatGPT’s release of that free product in November 22 when the world changed. That’s only two years ago!
There’s an opportunity to deploy that technology for the better… to improve our economy, to improve people’s quality of life. I believe that AI will identify the cure for cancer… you’ve got to really get amongst it and work out how AI can help your business.
Steve: You’re forward-looking, all the work you’ve done over the years has proven that. What are your predictions for the next 12 months and then the next 3 years, particularly in the media field?
Clive: In the media field we’re going to see much more creation of content enabled by humans.
I’m not a futurist and I’m not a crystal ball gazer, but I would say having worked for quite a few decades in these areas, like yourself Steve, I think it’s up to humans to shape the future. So, as a digital audio industry, we have to decide how much of our content is going to be produced by AI only, and how much of our content will be enhanced by AI.
We have to make the decisions about what we want now, to be able to predict what will happen in 3 year’s time. There’s nothing wrong with having AI in our workflow. Some radio groups already tried that, but you’ve got to be very transparent about it.
Also, I don’t believe that AI only replaces humans. It should be enhancing the human experience and of course in your sector of audio, digital and radio, there is human connection. There are shared experiences in human connections and if we walk away from that USP and disconnect audio and digital and radio from that shared experience in human connection, then we will regret it for a generation or more. That’s the same whether you listen to a podcast or whether you listen to your favourite radio show you, that human connection and shared experience is still very much there as unique selling point.
The real question is how can you use AI to actually further connect with people.
At the moment we’re seeing a lot of quite poor AI content. Poor news stories, poor lifestyle stories, poor travel stories, because they think that enables them to employ less journalists or less writers. That’s not the solution. The solution will be found in using these amazing tools to enhance what we’re doing, to make better programs, better content, better articles…
We already have a number of investments there and every day there’s a group of smart young people starting an app to solve business problems. We’re going to see thousands and thousands of new businesses started, that will happen really, really quickly… we’ve seen huge shifts even in the last couple of weeks.
Look at what Google announced last week with that video tool, Open Art. And the incredible statistic around the tokenisation of Gemini (tokenization means breaking down text into small chunks) and how many tokens they were serving six months ago into Gemini, versus how many tokens now, it was something like a 700 times increase of tokenisation. It’s gold rush!
Steve: One of the things that bothers me in predicting how AI will shape the future is how the internet can be manipulated. Fake content and fake websites that are scraped by AI can be manipulated by misinformation planted in fake websites and is stealing clicks from real websites.
Clive: Oh goodness that sounds like a script to a movie. One of our three values is called relentless optimism, it’s not blind optimism but it is a relentless optimism. I am much more optimistic about the role the Internet plays in bringing information to humanity at scale. I see lots of evidence that freedom of information has been more positive… we have to stay in the foot [against negative consequences] of course, but that’s what we’re doing with Meliora. We’re actually doing something about it by working in the Telco-Media-Tech space. Particularly in the category of media we want to work with our partners and say, well, let’s make sure that that that Steve’s movie script doesn’t happen.
We all shape the future. I want to make a better world for my kids… we are determined to be the change we want to see
Steve: Meliora has 3 key areas: advisory, ventures and creative. We’ve talked about creative, tell me about the other two.
Clive: Pillar one is a strategic and product development advisory, we will build solutions for our growth partners. We will build products and services for them, we have a deep technical engineering capability and expertise in human centred design. Having built fantastic products in my career like Radio Player and Radio App and built in-stream for Absolute Radio. With Shazam, Omni Studio and Audio Boom, we built these businesses from the ground up.
The second pillar of the business is ventures. We can’t build everything, so we want to invest in a whole range of businesses. We are announcing today the 11 investments we’ve already made (listed below). These are very early stage software businesses that we think will play really tangible role in what we’ve been talking about. We will do more of those investments.
Steve: You’ve invested in Jules Lund’s business, Tribe.
Clive: I was one of his first backers on that idea many years ago. It’s a phenomenal successful business now operating out of America, the whole influencer area is now mature and of course they allow creators to monetise their creative work. The Tribe marketplace is a great combination of human creative and technology which is what Tribe has as delivered, so I’ve been very proud long-term investor in Tribe.
We invest in early-stage tech-led founders, bringing capital, CTO-level insight and support to help them scale.
The Meliora Company will be based in three regions, with teams in Sydney for APAC, London for EMEA and Los Angeles for Americas. Meliora Advisory brings together a unique mix of highly skilled international innovators from across digital video, digital audio, telecommunications and ecommerce. The business will start with an initial team of nine members with more partners and associates joining over the coming months.
Meliora’s founding associates are:
○ Vijay Solanki – Sydney
○ Brendan Collogan – Sydney
○ Celia Wallace – Sydney
○ Ricky Sutton – Sydney
○ Clare Baker – London
○ Tony Moorey – Spain
○ Anthony Abbott – Athens
○ Amy McCelland – London
○ Mike McMahon – Colorado
The company’s initial investments include:
Tribe Holdings: TRIBE, founded by Jules Lund , is an influencer marketing platform that connects brands with a global community of over 70,000 opt-in creators to produce high-quality, on-brand content across platforms.
GXE: a licensed Australian fintech platform streamlining private asset management for investors, fund managers, and family offices.
Chronosphere: a cloud-native observability platform that empowers engineering teams to control costs and complexity while accelerating incident resolution.
Sonder: is a holistic employee care platform offering 24/7 access to medical, mental health, and personal safety support through a single app.
Edrolo: is an Australian curriculum-aligned teaching and learning platform that combines expert-led video lessons, interactive assessments, and real-time analytics to enhance student outcomes.