SK · MMXXVI

Creative Technologist

Saurabh
Kakade

I turn emerging technology into products that help people.

Creative Director & Strategist · Meta Creative Shop · San Francisco

How I work

Problem · Technology · Impact

Spot the problem.
Ship the answer.

01

Human insight

Where it starts.

Every project begins with a human problem the rest of technology overlooks — blindness, censorship, climate denial, exclusion — and the people it leaves behind.

02

Emerging technology

The unobvious bet.

Take a technology that already exists and find the use no one else saw — the LiDAR in every phone, AI translation, a public blockchain, a variable font, 3D printing — and repurpose it as a new primitive for that problem.

03

Things that ship

Idea to launch.

De-risk the idea cheaply and build a coalition to ship it — small teams, lean budgets, shaping the idea and making it real. At Meta, working at the intersection of AI and creativity.

The technology is never the point. The human problem it solves is.

A timeline

45 entries · 2012 — 2026

  1. 2026
  2. 2025
  3. 2024
  4. 2023
  5. 2022
  6. 2021
  7. 2020
  8. 2019
  9. 2018
  10. 2017
  11. 2016
  12. 2015
  13. 2014
  14. 2012
  15. 2008

Recognition

2015 – 2023

250+

Total awards

11

Grand Prix

13

Cannes Lions

Highlights

Press

14 publications

About

For a decade I've taken a new technology and invented something that helps people — the LiDAR in every phone as free “eyes” for the blind, AI that makes braille translation free, a public blockchain as a safe house for censored journalism. Most were built idea-to-launch by small teams on lean budgets, where I both shaped the idea and made it real.

Originally from India, built across four countries and six cities — Pune, Berlin, Prague, Paris, Munich, Hamburg, and now San Francisco. Recognized at Cannes Lions, D&AD, The One Show, Webby, Red Dot, and ADC. Today I work at the intersection of creative practice and AI.