Tony Ageh, an evangelist for new technologies who has spent 14 years at the BBC, said the corporation’s bureaucracy meant that it was difficult to force new ideas through to fruition.

As the leader of the team that developed the iPlayer, Ageh is said to have had negotiate no fewer than 84 internal BBC meetings before launching the streaming service, in 2007. It has since been used to watch more than 10 billion programmes.

The executive will leave his £178,000 role as controller of archive development next week, joining the New York Public Library as chief digital officer.

In an interview with the Guardian, Ageh said he found it hard to get his ideas through the corporation’s internal mechanisms.

He said: “Everything I told the BBC to do they didn’t understand or do. There’s no shortage of ideas at the BBC but it’s about whether that idea survives the BBC’s power testing of ideas. I am good at making ideas survive that process, which means they survive the outside world.”

Ageh said that the American library was ahead of the corporation in its ideas about how to use the internet to better inform audiences. He told the newspaper: “I feel I could have more impact on those kids in Walthamstow from NY than I could from W12. They are already ahead of the BBC in their thinking – the same Reithian, public service values.”