MIKE LITMAN

Strategy, Intelligence & Innovation

I work out what’s changing in culture and technology, what it means for your business, and then I make it real.

Cultural Intelligence · Brand & Product Strategy · AI & Emerging Tech · Capability Building

← spotter, strategist, builder

For 15+ years I’ve worked where culture, brands and technology meet, helping organisations understand what’s changing and decide what to do about it. That has included work for Google, Nike, adidas, Netflix, Meta, P&G and Gucci, through Contagious, R/GA, MediaMonks, Dare, AnalogFolk and Poke.

At Contagious I learned to spot shifts early and explain why they matter commercially. At R/GA I shaped Magic Leap’s move from consumers to enterprise. At MediaMonks I founded a global emerging technology capability from nothing and grew it to $3.2m+ in revenue.

Now I work independently on AI strategy, innovation and enablement, most recently as fractional AI and innovation lead for a multi-site hospitality business. I also build, because building keeps the strategy honest: I find out what works before recommending it to anyone else.

Hello!

Strategy Cultural Intelligence BIMA 100 London Published Author

Right now

Building AI products to test what actually works

Exploring Where conversational agents find their strongest use cases

Reading Curation by Michael Bhaskar

Listening The Pattern (daily culture intelligence)

The Career

Places I've worked

Cultural Capital Labs Director, AI & Product Innovation Strategy Independent practice. Fractional AI and innovation lead for a multi-site hospitality business. 2025–now right now

Digital Frontier Innovation Strategy Director & AI Enablement 2025

Monks Sr Director, Brand & Innovation Strategy Founded a global emerging tech capability from zero: $3.2m+ revenue. 2019–2025 the big one

R/GA Strategy Director, Product Positioning & GTM Magic Leap: consumer to enterprise. 2019

Contagious First Head of Digital Spotting shifts and explaining why they matter. 2017–2018

Burst Founder. Micro-content agency. Acquired. 2013–2017 my first build →

AnalogFolk Strategist 2012

Poke Strategist 2011 where craft lived

Dare Strategist 2010 digital was new & exciting

Earlier builds

Brandsonvine · Remote Palette · KingCube

The Proof

From insight to result

Each one started with a real shift or a real problem, and went all the way to something that worked in the real world.

MediaMonks

A new capability inside a global business

Brands wanted to explore AI, web3 and immersive technology, but there was no team or offer to sell them. I founded a global emerging technology capability from zero: its positioning, service model, team structure and go-to-market, with partners including Stability AI and Runway.

The result A new international business line that generated $3.2m+ in revenue, plus cross-company work with Reddit, Salesforce and Polygon.

Buggy Smart

Conversational agents in the real world

Parents can’t tell whether a café or restaurant will fit a buggy, and nobody publishes the answer. So I built Poppy, an ElevenLabs voice agent that phones venues and asks. 10,000+ calls later, 1,200+ London venues are mapped and ranked by borough.

The result A dataset that didn’t exist before. Voice agents aren’t only for answering the phone: pointed outwards, they become a research instrument.

See the project →

The Pattern

AI audio as a product

Too many sources, not enough time. The Pattern reads 150+ feeds, synthesises what matters and publishes it as a podcast narrated in my cloned voice, every weekday morning, without me touching it. 200+ episodes so far.

What it proved The value isn’t more content, it’s a better editorial filter. One person with the right tools and taste can run what used to need a newsroom.

See the project →

Intelligence in practice

The Relevance Index

Can you score culture?

1,203 brands scored on cultural relevance using Wikipedia, Reddit, and AI. Updated weekly. What started as a spreadsheet became a live index.

The insight The brands with the highest cultural scores rarely have the highest market caps. Cultural relevance and commercial success follow different curves.

See the project →

CultureTerminal

A Bloomberg Terminal for culture

140+ sources and 800+ articles a day across fashion, brands, design, music, art and tech, scored by a custom algorithm so the stories that matter rise to the top.

The insight Everyone in advertising says they’re plugged in to culture. Most are reading the same three newsletters. Staying close to culture is a filtering problem, and one ranked page beats a dozen tabs.

See the project →

Voice AI

AI that makes real phone calls

Four different jobs for a conversational agent, each tested on real phone lines: recommending, measuring, answering and researching. Most AI portfolios are text and images. This is voice AI doing useful work in the real world.

↗

First Order

AI calls London restaurants to find the one dish you have to order. Every other guide tells you where to eat.

↗

The Queue Index Ended

AI called 50 of London’s busiest no-reservation restaurants every Saturday to ask how long the wait was. Ended after 697 calls, when one in ten turned out to be AI talking to AI.

↗

With Moshi

An AI receptionist for independent UK restaurants that answers in the caller’s language, so no booking call goes unanswered during service.

↗

Buggy Smart

AI calls London venues to ask the pushchair question no listing answers. 10,000+ calls, 1,200+ venues mapped. Research as infrastructure.

voice agents calling real phones → real data London, mapped → all 7 London projects on one map

“

In the AI age, taste will become even more important. When anyone can make anything, the big differentiator is what you choose to make.

Paul Graham

Years in strategy & innovation

$3.2M+

Revenue built from zero

(Media.Monks)

BIMA 100

Tech Pioneer

∞

Tabs open

Keynote AdWorld 2024

Recognition BIMA 100 Tech Pioneer

Recognition 30 Most Creative, Business Insider

Speaker NFT NYC · Google x Monks

Author Published 2024

LinkedIn 26,000+ Followers

The Pattern

Listen now

Three institutions just rewrote the rules on who owns global art

Tech & Digital Apple dropped App Store commission to 25% in China without announcement fanfare Fashion & Style Alessandro Michele's Valentino debut swaps maximalism for intellectual restraint post-Garavani death Tech & Digital ByteDance secured NVIDIA's latest AI chips for international use despite export restrictions Brand & Business Ships near Strait of Hormuz broadcast Chinese ownership signals to avoid Iran attacks Fashion & Style Estée Lauder sues Jo Malone personally over her Zara fragrance collaboration name Tech & Digital Apple dropped App Store commission to 25% in China without announcement fanfare Fashion & Style Alessandro Michele's Valentino debut swaps maximalism for intellectual restraint post-Garavani death Tech & Digital ByteDance secured NVIDIA's latest AI chips for international use despite export restrictions Brand & Business Ships near Strait of Hormuz broadcast Chinese ownership signals to avoid Iran attacks Fashion & Style Estée Lauder sues Jo Malone personally over her Zara fragrance collaboration name

The Clients

Brands I've worked on

NIKE

Google

NETFLIX

GUCCI

BMW

From people I've worked with

“Michael is a rare combination of highly-driven expertise and calm, easy-to-work-with attitude. He has a real affinity for the digital space and is able to follow real human insights as well as following the money. Creatively and technically skilled. Top bloke.”

Conor McNicholas

via LinkedIn

“Michael is an entrepreneurial, creative, detail-orientated business operator. Much more multi-faceted now. Hire him.”

Gabbi Cahane

via LinkedIn

“Mike is an extremely likeable, creative and nimble media exec and entrepreneur. Always a pleasure to deal with.”

Daniel Fisher

via LinkedIn

41 recommendations on LinkedIn

Presentations

The talks

click any to view full deck

The Strategist Who Ships

The Last Unfair Advantage

The Non-Coder's Manifesto

Generalists Are Having Their Revenge

All 20 decks →

The Work

Things I've built

Flagship Modern Retro 100 brands × 1970s storefronts. 857 images generated.
AI-generated nostalgia that people actually buy. this one went viral ↗ The Pattern Culture briefing and podcast. 150+ sources curated into one editorial voice. Published every weekday, fully automated. flagship build ★ CultureTerminal A Bloomberg Terminal for culture. 140+ sources, 800+ articles scored daily across fashion, brands, design, music, art and tech. runs itself daily ↻ Automated Trove Save links. See your taste mapped. AI analyses every save to build your personal taste profile. personal favourite ★ Little London 160+ weekend activities for London families. 8 categories. Updated daily via automated pipeline. built for my son Taste OS Score any brand's taste across 5 dimensions. 20 pre-scored brands. Interactive scorer built in. taste as a system Live · Premier League 26/27 Beat the Gaffer A football prediction game fronted by a comic character. Predict the scores, climb the table, beat the Gaffer. Live with a real audience and a business partner. the character is the product ↗

Oishii London

84 Japanese restaurants in London. Curated, mapped, verified.

First Out

259 stations. 11 lines. Platform positioning for every stop on the tube.

EVERYWEAR

Wearable tech news. 55+ sources. Automated daily digest.

Pub Guide

114 London pubs. Curated by neighbourhood. Updated daily.

The Visible Shelf

295 books. Cover art, pull-quotes, audio takes.

See all projects filtered →

The Writing

Start with this one

Essay · 5 min read Creative Strategists Can Build Now: AI Collapsed the Conveyor Belt “When the making is abundant, the deciding is the scarce thing.” Read it →

Start here: nine posts to read first → All posts

Cultural Forecast

What's moving this week

W/C 26 October 2026 · Full forecast →

Rising

↑

Food

Bitter Flavours Taking Centre Plate

Radicchio, dandelion, fernet-spiked sauces. Bitter is no longer a garnish. London menus are treating it as a primary flavour note, not a corrective.

Fading

↓

Brand

Founder-Face Brand Storytelling

Every DTC brand for a decade made the founder the product. That era is closing. Consumers stopped trusting the origin myth.

Watch

→

Culture

Amateur Expertise Replacing Institutional Authority

People trust the obsessive amateur over the credentialled institution. This is not new. But the velocity is accelerating in ways that should concern every legacy brand.

Peak

⊙

Media

The 'Slow Living' Content Industrial Complex

Linen aprons. Sourdough close-ups. A wood-burning stove in the background. Slow living content is algorithmically indistinguishable from a Waitrose advert now.

How I Think

Beliefs

Taste is the last unfair advantage

When everyone can build, what you choose to build becomes the differentiator.

Build for yourself first

If you are not the user, you are guessing.

Curiosity compounds

The more you notice, the more you see. Go deep on the edges and the centre makes more sense.

Connect the dots others miss

Insight is pattern recognition across worlds.

Curation is a creative act

Choosing what to include and what to leave out defines the work.

Show it early

A working anything beats explanation.

AI is a taste amplifier

It doesn't replace judgment. It gives judgment more surface area.

Status is a signal system

Objects, brands, and interfaces are coded language. Learn the grammar.

All brands compete for cultural capital

Power comes from being culturally fluent, not just commercially present.

Always archive the signal

What you collect, track, and document becomes future capital.

Off the Clock

Beyond the build

⚽

Nottingham Forest. Lifelong, deep, part of who I am. Every Saturday, 3pm. Non-negotiable.

🍜

London's variety in art, culture, shopping and entertainment is my favourite thing about this city. I love sushi, magazine and design shops, hype and streetwear shops, art galleries and finding new places and spaces.

☕

Hot chocolate, not coffee. Caffeine doesn't agree with me. Yes, really.

🌃

Night owl. One kid. Builds between 9pm and midnight.

📚

Currently obsessed with: Claude Code, Nottingham Forest, and building The Pattern: a daily culture briefing from 150+ sources.

Inspired by

Artists & Filmmakers

David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Wes Anderson, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Lichtenstein, David Shrigley

Writers & Thinkers

Pierre Bourdieu, Alain de Botton, W David Marx, Michael Bhaskar, Luke Burgis, Emily Sundberg, Jason Kottke, Kyle Chayka, Dan Ariely

Culture & Strategy

Marcus Collins, Bobby Kim, Sahil Bloom, Ethan Mollick, Kevin Kelly, Ana Andjelic, Noah Brier, Richard Huntington

Visionaries

Iain Tait, Virgil Abloh, Nils Leonard, Pharrell, Michael Acton Smith, Alex Tew, Daniel Ek, Shigeru Miyamoto

The Wildcards

Brian Clough, Michael Cera, Daniel Taylor, Rob Saunders, Pete Cashmore, Harry Stebbings, Danny Wallace, Dave Gorman

Works In Progress, i-D, Dazed, WIRED, Monocle, The Face, Wallpaper*, Courier, Colossus, Mundial, Highsnobiety, Hypebeast, 72 Magazine

the syllabus, basically

What's next

Open to senior strategy, intelligence and innovation roles, in-house or agency side, and to fractional or project work in AI strategy and enablement.

If you’re trying to understand what’s changing, build an innovation capability or turn a promising idea into something people use, I’d like to hear about it.

Email me Connect on LinkedIn

↑ let's talk