We are a Futures Build Lab.
Epic Decade re-organizes into a series of Practice Labs.
In 2021 we reached a major milestone: our decade anniversary!
After leading more than 50 projects with nearly 40 clients, sponsors, and partners across sectors, geographies, and timescales; hosting nearly 3,000 VIP guests within our Ideas Salons and producing more than 100 intellectual property assets – we are reorganizing our design firm to leverage our expertise across five areas of impact.
PUBLIC
HEALTH // LAB
LIVING
SYSTEMS// LAB
GENERATIVE
STORYTELLING // LAB
HUMAN
EXPERIENCES // LAB
CIVIC
IMAGINATION // LAB
Dr. Alex Jadad and his daughter Tamen Garcia delivering a talk at Innovation Week in Newport, RI
PUBLIC
HEALTH // LAB
HISTORY: Where we will build upon our immersion as an innovation studio inside of a biotech unicorn supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to transform the treatment and experience of chronic disease.
RESEARCH: Advance the research we’ve conducted at Salons with Blue Cross Blue Shield, GE Healthcare, Google, Brown University, Doctors Without Borders, the University of Toronto, and more.
COLLABORATIONS: Continue our collaboration with challengers such as Dr. Alex Jadad, who consistently questions Do We Really Know What We Mean by Health?, founded the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, and who was recently selected by the World Federation of Public Health as one of only 17 members of a global Public Health Leadership Coalition with colleagues from the WHO, international universities, and national health ministries.
LIVING
SYSTEMS// LAB
HISTORY: Where we will build upon our immersion as the convener of Nexus North, a multi-stakeholder consortium of governments, oil & gas companies, indigenous chiefs, and civil society NGOs cooperatively working together to reimagine the region of northern Alberta, Canada’s multi-trillion dollar Oil Sands as a model for sustainability in partnership with the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo on a 50-year vision through 9-design principles of integrated social systems.
RESEARCH: Advance the research we’ve conducted at Salons with leaders from the Athabasca Tribal Council, ConocoPhillips, Suncor, Local Motors, Husky Energy, IBM Canada, Cenovus Energy, Autodesk, Alberta Pacific Forest Industries, Innovation Expedition, Sustainable Communities, and the Mayor of Wood Buffalo.
COLLABORATIONS: Continue our collaboration with challengers such as Charlie Cannon, an industrial design professor and co-principal investigator of the National Science Foundation Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, a $20 million investigation of the impact of climate change on marine life.
Conclusion of a 40-person convening of leaders from the Oil Sands region, participating an a Nexus North Ideas Salon at Cordevalle
A research field trip to an award-winning regenerative farm in Ojai, California learning from a pioneering farmer about regenerative ecosystems as a leadership framework
GENERATIVE
STORYTELLING // LAB
HISTORY: Where we will build upon our founder Seth Goldenberg’s history collaborating on the “north star” vision articulation, brand codification, communication architecture, design identity development, and strategic planning of the Oprah Winfrey businesses.
RESEARCH: Advance the research we’ve conducted at Salons with leaders from Disney Imagineering, Penguin Random House, the U.S. Department of Defense and Navy SEALs, Relativity Media Hollywood Film Studio, Boston University, the Guggenheim Museum, and more.
COLLABORATIONS: Continue our collaboration with challengers such as Lera Boroditsky the cognitive scientist whose delivered the TED Talk “How language shapes the way we think” to Bruce Mau the legendary brand designer who was awarded the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Museum’s Design Mind Award, a lifetime achievement award given in recognition of a visionary who has had a profound impact on design theory, practice or public awareness whose firm, where our founder led Massive Change, has branded everything from MoMA to Netflix to Unilever to the country of Guatemala.
HUMAN
EXPERIENCES // LAB
HISTORY: Where we will build upon our immersion as an innovation studio inside of Apple Retail working with a cross departmental innovation council to design the employee experience, codify the cultural DNA, and develop new scalable systems for the customer experience and the employee experience to intersect during an extraordinary growth period for the business.
RESEARCH: Advance the research we’ve conducted at Salons with leaders from American Express, Lovevery, VISA, Capital One Bank, the Department of Defense, Now What Insights Group, Mercedes Benz, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, JCPenney and more.
COLLABORATIONS: Continue our collaboration with challengers such as Denise Young Smith who has dedicated her life to advancing the employee experience while the VP of Worldwide Talent and Human Resources at Apple, an Executive in Residence at Cornell Tech University, the Board Chair of SF Jazz; and Nick Felton who pioneered a personal data visualization project for 10-years translating the experience of daily living into annual reports.
A workshop in Epic Decade's innovation garage with the Apple Store learning and organizational development team on redesigning the employee experience.
Story Studio as a Pop Up Storefront to engage Rhode Island citizens in hacking the brand that tells the story of their future
CIVIC
IMAGINATION // LAB
HISTORY: Where we will build upon our founder Seth Goldenberg’s experience as the Founder and Curator of Dialog:City a civic digital media festival for the 2008 Obama Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado featuring MacArthur Fellow Artist Ann Hamilton, multi-media musician DJ Spooky, Harvard and MIT based public monument interventionist Krzysztof Wodiczko artist, South Korean architect Minsuk Cho with a pop-up Air Forest pavilion, and others experimenting with new models of participatory civic life.
RESEARCH: Advance the research we’ve conducted at Salons with leaders State Street Bank, the City of Denver, the Gap, Hasbro Toys, Spherical Studio, Germantown Friends School, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, MTV, IDEO, and more.
COLLABORATIONS: Continue our collaboration with challengers such as Morgwn Rimel, a pioneer of humanities-based emotional intelligence at the School of Life a global network of alternative retail, learning, and publishing platform, and who recently has been a creative director and curator of extraordinary experiences of civic imagination such as Concrete Love by House of Beautiful Business.