How business strategy through design becomes brand reality - thoughts from the founders of COLLINS

Lowercase D design represents the craft, the professional activities of design, graphic design, information design, architecture, so on. Capital D design represents the larger philosophy, the philosophical framework of the idea and role of design in the world. Welcome to the Bright Ideas podcast, where we discuss how brands build relationships with consumers and society through innovation, technology and marketing. Bright Ideas is produced by the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School. I'm Matthew Quint, Director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership. And I'm JP Kuwvine, Adjunct Faculty here at the School and Principal at UBA Brands Consulting. Bright Ideas is sponsored by Lexicon Branding, a specialized consulting firm that develops inspiring brand names and brand architectures. For both the Fortune 500 and today's innovative startups and Cogin Page, an independent award-winning publisher that delivers best practices and innovative thinking from global experts across every key business subject. Today on the Bright Ideas podcast, we are hosting Ryan Collins and Leland Mashmeier, the founders of Collins, an award-winning strategy and creative agency. We look forward to discussing the power of design, changing trends in the social and consumer landscape and lessons around brands and leadership. Welcome to the podcast today, Leland and Brian, thanks again for joining us. Thank you. It's good to be here. Thank you. Indeed. For coming. Leland, I'm glad somebody has an equally complicated last name, even though Kuwvine, I think, tops it. But maybe to start, can you give us a little bit of background on yourselves and maybe how it relates to the creation of Collins, what made Collins necessary and how does it fit you? Yeah, great question. So I'll kick it off. So a series of kind of interconnected events led Brian and I to meet each other in 2007. And without going into the series of events, it was, it was basically Brian and I kind of pursuing the question of what's next, what's a bigger idea to, to pursue in the world. And Brian and I independently had both developed a concept of capital D design versus lowercase D design. And so when we met each other, we were very quickly bonded on that. And so what I mean by that is, lowercase D design represents the craft, the professional activities of design graphic design information design architecture. And so while, while what I'm about to tell you is kind of like specific language that came later, we brought in I kind of intuitively shared the notion that, that the capital D design was the creation of intentional change. And we believe, and to this day still believe that design is the third pillar of human inquiry, setting next to the sciences and humanities. So the sciences pursues the question, what is fact and creates all these disciplines to figure out irrefutable fact. And so the humanities pursues the question, what is meaningful, what is important and does the same thing creates all these disciplines to pursue that question. The designs as it should be called pursues the question, what is desirable and creates all these disciplines to pursue that. Therefore design is the creation of desirable change. It is the very thing that gets us from where we are to where we want to be. And so we wanted over that. Now at the time design was really seen as an aesthetic pursuit defined by its disciplines. We thought that was a shame because we thought there were bigger opportunities and bigger impact that design could have this is like 2007ish. So we founded Collins on the premise that design is the creation of desirable change. So there are sorts of partners helping companies figure out how to scale the present of their companies. But there was no partner really helping companies figure out how to change how to transform their businesses. And that's fundamentally. At a first principles level two things the business has to do you have to scale your present. And then you have to transform to be able to absorb better larger more profitable futures. And then you have to be able to help them figure out the latter. So that's what we founded Collins to do because it's not just managerial expertise. It's not just data analytics and financial acumen that moves organizations into the future. It's imagination and then also being able to ground that imagination with commercial logic and architect that change to create that momentum for an organization to move into that future. And then you have to specialize that from the last 15 years is helping companies that critical inflection points define design and build their futures. He was writing about design future creativity and strategy and he had a hit one and number of awards for strategic thinking with Holly recognize and I started reading his blog. And I really liked it. And so when I went to go when I realized that I wanted that I thought the future was not being served by models. And I thought that I was a person that I started around me. I recognize a common voice and what the one was writing. And invited him to come out to have a lunch in New York. And we did we talked for hours at that point we decided pretty much in that meeting we decided to start a company together. Let me throw in a provocation in all of this into all of this harmony and deep thought thinking through everything because you struck me with a couple of snide remarks on our occasional link in messaging exchanges like I wish brands were talking so much about meaning the future purpose or whatever they should just do great products. And then what does that all fit in with what Leland just laid out here. I didn't say they should be talking about their products. What I'm saying is that we spend a lot of time looking through the wrong side of the telescope. When people are spending a lot of time. What's our purpose? What's our meaning? And we have these existential angst when it's like you know your job is get a product out marketplace see if people like it. See if you can scale it. See if you can make a profit. Then our experience has been we've worked with some of the best product engineers and product designers in the world spotify among them geniuses Daniela is a genius. And what we begin to realize very early on is that you can extract a really good story from a great product. You can't always extract a great product from some purpose story narrative ethos. So first find the product find the product market fit. Make sure it works. Make sure people love it. Make sure people like curious what are they going to do next from there. You can extract understanding meaning story and narrative. And so that's why I get too concerned about when people start banging the purpose drum too soon. Another joint quote I think because you had it on a slide if I remember right was design doesn't create the future it installs the future if that still rings a bell. So can you explain that is designed then kind of a part more passive I mean it's inspired what others do and then executes it in ways to use your terms that make it desirable. Yeah, so look the history of design is filled with narratives of people envisioning this highly refined simplified but and beautiful future. And it's you know it's the same thing in the world of technology and you know lots of industries because there's something heroic with the idea of asserting from the mind of a person here is a vision let's all go forth and build it. The reality is is that that doesn't work. It doesn't work because it is just the perspective of one person often a man. And that is a bias perspective is an ill informed perspective it is a perspective that does not take into account the very complex nature of creating social commercial anthropological what you know insert your word shifts. The reality is that when we think about the future the future is a competitive market of ideas. The future is not written per say there are just ideas competing for what will become our collective future or futures of certain groups of people. And you see the future not as this thing that we decree and move towards but as a competitive marketplace you begin to realize that no one person can invent the future. It has to be collectively created by people. And so the the William Gibson quote that is often quoted that the future is already here is just not evenly distributed speaks to this very idea of the future being a marketplace of ideas. And so the one a few several of those ideas will win out. And so it's a power law distribution of what ideas are going to be the most collectively shared with each other. we talk a lot about is the space age. That is probably one of the more recent and most expansive and penetrating big ideas that a society has collectively shared and organized around. So the purpose of design is not to stand on a podium and pontificate an individual's perspective, but to say what is collectively desirable for the communities or the people that we are designing for. And then in the market of emerging niche ideas of what that future could be, which ones can we find, make space for, and then apply the skill sets of the craft of design, the practices of design to help grow because it is most beneficial and creates the most value for all the people involved. So again, design is the creation of desirable change. It is not the creation of the future. And so it is a midwife of the future, not the creator of it. - So if we take an example, and you were saying mostly man, I mean to the thought like people like Elon Musk and the vision of the future and an attached brand in SpaceX, Tesla, et cetera. I thought Zuckerberg and his vision of the metaverse in a smaller way, maybe a more concentrated way, James Dyson and household goods. Is that, I mean, does that fit your picture? How does it work out there? Where are the designers in this? - Yeah, so I'm gonna quote Thomas Moore for a second and say, no man is an island. That vision that Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg is putting forward is not their idea. These ideas have been around forever and have a long history. They have taken those ideas and built a scalable, profitable commercial model around them. In a sense, they have become corporate sponsors of these marginal ideas of the future because they believe that those ideas are the most beneficial to everyone. So in a way, they are practicing design. They are trying to create desirable change and make it tangible and make it understandable through metaphor, through story, through design, to other people so that they can experience it. We are all part of different micro communities and we all draw upon those to figure out what is desirable for us. No man is an island, no vision is an island and the best companies recognize that. They do not come up with a vision that is trademarked and ownable as lawyers would want their visions to be. The best companies listen to communities of people and say what does that community, what does that community collectively reaching for as its future? How do we use our unique assets and to contribute to that community and their vision of the future? Those are the best companies. Can you walk us through how you've helped clients recognize such patterns and help them kind of install the future? Could you give it an example for how that happened? Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to go back again to our definition of design. It is the creation of desirable change. It gets us from where we are to where we want to be. So it's a future oriented perspective. Now, and I'm going to also contrast it with design thinking. So what we practice in our process is known as strategic foresight. It's also commonly known as futures thinking. It's an emerging approach that we're sort of like also one of the early and long time practitioners of. It compares to design thinking and that design thinking is about the near term. It is about convergence on a solution. It's often designed thinking is often criticized as solutionism. And there are some other differences. Whereas futures thinking is about long term. It is focused not on solutions, but about narratives. It is about foresight of where the world is going and how to best position a company and design a company over time to take advantage of that change. So whenever we work with clients, we are looking at not converging on a specific solution for the immediate term. We are having conversations with executives about how are you going to grow this company over the next seven to 10 years to unlock the most value for it. So it ends up being more a conversation about valuation than revenue. So we're really more in the valuation domain rather than the revenue-dipping, just counted cash flow questions. So the questions that we dig into are going to sound familiar, but there are also things that when they're combined in a different way, you do a different outcome. So we do the natural kind of like commercial analysis on a business, where are you making money? Would you value mapping to figure out like what are relationships that maybe you are are not monetizing? We look at the competitive set, how the competitors change, we look at the category, what are the category dynamics, but we also look broadly and culturally and socially. What are emerging trends that are pointing at future pools of growth? Then we start looking at what is most authentic, but also most differentiated and exceptional about the company. And what we start to articulate are probable possible potential and preferred futures that this company could become a part of. That's a core point of futures thinking is, again, it's a marketplace of ideas, it's a marketplace of probability. So what are all the things that we need to pay attention to based on present day trends extrapolated over a seven to 10 year period to figure out which is going to create the most discounted cash flow for the company? From there, we create what is called a strategic narrative. Because again, this is about narrative, it's not about arriving at a specific problem. So we'll come up with a strategic narrative that articulates, it's the narrative of how the capital, how the company is going to create value over time. So a strategic narrative says, here's a macro shift in the world that is dislocating capital that is now up for grabs and that this new game that is emerging in the world requires a new set of criteria with a new set of players emerging to play it. How is this company going to position itself in that new game and differentiate itself in such a compelling way that it captures the majority of that dislocated capital from the old game? That's our strategic narrative, that sets up how things are going to grow over time. Then we move into brand. Brand falls out from strategic narrative. That strategic that brand ends up becoming a definition of how the company is going to differentiate itself from the competition while also driving irrational preference among the total addressable market. From there, we have our core equities, from the core equities, start defining core principles that we need to bring to life in the story and in the visuality. And I lean into story and visuality because of anyone who has ever been a part of driving transformation, which is a highly fraught gauntlet of failure. Harvard has done two studies, one from 1981, I think like the other one, from like 2017, both say the exact same thing. 80% of transformations fail. And of the 20% that succeed, only 20% of that 20% succeed and though they are all financial reengineering transformations. So if you're doing something beyond a financial engineering, you're likely going to fail. So anyone who's done it successfully knows that creating that transformation is about storytelling and creating desire for the future, making it tangible. Because everyone who is in a company says, I'll believe it when I see it. So we say, let's show it to you. Let's use design to visualize this future. But let's not just show it to you, let's create a narrative to give it thrust, to give it context, to give it meaning so that people believe even more. And so that narrative ends up becoming the conceptual infrastructure for how the executive is going to deploy capital, prioritize investments, tell its story to Wall Street, tell the story to investors and so on. And so that ends up becoming the strategic foundation for driving this transformation. Then we move into other types of work, whether that's change management and go to market design. And that varies from client to client that that initial stage of business and brand transformation lays the groundwork and creates the momentum for helping these companies reach transformation maturity. This reminds me of Johnny Bauer at Blackstone talking about transforming company valuation and brand at the very beginning, kind of at the inception of company and transforming the value. For example, by transforming a company from being, let's say, in the home goods to the internet of things and that creating a multiple that is significantly above. I think their customers have used, right? Clients of years, do you have an example? - So when Johnny joined Blackstone, he called us and so we've been developing this practice inside Blackstone because Blackstone wants to increase its exit multiples and this is the practice that you do to increase exit multiples. You take the portfolio companies through the transformation. So Johnny's been an incredible partner and we've done lots of great work from that relationship. One that has gone public is a company that we worked with called Therma. Thermal Holdings was a global, was a national collection of essentially blue collar wrench turning companies HVAC plumbing electrical and so on. Blackstone bought them and thought that they could create a larger exit value by doing a transformation on them. So working with Johnny and his team. We identified what made them so unique, which was the fact that, hey, yes, you do air conditioning and energy management, all this stuff for buildings. But you built the world's first zero energy school. You went to the Louisville airport and lowered its emissions by 80%. Retrofitted and changed the Boston Medical Center to be a zero energy building. Why that matters is because we are way behind as a global community on the Paris climate agreement goals. And one of the biggest reasons why we're behind on that is because of buildings. And we're going to submit 40% of carbon emissions on the planet after I think it's like after cars or something it's the biggest contributor. It's also getting worse. Building emissions and efficiencies are increasing every year. And so we have all these technology companies who are saying, hey, I have this widget, I have this tool, I have this system to help with efficiencies, but there's really no one applying those in buildings with that kind of expertise because it's really complicated to get the emissions of these buildings down and the energy usage down. But that's exactly what Thurma did. So we worked with them to say, look, you are the most important company in the world and you don't know it. You have this expertise that you have buried in the way that you think about your company and the way that you run your company and the way that you frame your company externally. And so what we said was, you're not an HVAC mechanical engineering repair company. You are an energy transition accelerator. You take existing technologies and and low cost construction methodologies and you increase the energy productivity of buildings. And so we're going to be able to make sure that the energy is on the supply side. How do we find infinite low use or low cost sustainable energy. There's very little conversation on the demand side. Why are we using so much energy? Can we use this energy more productivity productivity. And so we have been, has been pioneering since the 70s. And so we connected the work of the Rocky Mountain Institute with the with the talent and capabilities of what Thurma was doing. And we said, let's smash these this future with your capabilities together. And let's position you as an energy transition company. And so we have a transition building into the energy future by increasing and maximizing the energy productivity of every building so that they use less energy to accomplish more. So in doing that, we then said, you can't be called Thurma holdings anymore because of the equities of what that said. So we rebranded them as legions. And so we had a lot of companies because it was a holding company dedicated to this higher order purpose of driving the energy transition. We redesigned it to make it what understood as what it is a climate tech company deeply connected to the future. And now the company is often running under this premise knowing that it's a climate tech company specifically focusing in the energy transition space and it's it's influence a lot of stuff. And so we had a lot of things that we had to do in the future. And then we'll speak that language. They speak the language of craft engineering, coding, storytelling, poetry. And so we've got to keep these two things always in sync or what we call the intentional and the unintentional. Right. So we have to have structure and we have to have creativity. Those things or we have to structure and you have to have chaos. In that intersection. That's where it works. And so we have, we have, according to any number of people from ad age to D&D to organizations around the world. Some of those incredible creative people in the world. And, and I'll work with with brands like Blackstone, where strategy is important. That's enormously, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, it's the important for us. But it's the combination of these two things working really like working together where that magic happens. And, you know, the, the, the lecture that I gave it, um, D&D and London, basically the premises don't leave serendipity to chance. The thing on the outside that's whispering at you, the fact that a member of our team was really close with some people to Rocky Mountain Institute, the fact that we worked with Al Gore was our first client when we worked on on climate change 15 years ago. And so we had a lot of time in the fact that, you know, we might have been skiing in, um, or a member of our team was skiing last week in France, he came back with the story and a bunch of artifacts or another colleague of ours was in Mexico, and picked up a book on the Mexico 1968 Olympics that had an enormous. To do with the client work, a project we're, we're developing for Nike. The elements of being open to all sorts of stimuli that I think is the weird kind of, I hate the word magic, but I'll use it because you get hard to define. So many people want to modify solidify and tell you that there's a formula. Trying to find a square root of a sonnet, it doesn't exist. You have to have this looseness, you have to be, you have to be a little bit on the on the edge, you have to be open to this periphery, you have to be open to looking at mistakes. We started a company. I called up Lee, a transition point very early on the company and I said, let's go to a place in the world that so we can just go out and and we imagine where we're going. And I said, let's go to a place in the world that's where we can look at technology where we're looking at storytelling, which is important to us and incredible craft. And your point, JP craft is about the things that we make, right. And what we did is we went to Dublin and we walked through the national library at Trinity College in the middle of the national library, Trinity College is this amazing artifact created 800 AD that should not exist, but it's the book of Kels. Kels has those three things as an incredible story, fables from the New Testament, amazing technology. The fact that that thing exists is a testament to the kind of work and workmanship that went into creating that and the ink and the parchment, all of that stuff is amazing at the time incredible technology that survives to this day. The interesting thing is the amazing level of craft and the craft is the thing that makes it incredible that technology was so expensive that that parchment was so rare those in came from different parts of the world were so rare that if they made a mistake if they tore the page that they spilled the ink if they made a mistake. They couldn't redo the page they had to use the mistake and they integrated the mistake into into the page design. So say, a monk is writing and he spills ink he turns that ink into a dragon or they tear a page he covers it up and he turns it into a giant letter G or or or get some ink in the wrong place and he turns it into some incredible decorative floor. So if you go to the book of Kells, what you see is a structure, page after page of a structure. But every now and then, there's this wacky thing that happens. We found out when we went there from a scholar that those were mistakes and they had to embellish them. There's no other explanation for you. So what you have to be having is this thing that has amazing structure, incredible technology, and incredible stories. But every now and then, it's this beauty comes in because they knew to accommodate the mistake into the beauty of what they were making. Let's talk for a bit. I think JP was getting at this, right? Some of the current trends in technology and that some of the changing future. I think there's two areas that would be interesting. Of course, there are a little intertwined, which is artificial intelligence and quote-unquote the metaverse or mixed reality. Again, all these terms still not being exactly clear or defined in different ways by different people. So let's maybe start with AI. What are your, that quick take? We're seeing things with various AI systems that are coming out, chat, GPT, and other image-based systems like stable diffusion or dolly. Give me your reaction to that. How do you see? How are you loving that, hating that, incorporating that? Loving all of it. It's inevitable. Our brains are wired for it. It's amazing to me that chat went from nothing to a tab on everyone's laptop in two weeks. I mean, if that isn't a sense of the inevitable, I don't know what is. As for the metaverse, we've been in the metaverse since the Greeks decided to honor Dinesias by creating theater and billionth of theaters. We've been in this game a long time. We're wired for it. The fact that the amphitheaters that the Greeks designed thousands of years ago is the same system theater that we now see concerts in, watch theater, go to movies. It's the same structure. Our brains are wired for the metaverse. We've been living in it already. What have it's been television? What has been radio? What has been theaters? The movies? We know it's artificial, but our brains go there. So it's inevitable that this is going to happen to us. And all AI is going to do. And chat is a perfect example of it. How quickly it's going to be able to generate all sorts of narratives on its own. We're just the outset of this. So we love it. The future is here. You can ignore it and put your head in the sand or you can try to turn it to people's advantage. Is the craft and design there moving towards programming and algorithms and do designers need to will it become a basic that they need to be good programmers and understand and program algorithms as well? No. Explain that. If you're a chat GPT-com metaverse, how can a designer there still craft and create experiences and how does that work? There's no doubt that there will be, look, everything in evolution is a movement from simplicity to complexity. From from something single to something highly diverse. So in the pro in the evolution of the practice of design, yes, there's going to be a whole branch of designers who are focused purely on algorithmic craft and design. That absolutely that that will happen. There'll be specialists in that. Does it pull the whole of design discipline that way so that we give over the craft of the output and focus instead on craft of the input? No, absolutely not. All algorithms are machine learning. They they have to have inputs diverse inputs into the system. And otherwise the algorithm is just end up producing what they've already seen. What goes into them and that's what you see with all the current algorithms. There's a very specific sci-fi illustrator that everything looks everything that the algorithms are pumping out looks like now because it was the main database that they were trained on. Plus look from a Brian goes back to the ancient Greeks. I'll go back to the ancient caveman of women. We were all we've always been making art. Like there's no piece of technology that's going to stop us from visually expressing herself or being invested in non technical forms of craft. That will will always exist. And if anything, it just enhances the experience. I mean, think of music. All music is enabled by forms of technology. Whether it's an amp, whether it's a turntable, or whether it's a violin, or a piano, those are all forms of technology. And technology is the very thing that allows humans to do or to perform what they cannot organically with their natural born body. That's technology. So anything that contributes to the expanded capabilities or opening a new space for where craft can be taken is enlarge a good thing. If I can build on that, not only do we want to be in it, we love to make it. To build on what Lee said about Lascaux, you probably know this guys. Like research, I think it was about eight to ten years ago, had discovered that the Lascaux paintings are not just a desire to document something. The Lascaux paintings, when they discovered it, turns out the way the light was moved across that cave, it creates the idea of movement. They're creating virtual realities in a cave. It's the first thing that they wanted to do. It wasn't just a document, but how do we recreate life? And that is not just in a desire to observe, but a desire to create. So I think the metaphors goes right in two things. Our desire to create worlds and our desire to live inside them. That's why designers are navigating toward it. It's intrinsic to being human. Right. So I mean, one of the things that's been in the back of my head, especially as Lee was talking about now Legion, the Legion conglomerate, is this, and you brought it up, Brian. I remember, I think one of your, you know, in your rules of design, you get 100 and one of them, yes. Of course, which are not really rules, they're pontifications, right? But they're wonderful. And I pulled a few. So let me bring one there tied into Lealand and Legion. And yet, an overall issue about the growth of business, right? So Brian, you mentioned it and the rules is, you know, that human-centered design is now gone. Right. And we need to be, it's not sustainability, it's regenerative design, these kind of things, right? And Legion is a great business example of someone working on that. But I wonder where you guys feel along this lines of driving scale, driving future, driving growth for companies mixed in with the idea that still a lot of the capabilities of doing that in a regenerative way don't exist. How do you guys manage that tension of, you know, more people buying things of which we actually really want people to buy less things, you know, how do you go through that process or what are your visions on that? Because that's to me one of these innate tensions in the world of business is this balance of growth and yet an acknowledgement of the effects of pollution and greenhouse gases and all these things on the planet. And how do we get, how do we move forward? Let me quickly answer it in a pithy way and then we can go from there. Design thinking historically, you design for X, you design for a knee, right? Okay, I want to be able to go outside and take a hike. I need water. I'll get plastic bottles. Great. Human centered solution designed for X. As a result, you know, 20, 30 years later, we have more plastic in the sea than we have fish because we only designed for X. Moving forward, we cannot just, no, we can no longer design for a human centered solution. It worked. Super convenient, sexy, fun. I mean, I did a research. We did this paper on plastics and how they were introduced to America in the 1950s and 60s. It was sexy as hell astronauts, fashion, Corvettes were made of fiberglass who wouldn't want the future. If they went out of their way to make this thing look incredibly sexy in fashion, in clothing, architecture, cars, astronauts like plastic, was it? In what consequences now, we didn't we didn't design. We only designed for X. Moving forward, we have to design for X, Y, Z. And we've designed for consequences, not just for outcome. How are you embedding, right? This idea of a more planet centric. We had a speaker at our Bright Conference, Robert Watson, who was with the, called the Founding Father of Lead Building Certification. And he and his friends in talking about, because he sees, he's like, we're going off the cliff. And right now, everything we're doing is slowing down, going off the cliff, but he has a similar motif in his talk at our Bright Conference last year. And he calls it "ethonomics" as the phrase they came up with. I like your regeneration design. It's actually these kind of things. So how are you incorporating this in the work you do with your clients now? So there's two ways. The first way is an analysis process that we plug into our work across the board, particularly around the strategic narrative. And this also comes from the, from the space of strategic foresight and futures thinking. The acronym is PESTL. It is the sixth domain you're not in. So I'm guessing you're pretty aware of it. But for the listeners, it's sixth domains of inquiry into political factors, economic factors, social factors, technology factors, environmental factors, and legal factors, right? So that gives you a pretty holistic view. It doesn't give you everything, right? But it gives you a pretty whole that gives us a lot of insight into future areas of growth that effectively satisfy those different areas of concern and create growth opportunity finding growth and those constraints. The other thing that we're doing is there's a, again, I'll go back to the William Gibson quote the future is already here it's not evenly distributed. So we're working with a lot of companies that have the US excuse me the UN sustainable development goals at the core of their business model not a side concern the core commercial model of the business. And they are companies that are doing remarkable work pioneering technologies and processes and infrastructure that our world desperately needs, but they're still niche right because they're still relatively new and it's hard to displace 100 200 years of doing business and doing production and doing waste management and stuff like that. So the best way to displace existing paradigms is to find a larger better paradigm for people to move into more growth, more capital appreciation, more more exits on your multiple and stuff like that. So we find these companies and we work with them we apply the same skills and talent and process that we do for like a 30 billion dollar CPG company we bring it to them to give them that same level of competency and capability and building and advancing their, their work so that they can grow and scale faster they can get more credit for what they do. And so on and so we call that our resilience futures practice and so we've developed a whole very specific approach to those types of companies and it's really knowledge arbitrage right. So we're taking what we know how to do for these more mature larger companies and then bringing it to these companies who either don't know about it or can't afford to work with it with these companies to to elevate those futures that are going to collectively benefit all of us. And so you said at the beginning that you think one of the big design achievements and feeds was to translate the space age for us into something desirable and real. Is there a parallel in today that there is this vision of a world that doesn't destroy itself being a big one and design plays a role now in making that real. And so we're succeeding right now or what else is needed so Brian let me frame this and then you take it over so Brian's going to talk about the space age and how it happened with the space age but I also want to frame it with a bit of hope. And then I want to kick it off because despite our conversation about government, I am personally extremely hopeful for where things are going because the under there's an underlying philosophy of modernism that has pervaded western culture since the Scottish enlightenment and really more formally took its name in the early 20th century. And so we're going to talk about the powerhouse movement and sort of the reflective definition of modernism as an ism coming out of it that modernism and all the characteristics and concepts of it. Has pervaded every and all decisions that we have made as a culture. We honor what we elevate what we prioritize what we build what we consider fact what intersubjective reality that we create for ourselves. I mean that's what modernism is created an intersubjective reality saying this is the way things have to be. Because it is in nature and intersubjective reality is manufactured it has nothing to do with physics but it creates this perception that the world has to be order the world has to be a movement forward in progress the world has to. And so we have to eliminate nature and extract value from it in a linear process that's modernism. We have not really had an ism that has emerged to displace that in any meaningful way until recently. I personally and I'm pretty sure Brian does strongly believe that this conversation around regeneration is that new ism now whether it takes the name regenerative ism or regenerism or whatever the word ends up being regenerative ism provides the fundamental concept intersubjective reality that is pulling lots of people together to fundamentally invert our values hierarchy as a culture and institutions and what we prioritize what we invest in what we manifest what we elevate. So that is the opportunity that is being presented to ourselves. The more that we understand kind of what Brian's about to take you through the mechanics of actually ushering forward and scaling the future and inviting everyone to participate in it. The more that regenerative ism can turn into a truly collectively shared ism the way the Bauhaus did in the in the late 1910s and 1920s. And this hope made visible and there's a great quote from the writer Rebecca Solnit. This is a quote that we use often here and it goes like this. Hope is not a lottery ticket that you can sit on the sofa and clutch feeling lucky. It is an actually break down doors with an emergency hope should shove you out the door because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the tunnel to hope is to give yourself to the future and in that commitment to the future is what makes the present. In habitable. But in the 60s future was always is always coming and happens because John Kennedy decides to change the story spot neck freaked out everybody in 1957 flies over everyone's head Kennedy does not go we're going to take we're going to take down spot neck when a fire and he says no and the other thing too is people forget we looked at Russia and at the time the Soviet Union as a barely posted gradient society and the first three advances in space exploration are made by the Soviets first band in space first and the first mental walk in space all done by a post agrarian society we were blindsided so this Kennedy do this Kennedy say we're going to we're going to take them out we're going to and are we going to meet them no he goes we choose the moon and that's where we're going he could have in that and he didn't see our decision wasn't one of the fate we have to take them out he reframed the thing as as as a mythology of destiny and he saw it for all mankind. So the thing about that is then that informs everything and then the creative masses in television and kids entertainment the Jetsons comes on 1963 a year and a half after he makes that speech. The Jetsons to this day is still a meme about the future so it started to happen is Kennedy set a big hope about a different view the future than anyone had ever seen and the creative classes and architecture and school and television in the movies bring that to life we're in the future every day we see it it's constantly coming in fact when I was growing up the thing was well if we can get to the moon then we can solve the drug problem if we can get to the moon we can solve social strife we can get to the moon why can't we do these other things and they were right. And there's the sense that even though we were going through the Vietnam War we're going on incredible rice riots drug problems all sorts of political economically up a hill in the United States there's a sense that we're all going to the moon. So there's this larger meta story that said we are building a better future and we need a larger story that we can all see ourselves in. And I think and these things that the idea of creating a world that general that regenerates itself that creates a better future not those not zero really you're going to say to people in their 20s you have to do something that has no impact. We think it has to be net positive the idea of sustainability what a ridiculous term. Really use the word sustainability you know I'm assuming Matthew you have a partner yeah we were described your relationship if anyone said to you how's your relationship with them oh it's sustainable who the hell wants to go to world economic forum to go into a conversation about oh sustainability no one sustainability is like this idea future proofing the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Future proofing really Tuesdays coming let's stop it our language words create worlds and so what we're interested in the future making and regeneration we shouldn't help we shouldn't be telling these next generations they should be doing that you know net zero we should be there should be net positive. We have to now repair the damage that we've done over the last 100 years it can't be net zero we have to we have to make the we have to put more nutrients back into the soil we have to create with the clean out the environment we can't just be net zero we have to be net positive net zero terrific first good step for for the next generation it's net positive that's why regeneration is a really interesting. And fact probably the only idea yeah again reflects what I was talking about with you know Watson's talk who has been working on this and how to get you know companies government NGOs all working together to what are these kind of systems and this idea of exactly that it's it's it's a thrown on it like when we think about the value system we create it has to be ethical to the planet surviving because if the planet survives then we can survive right. And what Kennedy said. was really interesting. He said it isn't just NASA getting those people to the moon. It's all of us getting those into the moon and back. So he framed it as a collective endeavor. As a world culture, we have to do this. And I'm not sure exactly how we're going to frame that story, how we get there, but Kennedy's speech and then the resulting impact that had on everything. Because Kennedy had to get the United States government, and he had to get the United States people behind the fact that we're going to spend billions to create technology and metals and systems and arithmetic and computers that didn't even exist in 1962. They had to invent them in the next eight years. It didn't, it did not exist. And so what he did, he said, he marked a vision and then everybody started to see themselves in that vision or all of a sudden, or Lee said earlier, to take a vision of the future that's so compelling and so unignorable, it becomes inevitable. Well, this has been fantastic, guys. I think what we do ask and we'll leave you with one last sort of the simple thing, which is, you know, we didn't even talk brand as much as we often do on the Bright Ideas podcast, although all the themes were there, right? The word didn't come up much, but the beauty is we view that as very holistic in the ways that Leland Express at the beginning with everything we've discussed, but we'd love to just get you're a take of each of you on one of your favorite brands and why and ideally not a client, right? So something outside of your your direct business experience that you, you know, that you love and why. After you, Brian, my favorite brand is co-created. I'm going to use every buzzword you can possibly imagine. It is democratic, it is transparent to certain people and it's perpetuated over time. Our definition of brand is a promise performed consistently over time. And if I take a look at it, it's generous, it's thoughtful, it's positive, it helps create the world that we want. So my favorite brand in that context is Santa Claus. Santa Claus is a brand that's co-created by parents. It perpetuates, I think, a wonderful story about generosity. It continues year after year after year. It is non-denominational. I would start it out as a, you know, as a Christian celebration and everyone understands it and everyone looks forward to it. So if I were to identify one brand that I like that embodies the idea of, and it's always anticipating. It's always anticipatory. Really good brands are anticipatory. Are you going to be good this year? Yes. Great. Santa Claus is going to help you out. So Santa Claus is my favorite brand, although he is an old white cisgendered male. No, it's the, we get into, no brands are perfect. It's all about, right? That's there. Are they on a journey? And what could argue that at some point, Santa Claus is going to get on that journey of not being a white cis? Yeah, well Santa, yeah, well, I don't know. I was, you know, I was at some friends of mine and a couple of years ago. And they broke. I saw daddy kissing Santa Claus. So maybe Santa Claus is moving to a new phase. But I like that brand because it embodies many of things that I love about storytelling and certainly design. Perfect. Leland? I will draft off of our conversation about the space age in St. NASA. Why? I love how one of the things that I think a great brand does in general is, is it constantly disrupts expectations while at the same time reinforcing them. I think NASA does a really good job of that. NASA, you always expect the smartest, most interesting, innovative people to work at, and that they're always on the frontier. But they're constantly bringing stuff back that just makes your jaw drop. And totally, not just changes your perspective of what is possible at NASA, but also what is possible in the world. You know, the fact like Brian was talking about that in less than a decade, NASA went from a sort of fumbling, rocketry, division of the United States government into the world leader putting a man on the moon and created all sorts of metals and mathematics. And things that were never, ever invented before is remarkable. The fact that they put a lunar robot, Mars robot on earth and have conversations about life and space and take these beautiful pictures of deep space with dust that was from the, like, it's just a never ending well of surprise that makes me consistently fascinated with the company. And I think if more companies kind of recognize that, that that's a big part of what they do so that they can hold a mental space in people's mind and build that those necessary memory structures to build those those necessary equities. I think a lot more companies would be more interesting in the world. I'm glad you don't say you love NASA because it will help you escape earth in case the whole region oration bit doesn't work out. Well, that's the competitors, right? That's what's what's happened with NASA is that that that ethos and belief is it grew in the 67 years and 80s, right? It's turned into innovators of today turning it into a commercial competitive space, which is, you know, has, makes it even more fascinating future, hopefully. Excellent. Glass thing too, frankly, just think they have a really, really, really great logo. But now is the farthest man made object in the universe. It's now somewhat flying out past Pluto and with that awesome logo that was done by a friend of ours, Richard Damier. He's in his late 80s and he's still a designer for NASA and that logo he did in the 1970s still to this day. I mean, it still kicks ass. Yeah, it's it's clearly an iconic one if you were to ask people about it, you know, 50 logos they love. It would hit most people's 50 logos they love. So yeah, if you're interested, we interviewed Richard in the middle of the pandemic because we people are looking for hope and optimism. And so we interviewed him and we invited people five six, six hundred people again. We were shocked by the number of people again. So you can find that someplace. He talks about how they developed, why it was important. And then he talks about how he was just hired back to help them in his 80s, how he's hired to help them as a design consultant to help plan their future. I remember seeing that hit the news at some point in my or hit my radar of the news at some point. Well, Leland Bryan, thank you again for being on the Bright Ideas podcast. It was wonderful to host you and we look forward to continuing conversations in the future. Thank you. It was a lot of fun. And JP, if you do want to buy you class, I'll be on my best behavior. I promise. 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