©Phil Crow 2023
Nikos Manouselis is the Global CEO of SGS Food Nexus, a new SGS business bringing together food-safety risk intelligence, regulatory intelligence, and data-driven decision support for the global food industry.
He took on this role following the acquisition of Agroknow by SGS in 2026, after founding and leading the company for nearly eighteen years.
His work has long centred on one recurring question: How can complex and fragmented information be turned into intelligence that helps people make better decisions?
Since 2005, Nikos has worked across industry, academia, and international institutions at the intersection of data engineering, artificial intelligence, food and agriculture systems, regulation, and organisational decision-making. His focus has not been technology in isolation, but the wider conditions required for technology to create value: reliable data, connected systems, expert judgement, appropriate incentives, clear ownership, and the ability of organisations to act.
As founder and CEO of Agroknow, Nikos led the company through several stages of research, product development, commercial growth, and organisational change.
One important chapter was Agroknow’s collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to redesign and deploy a new technological backbone for AGRIS, the global agricultural research information service established in 1975. The work involved modernising the technology, content-processing pipelines, and editorial workflows behind a service used by agricultural research communities around the world.
Agroknow also created FOODAKAI, a food-safety intelligence platform developed to help companies identify, assess, and monitor emerging risks across ingredients, suppliers, products, and markets. What began as a research and product experiment gradually became the company’s principal commercial platform and the foundation of its food-safety intelligence work.
Today, at SGS Food Nexus, Nikos is working on the next stage of that journey.
The challenge is no longer only to build better algorithms or collect more data. It is to connect food-safety risk, regulatory requirements, quality information, testing, inspection, audit evidence, and expert knowledge in ways that support earlier and more confident decisions.
This new chapter also raises a different set of leadership questions.
What changes when a founder-led company becomes part of a global institution? How can specialised teams, technologies, and cultures be integrated without losing what made them valuable? How does a founder move from personally building much of the system to stewarding an organisation that must increasingly operate beyond him?
These questions now form an important part of Nikos’ work and writing.
Nikos is an Electronics and Computer Engineer by training. He holds two MSc degrees and a PhD in Agricultural Information Management. Before focusing fully on entrepreneurship, he held research and teaching positions at the University of Alcalá, the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, and the Technical University of Crete.
His academic work covers metadata, interoperability, recommender systems, knowledge organisation, open science, and data-integration infrastructures. He has authored or co-authored more than 170 scientific publications, documented through his Google Scholar profile, and has participated in international research and innovation initiatives connecting technology with practical challenges in food and agriculture.
Alongside his professional work, Nikos has been active in entrepreneurial communities. He is a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Greece and has served on its board, including as Chair of the EO Accelerator Program Greece, supporting founders working to build and scale their businesses.
Outside his principal work, Nikos has a long-standing interest in music, radio, travel, books, and digital culture. Through his radio alter ego, Mister Myster, he creates independent radio programmes and playlists that connect music with places, journeys, seasons, memories, and moments of transition. His radio archive is also available on Mixcloud.
About this blog
This blog is a personal space for exploring three connected territories.
The first is intelligent food systems: food safety, risk intelligence, regulation, data, artificial intelligence, and the difficult work of turning information into decisions.
The second is building and stewarding organisations: entrepreneurship, leadership, acquisition, integration, commercial growth, organisational design, and the transition from founder dependency towards wider ownership and institutional scale.
The third is building a life that the work is worth supporting: family, relationships, health, curiosity, travel, music, responsibility, personal change, and the challenge of making room for life rather than treating every empty space as unused capacity.
Some articles are technical. Others are commercial, organisational, or personal. What connects them is an interest in the systems beneath visible problems—and in the human decisions that ultimately determine whether those systems work.
The writing is not intended to provide universal answers. It is an ongoing inquiry into how science, technology, organisations, and human judgement come together; how ambitious things can be built without losing sight of the people they are meant to serve; and how a builder can gradually learn to become a steward.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the views expressed on this site are Nikos’ personal views and do not necessarily represent those of SGS or any other organisation with which he is associated.