# Transcript: Reinvention Not Repetition: Shifting the Innovation Mindset **Date:** March 14, 2026 · 10:00 PM **Session:** [Reinvention Not Repetition: Shifting the Innovation Mindset](/sessions/2026-03-14/pp1162581-reinvention-not-repetition-shifting-the-innovation-mindset) ## Summary A panel featuring Amy Peck (EndeavorXR), Sam Hunter Magee (Harvard), Meg Murphy (Harvard), and Sergiu Ardelean (Artivive) exploring how reinvention — not incremental improvement — drives meaningful innovation. The panelists shared how saying yes to unexpected opportunities, integrating arts into entrepreneurship, and building global communities of social-impact startups can transform both personal careers and institutional culture. ## Topics `creative entrepreneurship` · `social impact startups` · `augmented reality in art` · `intrapreneurship` · `innovation mindset` · `arts and technology integration` · `global accelerators` · `human-centered design` ## Key Takeaways 1. Reinvention requires giving yourself permission to fantasize about the future — even the act of imagining opens new neural pathways that change how you solve everyday problems. 2. Artists solve problems differently than engineers, and including creative thinkers on innovation teams leads to breakthrough solutions rather than incremental improvements. 3. Building community is the essential third pillar alongside classes and accelerators — a welcoming sense of possibility drives entrepreneurial success, especially in liberal arts contexts. 4. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can — Arthur Ashe's philosophy applied to entrepreneurship means anyone can innovate regardless of their background or resources. 5. A good innovation ecosystem is not a place, it's a network — bringing connections and mentorship to underserved regions unlocks ideas that were already there. ## Full Transcript Okay, so let's maybe start with you. Amy. maybe tell people a little bit about yourself and what that concept means to you, reinvention, repetition. So that was us very, very late one night, the last night to actually submit for a panel here, coming up with the idea. But I think it's a good example of using creativity and kind of collectively getting together on an idea. So my name is Amy Peck. I have a company called endeavor XR. We've been in business since 2014 we really are a technology strategy and consulting firm, but I never wanted to be a consultant that just optimizes processes. So we really look at parallel paths to innovation, one using technology to optimize what we already know how to do, but that's just incremental improvement. But what we really do is look at how do we create new systems, new paradigms, new products, new services, based on how we as humans want to live in the future. And then, you know, this idea, you know, I think we have a tendency to just sort of play at the exact same lane that we're in, and it's very hard for us, especially in our work environment, because I work with mostly corporates to really go outside of ourselves and use our creative minds to rethink everything. And now we have AI tools that can help us on the productivity, but we still haven't created that room for creative invention. So that's really for me. I look at it through the lens of, you know, companies, but starting with yourself and having this vision of how you want to live in the future like a fantasy even, because it's not about that fantasy coming true, it's about expanding the art of the possible. And even the act of fantasizing about your vision, opens up new neural pathways in your brain, and then that then colors how you do your day to day problem solving. Beautiful. Thank you. Amy, all right, we'll turn to you. Sam, so can you tell us a little bit? As director of creativity and entrepreneurship at Harvard College for the layman program, you're bringing in new ideas all the time, but I know this work really started at MIT, where you were for 12 years and and you sort of learned a lot from being in that atmosphere. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Yeah, first of all, thanks so much for having us. This is great to be here, and thanks for coming to the talk. So I started at MIT. I was an art school teacher, right? And so then I came to MIT, and I was running art studios, and it's where I caught, sort of the entrepreneurship, the startup bug. And it was then that they asked me to start mentoring some startups, some social impact startups, and I realized that a lot of the teams were pretty homogenous. Their skill sets were similar. And I was like, Where are the artists, right? And so I brought this up. I said, where are your artists? Why aren't the artists on the team, and those of you know MIT, the art scene, and they pushed back right? Like, well, you know, why do we need the artist to design the website, to make the poster? I'm like, no artists. They solve problems differently, right? And so that's why you need the artists at the table. And so I thought, You know what? The heck I might as well start an accelerator based on the arts at MIT, an engineering school. It's still going now, but it was focused entirely on startups that were focused on the creative side of the continuum. And it just took off. It went really well, like I said, still going, yeah, so yeah, artists solve problems, beautiful and as part of introducing ourselves. So my name is Meg Murphy, and I'll just say straight out that Sam and I are married, because this will come up, like in a way, so we'll always know these things, like, how do they know? How do they know? So and we are both live in Cambridge and Boston area, and so we ended up both, although my background is in journalism, and I was at the Boston Globe for a while. I moved over to higher ed, and so while I was at MIT. Sam was there 12 years. I was there for a while working as a speechwriter for one of the deans. And I mentioned that because I witnessed firsthand the difference that Sam was making at MIT in sort of mainstreaming the arts more. And it kind of came up in an interesting way when I was in the Dean's office at the School of Engineering, which is kind of the heart of MIT, and they were launching the College of Computing at MIT at the time, and there's all this work, and my office is very involved in kind of creating all these panels and events for this launch. And sort of pretty late in the game, we realized the Dean realized, we're not going to we need art. We need art to actually draw people to this. And so then I said, Well, I happen to know someone in the Office of the Arts, like maybe he can help. And what ended up happening is that there was a focus on something Sam was already working on, called the borderline project. So the borderline project was his office gave students an opportunity to augment murals that are under the tunnels and at MIT, and that's how he came to know Sergio. So they'll tell that story in a minute, but, but let me just show you the video of see. I've already done it. Here it is the video of borderline, so you can get a sense of what this looks like, and then Sergio and Sam can talk about their meeting. Okay, oh, it does have sound as well to basically make them be a destination to go to, as opposed to just a means of getting places. So we added murals to the tunnels, and then we animated those murals. When you hold up your phone to the picture, there's another story that takes place. So you get to see an animation that a student created display over the actual picture for the opening of the College of Computing. We're having an AR animation competition, and right now, we're hosting a workshop teaching students how to make AR animations. I think it's really important that people at MIT are aware that the students are very multifaceted. They have different aspects to their personalities and different passions, and through this, we hope to present a more whole and well rounded image of who students at MIT are. You public. Alright, so who wants to begin Sam or Sergio talking about this origin story? I would love to because it was a series of things that happened that brought us together and that brought us today, here, and when we were preparing for this panel, we just came across the year to say yes. So that is also the story, how we came together, how we build what we have. And also this project was a series of things that happened that we saw as an opportunity, which wasn't clear where it's going, but we said yes. And everything started with Sam buying some I think it was Amazon, prior tablets back in the day, not necessarily the best tablets, limited budget. And our solution, which is an augmented reality platform, which is called artifact, it's for creatives. We have 700,000 creatives worldwide for creating this kind of experiences, not only for murals, but also for artworks. And the students were using our solution. So Sam thought, I need a solution to see how we can move forward. I would write the CEO of the company on LinkedIn. So I was Berkeley, and my nickname popped Sam McGee with a message, hey there. Sorry for bothering you. We have this tablets, and your app is not working. And then we tried to find a solution, and Sam is like, you really answered, right? Sorry, no, I'm still and then Sam said, This is amazing. I'm so happy you know that you answered the messages. Would you like to fly over and speak to our students about what you build? I will not be able, because we are with the arts department to pay for your flight, but we'll be more than happy to host you here. And then I said, Yes, I'm still today, also mentor of the program. The program is still running, and it's getting bigger and bigger, and from that point, I visited seven flag three times in the last year. And then I found out that Sam is an artist himself, and we also have some artworks with us today, and we will also have somebody in the audience get these artworks, they're also augmented. But when I saw Sam's artworks, I said, you have to have an exhibition. You have to come to Vienna, to our gallery and based in Austria, Vienna, and show your artworks and some, yes, but we'll see and when, and so on. So two years later, we then had exhibition where we also have some pictures that we share. Yeah, but I would like to give a little perspective how we came to build artifact, also in the idea of saying yes, and, you know, finding new ways of expression. So before I started artifact 2017 I had a marketing agency, and we were having we were one of the first using augmented reality marketing. We won over big plans like Volkswagen with the whole group, with Porsche and Audi, and we were doing campaigns for them in 42 countries. We also opened an office in Shanghai. So it was booming, but the problem that I saw was compared to budgets that these companies were putting into the augmented reality experiences weren't reflecting of how many users we had. So for example, a campaign that we had in France, if you had given every user 500 euros or $500 would have come to the same budget, which was insane, and they started to think it's like, what are we doing wrong? Right? Because, from our perspective, from the agency, we're the greatest we were using technology in the ways the technology wasn't used. People could look at the car and use augmented reality to change different configurations, to look at the real car and, for example, see different dreams and so on. It was amazing, but people weren't adapting it. And then I started having some interviews with people who interacted with these campaigns, and I said, Yeah, that's a nice gimmick. It's fun, but it didn't really have any value. It was just a nice to have, because they would find the same information with the website, or maybe not the catalog, and that would be the easier reach part, like reaching the content information to get what they wanted. And then, after many years working for these campaigns, for this project, I was frustrated because it was like, What are we doing something and it doesn't really resonate with people like, what's the next step? What should we do? And I was also, you know, for a long time, questioning the choose, like, what they choose to do, and also with the agency. And then I had the idea we should actually ask the creatives. We should ask the artists, how would they use it? Because most of the time, as the creatives, when working with the technology, they will try to find limits, they will try to crack it, they will try to bend it, to tell their own stories. And this was actually the moment when the idea for artifact, or this platform for creatives, was born. And fast forward nine years. Today, we have 700,000 creatives on this platform that found their way organically. We are working with institutions, with museums, again, with brands, but now, when we have marketing campaigns. We're always bringing artists in. And we say is like you have to work with artists. You have to make a sustainable campaign based on narrative and story. And I think this is the learning. Yeah, I wanted to add, I know that Sam loves using art of Vive, the augmented reality for founder crush, which is one of the events he runs for the program on creativity and entrepreneurship, where founders present. And when we first started experimenting with art of Vive, we even pitched it when I was in the Dean's office, a different dean's office at the School of Public Health at Harvard, we were looking into using ardivide for a huge public health campaign, because it's the whole idea of getting people to see differently, you know, and pausing and it engages people of all different generations and so on. Which leads to the next video, which is a video where artivive is playing around with, how would you describe it? So this is a very fun project that we did last year, and it's all around world Smile Day. You understand why, and because we are working with these institutions. Right at the beginning, it was trying to find ways how we can transport the information that they have about the art history, about the artworks instead of the audio guide, but then we had the idea is like, let's bring new content. Let's shift the narrative. Let's use these museums to build new stories. And this is a project that we did with the city of Vienna, which I'm very proud of. Successful for years. Vienna has been celebrated as one of the most livable cities in the world, but it also ranks among the most unfriendly. But why exactly are the people of this charming, deeply cultured city so grumpy? Could it be the art? Maybe it rubbed off on the Viennese making unfriendliness socially acceptable over the centuries. Well, then let's try something new, so that even Vienna can't help but smile in a unique cross museum initiative, starting on world Smile Day, Vienna will be putting on a completely different face, and we are offering exclusive tours with art expert Marcus Hubel, for anyone who takes art seriously, let him explain why B and e's are so grumpy and what art has to do with it. As you know, smiling is contagious, even if it's just for one moment or maybe two you i So that's one example. I think it's like, you know, if you're looking at innovation and you know this shift mindset, I don't know how much you know about Europe, its institutions, and Gines and its institutions, this project when, when we talked with the city of Vienna, and they pitched and we pitched, and, you know, we tried to find a way how we can do it, I thought, it's like it will never run. It's like these institutions are cherishing everything that they have for so many centuries that they were not allowed to have something like this. But the selling proposition was that we're not changing anything. People are coming with their own smartphones, and they will be able to see this layer just if they know about it. And they were open for it. So we managed to shift this and open the gates of five institutions in Vienna. It might be also that we said one and the other that you know, the other one said, Yes, already. The only one not wanted to do it. So we tried to use all or everything that we had. And afterwards, these institutions, they were as proud about the project as we were beautiful. Yeah. So so much of the theme is, you know, opening hearts and minds by bringing a new angle, a new way of thinking. And I'm leading to Sam here because the next slide is about something that we created with colleagues at Harvard, and it's a new kind of social impact accelerator. I'll just pull it off if I'm capable. Here we go. And so Sam, I'm thinking maybe you could talk a little bit about what Harvard health law accelerators, h2 A is, and why it's different. Yeah. So continue, I guess continuing on the theme of reinvention in just a little context. Went down the river MIT over to Harvard, and I was asked to create a program under the name of George Apollo, layman around creativity and entrepreneurship. And so what we ended up doing was creating sort of a three pronged program, where we have classes for students who are interested in creating new startups. And so what we did there was, rather than just traditional startups, like most places do, we focused on social impact, on the UN SDGs, the sustainable development goals. And so everything is checked and balanced through the SDGs, then the second piece accelerators. And so I can talk a little bit about that, and that's what these pictures are. These pictures are. And so these accelerators act as pathways out of the class, right? So you learn all this great stuff, this this mindset, this creative mindset, this entrepreneurial mindset, you want to make a difference. You want to make a change. Here's an accelerator that can take you to market with whatever it is that you're doing, but it's all social impact. And so these accelerators, we call them because it was in partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health. Somebody worked there. And so Harvard health lab, and it's always get this wrong, personal and planetary, public and planetary health, it's so it's really anything that makes the world a better place. These accelerators focused on early stage, focused truly more on the entrepreneur than the enterprise, because we're educational. And so we decided, instead of just going with one and testing it in beta on campus and get feedback, to go global right out of the gate. And so we leveraged our connections to start top left, a Canadian version. So at the University of New Brunswick. New Brunswick, we have Harvard health lab Canada. So this is 10 teams right now we have 40. So this is 10 teams all doing social impact startup stuff. And then to the right, we have Megan me down in southern Brazil, in a city called fosdo gwasu, absolutely amazing, beautiful place where we started this 678, years ago. And it's sort of the relationship, yeah and the health lab, I think is three years maybe there, yeah, and so another 10 teams there. But what's interesting about their version of this, because they pretty much take the framework go with it is. He's applied it to his entire university and the grade school. So he has his creativity entrepreneurship curriculum in labs from ages 10, and he's gone wild with it, yeah. So we have these, he has these startup fairs now, 450 plus student startups out of Foz is just, it's just what. It's awesome. So that's Foz. And then we have through an organization in Africa called Smart Africa, a Pan African accelerator. Last, last cohort had eight, eight African nations represented, which is great all again, social impact, yeah. And then the local cohort, 10 Harvard teams, yeah. I want to just add the rat like, what I think is kind of the radical part that we want to go back to constantly in this panel, I think, which is the intrapreneurial part of things, where, if you, if you can change things, where you work, we're both staff. You know, we were staff at Harvard. It's pretty unusual to create an accelerator as staff members, but we recognize this opportunity where he was under a gift, he still is at the layman gift for the creativity and entrepreneurship. And then we had this incredible Dean at the School of Public Health, Michelle Williams, who was the founding faculty member for this accelerator, she was one of the most active Gines in terms of actually bringing ideas from the Academy into the world and doing public service. And she was behind something that was for social impact. So it was it was also seizing the moment to create something like this and then keep it going. And honestly, it's like Harvard eventually started to realize that we exist and that it was happening, and then, and then the moment arrived now where they really need something like this, but it was kind of like under the radar for a long time, and that does play into what we're seeing as panels, kind of like, look at your opportunities, make a leap, so on. And so that goes to the next slide, which is in Vienna. And I thought, Amy, maybe you could talk about this. This is the panel. Well, I think so this was actually the first time. So Sergio, it was an old friend of mine. We've known each other for years, but I had never met Sam and Meg. And you know, I was going, I was going to be in Vienna, and Sergio said, you know, the night before, you know, your your keynote, you're going to, you know, we have an event. Would you come and join a panel? And in keeping with our tradition of saying yes, of course, I said yes. And so, you know, you can see Sam and I there, and Meg is in the audience. And you know, it was one of those things where we just, we were just riffing on each other. We were all finishing each other's sentences. There's another gentleman there, Severin, who's a venture capitalist, and I've since become an investor myself and a venture partner in a couple of funds, and also Sergio and I at the kind invitation of Sam, our venture partners for the h2 a accelerator, but you know, there's another kind of leg to your own. So once you have your kind of personal vision, I'm finding that so many of us around the world, like we all travel so much, and I'm meeting people around the world who are independently coming to these incredibly creative visions for how they would like the future to look. And there's something about taking those ideas and actually just coming together and saying, you know, we don't know where this is going to go, but we're all speaking the same language. Why don't we come together and start tackling one of the things that we really want to have vision around? And for me, it's, it is this, you know, creative thinking and critical thinking combined that can really propel us forward. And then actually, and then I also didn't know before I met Sam, that he was an artist. So can we show the next slide? Yeah, sure. It has video to us. I think, okay, good. Is that okay? Yes. And so I was blown away. I will talk just a little bit over this as it's playing, because I then get, you know, off the panel, meet this, you know, brilliant person and his equally brilliant wife. And then they're like, oh yeah. Well, this whole exhibit is mine. Like, this is all my artwork. What? Oh, and it's augmented with and I'm what, you know. So I went around, but it was as fun as it was actually seeing your artwork myself. It was more fun standing in the corner and watching everybody else experience and it was really magical. And and there's something about these layers of invisible stories, and when you're thinking about your work, imagine what the invisible story is, and doesn't matter how dry it is, what's the invisible story about behind your work? What's the invisible story about your like, deepest wants? What's your invisible story about not slapping the microphone? And these are all the SDGs, and just to explain the art for a second, these are all inspired by the SDGs, weren't they? Or is this a different please go ahead. I'm sorry. It's like, so going back to the, you know, the way how Sam and I met over LinkedIn, and then I flew over, and then we connected to this moment when we had the exhibition in Vienna and Meg, Sam and Amy met for the first time, and it was really so interesting, because I was on the phone with Amy and like, we have, you know, this panel is hosted by in our space. Would you like to join? It's about entrepreneurship and creativity. And then we said, Yeah, that's great love to and it was, I think it went for an hour. And then it's like, people, we were saying we should stop, and people give them something to drink. And I was like, no, let's go on. So I think it's this way of seeing opportunities and then taking them because, and I would like also Sam to say a few words about the exhibition. But before that, we had some guests that fall in love with with the artworks and asks to come again. Oh yeah, so yeah, this is to sell it. Oh yeah, game changers. I can pull that up. Yeah. Do you want to play it or No, I can talk over. So yeah, this is also what I brought. Sorry. Move. Okay, good. So, yeah. So Sarah, you've invited me to do this show, which was terrific. Took me a couple years to actually get around to doing it. And I'll just tell you a little bit about what it is. It's a terrible so it's, I used a little bit of AI. I used American lighthouses, also the Tarot, an old tarot deck, to create augmented tarot, but they're just seven, I think seven or eight cards, right? It's just for people who can't hold all of the terrible right? So it's kind of the ADT version of the Tarot. So I'd like to give these away. You have to ask a question, but we're going to leave time at the end for some questions, so you have to be brave and ask a question. So yeah, I was kind of transitioned from somebody who was at the show these great folks, from four game changers, which is, again, a runway Viennese streaming, yeah, so it's the main private TV stations. It's all under pro zimprocess. Seven, they have, like this event, Summit Conference, about change, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I took the opportunity to sort of draw work in, right? And so pitch the idea of interpreting the SDGs, all 17 of them, using tarot and using AI and some other stuff to come up with these pretty amateur stuff. Apologies, but it was, it was a blast doing it, and it allowed me to sort of bring the work that I'm doing into my practice more. But yeah, yeah, and, and it's a good example of taking risks, you know, because not many people would step up and create art while being an administrator or doing a major program. So, I mean, I think that the something we really want to talk about today is this idea of reframing in a way where you're actually, I mean, for instance, with with H way, with Harvard health lab, we focus on early stage so young entrepreneurs that are we're not focused so much on their end product. We're focused on investing in them and in social impact. And I think that our shared values around social impact have been a major factor in what brought us together and have brought you into working with us in the accelerator and in a way, that's a reframing, at least from the higher ed perspective, the reframing really is the usual suspects for innovation have really been business and engineering, and it hasn't been that, at least at Harvard and I think elsewhere, that you pull in people out of the liberal arts necessarily, like, in fact, way too many students the liberal arts don't even see themselves as entrepreneurial, even though they are. And I think maybe you could probably speak more to that, Sam, because it's what you do every single day. Do you want to talk about that? Like, this sort of, not the usual suspects? And like, can I give my opinion? Because I went so, so I was invited to founder crush for the first time last year, and I do a ton of Judge. I'm been a pitch judge for South by for seven or eight years, and all over the world, Judge pitch competitions. And so I've seen a lot. What is remarkable about this group is that, you know, they have been given permission to go after what they really care about. So it's not what a VC would normally ask you, like, what's your business model? How are you gonna go to market? You know, how are you gonna spend my money? It's, what do you care about? What do you love? And then, you know, Meg makes part in all of this as an incredible Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, but you know also storyteller, shaping the story of what, whatever they cared about, whatever their their impact startup was, and it wasn't about necessarily, Taking these companies to market, some of them have, but it was really about teaching them this creative, entrepreneurial mindset, and no matter what they do in their lives, these kids. Shouldn't call them kids, but I'm old enough I can call them kids. They're what they're going to add so much value to whatever they choose as a career, or whatever path they choose to take, because they just look at the world differently. And sometimes it's just, you know, in keeping with saying yes, it's also giving permission to yourself to explore something from a completely different angle. So that was my takeaway of learning the work. Yeah, thank you. That's beautiful. Do you want to add anything? Sam, about the students and sort of I've noticed that it's a huge relief to many students that this community exists, that, in fact, what we really need, more and more is community as part of the reinvention. What are you seeing there? Yeah, when I was speaking earlier, I said there were three parts, and I only hit two, and then I forget what I was talking about. The third part is community. Right? And it's building a sense of welcoming, a sense of possibility, and the best way to do that is through community. And so what does that look like? What does this third part look like? I throw a lot of events, sort of low content, but fun events, which the undergrads right now at Harvard really need those. And so building out that community has been a huge part, I think, of why the program is succeeding. And to speak a little bit about sort of entrepreneurship in sort of the liberal arts, right, in the humanities space, which is a strange space for it to be. I was thinking about, okay, reinvention. Let's not use the traditional definition of entrepreneurship or creativity when we're doing this right. And so part of my sort of a bit of an uphill battle trying to get this going. But now having it going is to do a mind set shift. And so the way I describe entrepreneurship, which is, which is sort of the sticking point where I'm at is, is through a quote by Arthur Ashe, which really, I think gets across well, is start where you are, use what you have and do what you can, right? And so you pair that with creativity. And that's that's a powerful mix. And so then we just create framework so classes, accelerators and community, and we just sit there and students just take off with it. Yeah, can I tell our Baku story? I had to draw Sam into my world, come to the dark side. So I do a lot of work in Central Asia and GCC, and so I work with a couple of companies in Baku, mountzer, by John, beautiful city, by the way. So Sergio was unfortunately unable to come. Meg was unable to come, but I did get Sam. And Sam, first of all, did a wonderful panel, but we decided to do a workshop. I they'd asked me to do a workshop, but I thought, you know, I want to bring Sam in. Sam really brings this artistic, creative vision of a true artist. So we had no time while we were there, I had my deck that I usually use for these types of workshops, and well trodden. I know the material I get Sam's deck about. Well, in fairness, he gave it to me the night before, but I was too exhausted to look at it, so I get up in the morning, and we have about three hours, and I'm mashing together these two decks, which are vastly different stylistically. So I'm trying to make it, you know, Canva. And so we go in, we have about 45 executives from this company that I work with, and Sam had not really seen the deck, like I just ran through. I'm like, okay, all your slides are in there. But you know, just when your slide comes up, you talk, and first of all, we have developed such a great relationship that it completely worked. But these 45 executives, I weaved in kind of one of my exercises, they came up with 15 ideas for solutions for significant problems that they have, and all of them were in different areas of the business. Then we took those 15, we put them all up on a wall, and we identified the ones that all of them have, the problems that all of them have, and we distilled those down to three, and they'd done this already in their three groups. So each one of them took one of these three ideas that was actually cross all of the business units, that is a problem that all of the business units deal with. In a 90 minute workshop, they came up with three viable solutions. And this company, to their credit, they have an innovation center that is completely fluid. It's not R and D, it's not it is a separate, separately funded entity, and they are consistently innovating, and they are still working on those. And I guarantee you, this was back in October. I guarantee you, by when it's time to go back next year, they're going to be in play. And so, you know, we love to be lofty about all of this, but there are really practical elements and utility to this kind of thinking and this kind of it's training. It's a muscle. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for being a trooper. Maybe this is a good moment to play the video of. This is our final video, and it's how people imagine the future. It's based on Amy's work. Do you want to say anything about Yeah, so I end a lot of my talks and workshops with this particular video. It's self explanatory, but it's one version of what life could be like in 2050 now you're going to see some brand names in here, so it's clear that this was done by engineers of some of these companies, but we can Just roll it, and then We'll talk about After. You You You all right, so here is the interactive portion. How many of you like that version or a similar version of the future. Raise your hand. Not many of you. How many of you think you could do better? One, he's really okay. He's in. He's got both hands up, okay, all right. But the point is that, you know, you look at science fiction writers, you look at these engineers, this is what the future will look like if we just allow the few people who have the time, the energy, the ideas, to build this future. But we all when we were five, we had the most incredible imaginations. You know, you'd be like, I'm going to fly to the moon on my purple giraffe. And, you know, I'm going to shake the money tree and go to the candy store, and we're gonna sit around and eat candies and peanut butter sandwiches until, you know, mom calls me back and I have to go home, you know, and it just rolls off the tongue. And we systematically, kind of, you know, just beat that out of our minds and our mindsets. And we believe that, because that was our imagination when we were children, that it doesn't have value in the real world, it is the absolute unlock for us to be able to manage all of this technology, rethink systems, and actually have technology as a partner, as opposed to sort of usurping our control over what happens in the future. So we would love to hear from you and think of some questions. And then, you know, my any of my co panelists, want to talk exactly what you're saying now, also with all the agents and all the AI tools that we are having, is like, we are becoming super big prototype. We can test things, we can put it out there, and we don't have to go the whole way. So I think it's like also on the personal level, to try out the ideas and dreams that you have to just see how you can, you know, move forward, or if it's something that it's making the world better, or way that you want to have it. And you said today, Amy in another panel together, right? It's just take the time. Just take one hour a day, or half an hour where it says, Okay, I'm working on my innovation. I'm working on my thing, my the world that I want to have, and whatever it is, it's if you're learning a new skill out of the everyday, or if you're trying an agent out, if you're trying to do something that's going towards that direction, but just have it in your calendar. It was your idea, and do it and try to do it every day. And I think it's like we are supercharged with all the tools are out there. And I feel it's like every day there's a new tool coming out. Yeah, I think it's easy to feel overwhelmed by them, but, you know, it's just, you know, a little bit every day. I mean, I have, generally four or five the Gen AI tools open at any given time. And especially with the llms, they all have personalities. And I do spring for the for the Pro versions, because I want to have this broader context window, and I wanted to sort of understand how I think and how I solve problems, and so I bucket these things in projects. But I didn't start there. I just started with chat GPT, with really crummy prompts, until I figured it out. And then there's a plethora of free learning tools out there, but I actually am doing a very deep dive on neuroscience and brain computer interfaces right now. And I just, I had Claude and open AI build me a course, because now I know how to prompt the right thing. And so, you know, every day I have an hour module that I have to do. And clot is brutal when they grade you, by the way. PS, like, if you're thin skinned, go with you know, chat. GPT, but it's great because it's taking all of these little pieces of understanding. I had of the technology, because I worked with several BCI companies, but there was nothing really connecting the dots for me, like the science behind it, and how we what we understand about the brain, and so I'm learning that a little bit every day. Beautiful I would add. From the higher ed perspective, I'm thinking about what Sam's what I've witnessed Sam accomplish in creativity and entrepreneurship at Harvard College for the undergraduates, it's interesting because, you know, just like many other liberal arts environments, the word entrepreneurship was very much not, not a popular term. It's still, there's still growing on them. But what he did, and it was really interesting for me to witness, was he just built programs that became so popular that the student demand was pushing and pushing the administration toward needing to embrace something that was inevitable, because students want to make change in the world, and they have ideas, and they want to take them out of the classroom, and they need innovation pathways for that. And so he just built it, and then now it's finally come around to Harvard's actually creating a minor which is not like a huge deal to people outside of the Harvard, but within it, it means it's like turning an oil tanker, like it's like a huge thing that they brought entrepreneurship into the college, and that's through this work that really led with social impact. I mean, I think that's what made it palatable, but it's also sincere. I don't know if you want to talk about that a little. Yeah, it was just this mindset shift. One quote from a student that I think captured it best for me was down in Brazil, manera, which is right next to Foz, agricultural businesses, Laura and one of the students who was presenting a startup idea said to me, said that I thought I was going to work in the business, in the in the factory or whatever, but now I know that I can start my own business, right? And so that shift. That's, that's the thing that I get really excited about. Yeah, absolutely. And it's also, it's been really fun, not just fun, but important. I think that part of what we're doing globally with Hoa is going to places that don't have networks. Someone said at an event we were at last night that had a lot of investors, artists, entrepreneurs. He said, you know, a good innovation ecosystem is not a place, it's a network. And what we're really doing with health lab is bringing Harvard's networks to these spaces that have great ideas. They don't need us the ideas, not at all. I mean, in Brazil, they're just blowing our minds at the amount of amazing ideas coming forward, because there's also, it seems to me, like more hunger as well, and they're taking advantage of opportunities in really interesting ways. But what we're bringing forward are the networks, right? So we can plug them into mentors, into our alumni, and to things like that. And that's the same thing, even that snapshot of Canada, that's a part of Canada, New Brunswick, the Maritimes, that doesn't have the networks. So, I mean, I think in a space like this, it's like we're trying to pull all of our networks together to create more of like a sort of global family of young social entrepreneurs. South by is a great way to kind of get to know people and advance that. And we'd also really love to hear from you. I imagine there might be educators in here, artists, investors, all right, so question time, or even just if you want to come up and say, like, I do this exercise when I'm trying to do some future visioning, and my opening statement is, if I wake up tomorrow and I'm queen of all things, don't laugh like it could happen, I am going to remember you No, but I need but All right, so we'd love to hear from you, but I will remember the queen. Okay, so really enjoyed the panel. Thank you guys so much for your perspective and for the videos. I recently was running an accelerator for undergrads at Rice and then a commercialization incubator for the PhDs, and one of the pieces of advice I gave to one of my freshmen who kept pivoting from idea to idea, was about nurturing himself to the point where creation can come from him, as opposed to just trying to find, like the next thing, the next thing. And I recently left rice, and I'm facing that myself. And I guess my question for you guys, as we talk about reinvention is, how do you nurture that space of creativity internally and get yourself to a point where you can flow with the ideas for impact, and you know how and where to run with that, and you're the best person and the best self to start making those steps? Big question, I guess, but, yeah, terrific question I can start, because I wasn't in the space when I was a big agency after 11 years, and like, I don't want to work anymore. I was in the space and so on. So I truly took a year off, I think that I was in a space that they could do that, and also from the time perspective, and left my power. And it was six months not working, not thinking about anything, you know, traveling the world, and thinking, you know, I would find myself a meaning of life. But when I came back, I felt it's like I don't want to do something more. So I think the best exercise would be just try to get out of the bubble that you are. But truly it's just for a few days, a few weeks, no emails, you know, no strings to the bubbles, bubble that you are, and then when you're getting back to just see what you're feeling. Because, like I said, it's in you. You can feel it if you want to continue, or you want to go in another direction, or you want to change something, and then it's coming in from inside. And you know, when I came back and I realized I don't want to do this anymore, I came up with Yeah, for heads to let's the artist. But I think it's like because I was able to take this break before I was able to see them the answer afterwards, yeah, I think also just making the space, but, but having sort of building a cadence where you're actually generating ideas. I don't know who said this, but someone said it takes 1000 ideas to come up with one good one. I don't know if that's true, but it's it's just allowing yourself. I actually use all the tools, and I have my, you know, notes, and I'll just start babbling things, and then I'll go through them later, like, this is not good but, but, you know, there's always a little gem in there, because you have to start almost having a dialog with yourself. But you can also use now, it's great having AI tools. You open one up, you know, in speak mode and chat. GPT has it quad, wherever you want, whichever one you like to use and riff with an AI about it and start getting into whatever, whatever works for you. It's just finding what that is, because you will absolutely know it. When it lands, you'll keep coming back to it, and then you'll start to pull it apart, and then you've got your path. I'll keep it short, but I, you know, keep whimsy as part of your life, right? Always. I really appreciate it, guys. Thank you. And at some point I am going to reach out, because I have all these questions around building quality accelerators as well. But yeah, hi, thank you. It was very refreshing. My name is Anna Maria. I'm from Mexico. I'm a designer, but I work at corporate, so my question might be a little difficult with no direct answer, but I'm interested in your opinion. So I know that within education social startups, it's easier to be more open to experiment. How would you say corporate companies can try to experiment in order to reframe like the status quo? Yeah. So I mentioned the company in buil that we work with, they do have this innovation hub. Most companies will say they have an innovation hub. So start there, it's usually r&d, which is, can be different, right? R&d can have a very different remit, especially if it's a hardware company. They're focused more on the engineering side of things and not necessarily true innovation. And one of the things that Amazon does, which is really cool, is they will give any team $15,000 and they take ideas, I think, quarterly. So you present your idea, the only rule is that you can't have anyone from the same business unit. So you're five people, or however many people you have, they have to be from different business units. And if they think it's a viable idea, they'll give you the time and the resources to explore what that is. And not all companies do that. And maybe that's something that the financial component is, something that maybe companies won't do, but I'd start asking for, like, an innovation hackathon, so it doesn't have to be engineering based. It can be just an idea hackathon, just for a day. If that is successful, then start talking about how you could do it programmatically. If you reach out on LinkedIn, I have a lot of these types of programs sort of built out. I can give you some frameworks that you could pitch and and then, you know, we'll come down and hang out with you. Hello, loved it. I don't know if it's kind of off topic. I'm trying to formulate the question in my head, but I couldn't so sorry, but I would like to hear some comments around Okay, the world is evolving to a place where economic dynamics are changing because of AI and human relationships throughout the world, and we are seeing more a more oriental vision coming up. So China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, with the dramas and everything, how do you think us in the global south and the OCD can relate to this distant and different kind of creativity, and how do we use it to reinvent the way that we are going to share thoughts with the other side of the world? I don't know it makes sense. I was trying to make it, but I think art, art is a fantastic vessel for that. Yeah, I think that's really interesting, because it sort of gets at something that I've been thinking about a lot as well, which is, what does the United States have right now, when there are many challenges, what does it still have? And I do think it's still, as we travel, I still can very much. Buil, the innovation here is so strong, the way people think, the ideas that really, I mean, there may be a fear of failure, but it's much stronger in a lot of culture, other cultures, and so here, like at MIT, it was always like, have many, like, what, a couple startups. You failed startups by graduation. Yeah, failed start. So it's like that. I don't know if you guys want to talk about, yeah, well, I was gonna say that MIT mindset, which was really cool, is in there. It was definitely student up. But this stuff is catchy. This desire to make change really is. And not only you know, is it sort of self building, right? But folks on the edge listen to these things and pick up this need, this desire, this mind, this mindset shift, and start creating businesses and start creating nonprofits. And so it's just really, it's really, sort of a catchy thing. I kind of want to tell John's story here. This is a friend of Sam's, John Conroy, back here, and he has a daughter who was listening to all of these thoughts about innovation and Harvard health lab and startups, and she came up with an idea. Do you want to describe it? Yeah, and it's gotten her full ride to what Vanderbilt or Yeah. And so it's bake, bake a cake. Is that? Give a cake? Give a cake. Bakery, okay? That was born out of covid when there was a lot of idle time and extra baked goods around the house, having the proximity to Sam and Megan, kind of that whole ecosystem. She was only 13 at the time, but she said, Dad, I think if we she looked up the cottage food laws in Massachusetts and said, Dad, if you give, if you bake in your home and give it away, then you don't have to have the kitchen inspected, and it's not subject to all these stringent rules. So she made a list of potential nonprofit partners, and at first, I kind of just humored her and was proud of her for thinking in those terms. And the next thing you know now, we're five years in, five years in and 501 c3 we have a woman, Cindy Piccini, who came in and is our CEO. She was a long time brand and communicator for Ocean Spray. She came in so, yeah, that's amazing. I do want to bring up something that was really interesting, though, which is really important, which is that you're thinking globally, but there are people from all over the world. Here right now, in your local universities, there are and in turn, we're so afraid of just like interacting with strangers. People said hi to me today on the street, and I was like, What do you mean? Hi New Yorkers. But you know, people are eager to connect, and the best way to understand like this Japanese band came up to us on the street, and they were like, Hey, we're a Japanese band, and we're here and come and see our show. You know what I mean? It's just because it actually just it makes us feel much more human, and you're not, then you don't think of them being part of the global south or from Asia, wherever they're from, and I love the way you're thinking, and going back to that community, build a community of international, like minded people, and then who I mean, you'll be capable of anything. All right, we have three minutes hi in your consulting work, I think you mentioned utilizing a human, centered approach. What does that look like for you in practice? Challenging, because usually I get, you know, a room full of C suite executives who kind of come in with a pouty face. Sometimes they're into it, like they're excited about it, but a lot of times, you know, it comes down either from the CEO, someone in the C suite has green lit me coming in and working with them, and the goal is usually to get to the bottom of some of the business processes that are really challenging for them. And so they think they're going to come in and just talk about all their the problems, right? We do completely a different exercise. It's like being back at university again. And so we separate everybody, and I ask them, I have different prompts, but in general, the net, net is, you know, 50 years from now, it has to be really far in the future. Imagine you have a blank canvas, and I want you to just describe your entire day, you know? What do you eat when you wake up? Who is around you have? Like, what environment do you live in? Do you go to work? You need to go to work. You know? What do you care about? What does the world look like? And the first thing almost all of them say, well, I'll be dead, or I'll be retired. Like, no, not the exercise. The exercise is, you know, you can be a different you can even not have a human form. You can fly. We could be on another planet like it's it is, go back to your five year old self, build that day. And once they get going, we can't get rid of them, because, again, it's giving people permission to fantasize. We are all incredibly creative artists, right? We may not be a traditional artist, we may not be painting or writing great music, but we are artists and we are creators. And so once they come up with that palette, then we talk about, well, what would the products and services be? And then we start just coming back and coming back to all the sadness where they are now, I'm just kidding, no, but it's like now we come back to where we are. Now you have a North Star, but it's what you built. It's a North Star that you created in your own mind, that you care about, and they become really protective then of this idea. And the hope is that they continue that line of thinking and that these exercises, then, you know, we distill down, and we start to identify like, how can we really change things, not just do things better, not just do things faster, but really change things. And then we start going into the thing that Sam and I did, which is identifying like, how can we really, you know, break things and rebuild? Unknown Speaker 1:00:33 --- *Source: stt · Language: en · Model: claude-opus-4-6* [← Back to session](/sessions/2026-03-14/pp1162581-reinvention-not-repetition-shifting-the-innovation-mindset)