Innovating at the Intersection of
Product, AI, and Strategy
Hello, I'm David Thomson, a strategic product and design executive with an entrepreneurial spirit, committed to blending design with AI and business strategy to create impactful, human-centric solutions.
Founded and led #1 Globally Rated UX Agency, Momentum Design Lab, to acquisition
Influenced $50B+ in Customer Acquisitions
Worked with 32 of the U.S. & Global Fortune 100, 64 of U.S. & Global Fortune 500
After starting a career as an in-house designer, product manager, and developer at a mix of large organizations and emerging startups across media & entertainment, e-commerce, enterprise platforms, and financial services, this provided a unique perspective on creating engaging software platforms.
This foundation led to the founding of Momentum Design Lab, globally recognized as a leader in strategic product design and known for its user-centricity which integrates research, strategy, design, and development into delivering innovative products.
Providing executive leadership at Momentum, expanding operations from Silicon Valley to New York City and then to London for over two decades. After the acquisition HTEC, integrated the specialized service offering into a broader end-to-end product development organization.
Beyond Product Leadership
Over time as an agency operator and leader, it quickly became clear that success required more than expertise in any one area. It was essential to develop go-to-market strategies, establish strong brand positioning, and build cross-functional partnerships. Equally important were leadership skills such as effective delegation, fostering alliances, driving customer success, and managing digital strategies across paid, earned, and owned channels. Business development, maintaining a customer-centric focus, and ensuring fiscal responsibility were also key to our sustained growth. Strengthening team dynamics, shaping compelling narratives, packaging services, and driving business strategy helped us earn the trust of great customers and foster long-lasting relationships.
Leading a multi-city and increasingly remote global workforce provided invaluable experience in managing complex organizational structures, driving change, and optimizing resources to meet diverse regional needs. After the acquisition, these skills were applied broadly within HTEC, enhancing operational efficiency while expanding service offerings. This included spearheading a rebrand, unifying services, and developing frameworks for Innovation, CX, and AI strategy delivery, all of which positioned the company for long-term growth.
Spanning Product Domains
A multifaceted career bridging design, technology, strategy, and innovation, driving holistic impact across the business ecosystem. Spanning startups to global enterprises across diverse industries, this experience focuses on delivering transformative solutions and fostering sustainable growth.
Product Leadership Approach
An integrated product and design leadership approach aimed at creating award-winning teams and products is built on four tenets: Craftsmanship for quality, Empathy for user-centricity, Collaboration for holistic solutions, and Curiosity for continuous improvement.
The Anatomy of an Award Winning Team
Creating a successful team is like building a high-performance sports organization, where each player's skills shape the role they play and drive overall success. The team is composed of a blend of letter (M, T, S, I, & X) shaped individuals across designers, UX managers, and product managers, each bringing their own unique value proposition to the table. This combination of creative vision, user-centered focus, strategic direction, and cross-disciplinary expertise ensures teams are well-equipped to handle the diverse challenges of both Greenfield and Brownfield projects.
The team applies the appropriate methodologies, whether UI prototyping, user-centered design, design thinking, or cognitive design, tailored to each project type, time constraints, budgets, resource constraints, and the specific needs of stakeholders.
Fueled by an ambition to excel, the team delivers their best each day, balancing work-life with accountability. This environment encourages critical thinking, risk-taking and learning from failure, enabling growth and adaptability. Regular gatherings strengthen bonds, driving collaboration essential for long-term success.
Designing for and with Artificial Intelligence
Early exposure to emerging technologies like sentiment streaming, NLP, knowledge graphs, LLMs, predictive AI, and RPA before they became mainstream was gained by operating a studio in Silicon Valley. This experience, fueled by a passion for exploring what's next in technology, led to spearheading two key innovations since the dawn of advanced reasoning via GenAI: Cognitive Design, a design methodology which aligns interfaces with users' mental processes, and Synthetic Design framework, which leverages GenAI for rapid, data-driven product development.