M&C Saatchi Group Launches Digital Business Innovation Consultancy 'Thread'

Today M&C Saatchi announces the launch of Thread, a digital business innovation consultancy that helps ambitious clients reinvent their business through new digital products, services and ventures.

Thread believes large corporates can successfully innovate and reinvent, but the dominant models of corporate innovation make it harder, slower and more expensive than it needs to be. Founded on the principle of Diversity of Thought, Thread is fuelled by a global network of over 70 innovation specialists from the world’s most innovative markets. By combining the commercial rigour of strategy consulting and the creativity of design studios, with the pace and experimentation of startup teams, they develop and build high-growth digital products, services and ventures for clients.

Founders Michaeljon Alexander-Scott and Lilian Tse join M&C Saatchi from Fjord/Accenture Interactive and bring diverse experience within global consultancies and design studios.

At Fjord Lilian was a design director, responsible for launching new digital products for the likes of GSK, Pepsi and Vodafone and pioneering new ways of helping clients tackle existential problems.

Previously she worked for Frog Design, founding the London studio, following a career at Gartner and McKinsey.

Michaeljon led the insight and strategy practice at Fjord/Accenture Interactive and prior to this he was a founding employee and head of strategy of M&C Saatchi’s leading global and social issues agency, following a career as a strategist at BBC, Isobar, The&Partnership and MGOMD. 

Moray MacLennan, CEO of M&C Saatchi, comments: “Clients increasingly recognise the importance of developing new digital products and services to diversify their revenue streams. Thread, and the experience that MJ and Lilian bring, enables us to expand into this growing territory and continue to accelerate our investment in differentiating digital capabilities.”

Michaeljon Alexander-Scott and Lilian Tse, Co-founders of Thread Innovation, adds: “We’re focused on helping ambitious clients reinvent their business in the face of relentless competition and changing customer expectations. As business leaders at management consultancies and design studios we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. The traditional consultancy model makes corporate innovation too difficult, too slow and too expensive, so we’re absolutely delighted to join M&C Saatchi Group and offer clients a new and more dynamic way of collaborating that is built around their needs and priorities.”