As Director of Global Futures Michael is responsible for the identification and analysis of emerging issues and trends across Europe, the United States and Asia, ensuring that these issues feed into the Future Foundation’s world view and that of its parent company Experian.

Apart from his consulting work for clients he is a regular writer, presenter and media commentator on social, economic, political and technological change and its implications for business, government and society.   Michael also continues to play a key role in the analytical content of the Future Foundation’s nVision service that he conceived and developed in 1997.

Published reports at the Future Foundation include: 24 Hour Society; A Social Forecast Revisited (on leisure trends); The Giving Age: inheritance in the context of an ageing population, The Rise of the Mass Affluent, Shopping Centre Futures and Asset Accumulation and Lifestage.

His widely acclaimed book Citizen Brands (John Wiley and Sons, 2001) considers the dynamics of the relationship between companies and society and the implications for branding and business strategy.  His second book – Complicated Lives – suggests that a defining feature of modern life is complexity and that the ever-growing reports of stress and time pressures arise directly from this.  Published in August 2003, the book argues that managing such complications, or helping people to manage them, will be one of the most crucial issues of the 21st century.  The updated and significantly revised edition of Complicated Lives was published in paperback in August 2005.  Michael has presented on these issues in a number of countries including Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States. 

A sociologist and statistician by training, Michael is a full member of the Market Research Society, a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and an Associate of Demos.