In 1984, Ritchie founded the software company, Office Workstations Limited (OWL) in Edinburgh, after leaving ICL when they closed their Scottish Development Centre at Dalkeith Palace the previous year.
It was there that Berners-Lee told him about a system he and his team at CERN were developing, which with the aid of computer terminals, would enable its staff to view and edit the vast amounts of information the facility was generating and storing in hypertext documents.
Thinking this sounded a bit pretentious, not to mention a mouthful to pronounce, Ritchie convinced himself it would not come to much and duly rejected the idea as a viable business proposition.
From 1997 onwards, Ritchie became involved in venture capital and was the founding chairman of several Scottish IT companies, including Voxar, VIS Entertainment, Orbital Software Group, and Digital Bridges.
In the New Year Honours 2003, Ritchie was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to enterprise and education.