Independent Voices/Creative Collisions
Our Fall Summit is coming up! Learn more about the speakers and their sessions
Three times a year, independent voices gather to share unique expertise, insights, and perspectives on innovation, design thinking, strategic evolution, and more.
Join (from anywhere!) senior practitioners, designers, strategists, innovators, and educators for a half-day summit as we share insights and unique perspectives, participate in inspirational conversations, and spark the creative serendipity that enables new ideas to emerge.
It’s a concise, half-day summit crafted to catalyze a network effect of creativity.
Expect to hear new approaches, see challenges from new angles, and leave with new ideas. Then, use those ideas to discover new solutions, find new approaches to persistent challenges, and develop plans to capture new opportunities.
This fall’s theme is nonconsensus.
Nonconsensus is the independence of thought and mind. It frees you from the limitations of thoughts, expectations, and organizational bounds. It encourages you to see a new, wide-open future where anything is possible. It helps you see diagonally, left, and right when everyone else is looking backward.
Nonconsensus is different than non-conforming. Instead of resisting your existing system, nonconsensus pushes you to create new systems, develop new beliefs, and see new opportunities.
Join us to explore your possibilities. (Plus, it’s free to attend!)
Meet the speakers and their sessions:
Evolving a Legacy Brand with Katie Iwanin
How do you evolve a legacy brand? How do you build on its heritage and strengths while evolving it for the present day — even if the heritage is at odds with modern culture?
Katie Iwanin, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy at Minnetonka Moccasin, will share her experiences building a brand while honoring and uplifting the Native American community and brand building during her time at Zeus Jones, where she worked with clients such as the MN Twins, General Mills, Nestle Purina, Medtronic, Facebook (now Meta), and Target.
Learn:
The importance of reconciling past brand missteps to create a solid brand foundation.
The art of balancing tradition with innovation to keep your brand relevant.
Proven techniques for leveraging a brand's heritage while embracing contemporary trends.
Case studies of successful brand transformations that have captured new markets and revitalized customer loyalty.
Predictions for what's on the horizon in reaching future/younger audiences.
The Once and Future of Workshops: Why interdisciplinary collaborative design is relevant in a post-pandemic, AI-emergent world with Mark Buccella
Why do we have design workshops? When did they begin, and how have they evolved? What role should collaborative design methods play in a future where robots can write our problem statements, do our research, draw our storyboards, generate our designs, and write our code?
Mark will look at the history of interdisciplinary design workshops, how they've evolved and changed in a post-pandemic world, and why (and how) we should keep doing them.
With the rise of Design Thinking, we've seen businesses around the globe adopt a more human-centered mindset to product creation. This has created the standards of excellence evident across the most-loved apps on our devices today.
However, in focusing solely on what is consciously desirable from a human point of view, we leave potential improvements on the table.
Amber will discuss how by coupling Cognitive Science with Design Thinking, we can create products that not only address unmet conscious needs but do so in a way that leverages the unconscious functioning of the brain to increase effectiveness.
What do you do when you're stuck? How do you create a fresh perspective or reframe a challenge? Killeen Hanson will share how she uses text-image and image-image mashups to jumpstart research processes, challenge assumptions, invite productive disagreement, and work collaboratively with research teams to unearth fresh perspectives and reframe challenges.
Killeen will pull from her teaching practice at The New School, her work at the New York Public Library, and her ongoing publication project, the Sobremesa Reading Club.
You can expect to learn:
Techniques for working with teams to collaboratively challenge assumptions and find alternative ways of looking at the familiar
Practical examples of how combining images or text with images can inspire generative opportunities.
Prompts and exercises for combining text and images to ask more incisive questions
Advice for making safe spaces for people to think alongside each other, to disagree productively, and to wrestle with ideas
Links to image collections and archives to jumpstart your own combinatory research
The summit will be hosted by Nora Guerrera. Nora is the founder and Managing Director of Northome Group. She is a strategic leader and entrepreneur with a diverse background in anthropology, innovation, and strategic design.
Nora creates spaces and places for serendipity, connection, and the activation of new insights and ideas. Contact her to learn more about how you can manage ‘unknown, unknowns’, diversify your flow of useful surprises, and activate them to create novel connections, strategies, and solutions.
Whether you're an executive leader, freelancer, educator, or practitioner, you won’t want to miss this unparalleled opportunity to challenge how you view and use design and strategy in your efforts.
