Think & Link by Capsule

Our two brilliant guests will help us make sense of this ever-present, ever-shifting dynamic. We have Kymm Bartlett Martinez of Wilder Marketing Group and formerly head of marketing at the University of St Thomas. And, we have Yumi Clevenger-Lee of Quest Global to discuss their successes using acquisitions to build a culture-first engineering consulting business that boasts 13,000 people across 17 countries.

We’ve paired Randy with Ben Erwin, the CEO of Charitybuzz. This designed organization turns the creative gift of an introduction into a great cause. You can bid on meetings with celebrities, business moguls, chefs and other highly coveted people. Win and you’re off to a meeting with Theodore Anthony “Ted” Sarandos the current co-ceo of Netflix. Your bid goes to Ted’s listed charity.

We have the former Global Head of Marketing from TikTok, Nick Tran who is also the former Head of Marketing at FarFetch and Michelle Hanson the Head of Marketing of The Village Company. We’ll likely be talking about what Mr Bubbles has been doing on TikTok and the future of this venture.   Areas of learning from this episode: One: The luxury design curator FarFetch and what they see in the future of fashion. Two: The relevant changes at TikTok and what it means for marketing, social and media professionals Three: What you can do to be creative with any media available, social, digital or print.

We have Portia Hart, founder of Blue Apple Beach, Amare Beach and Manzana Azul, the operating business surrounding these exotic ventures. And, we now have Wendy Meadley and David Loehr of World Expo 2031, specifically the Horticulture Expo hopefully coming to Minnesota. Spend some time exploring what Portia is doing for sustainable travel and triple bottom line thinking. Look into Wendy and David who are hoping / expecting to bring millions of people to Mn for exhibits. This will be an inspired conversation about the future of travel and horticulture. The magic in this pairing is inspired.

Welcome to Think & Link, where we explore creativity, design and human imagination. Brought to you by Capsule, a special projects agency in Northeast Minneapolis working with clients like Patagonia, Herman Miller, Red Wing Shoes, Tyson Foods, and Pepsi Co..   We have Tyler LaMotte, a friend of Capsule since he hired us while working at Patagonia for what is now a famous bit of packaging design. Tyler is now the Chief Brand Officer at Jackson Hole Mountain Resorts. And, our long lost friend, Hope Frank, is finally taking the Think & Link stage to talk about her documentary project, Brave Blue World. It is airing on Netflix and starring Matt Damon, Liam Neeson and Jaden Smith. Feel free to watch the trailer for now and the full documentary on Netflix.   We will be talking about what the future of this big blue ball we live on looks like in the next decade and what it means to be an involved, active global citizen. As in all our sessions, we hope to inspire our viewers to go out and use design methods to improve the world around us.

This will be an intellectual sparring session with two great minds challenging each other to elevate how we study and design experiences. Both of these guests have made appearances on our stage before, and as before they come with a full quiver of inspired stories to share.   We have the gentleman of design, James Damian, former head of design from Best Buy. He is paired with the author of “Why We Buy” Paco Underhill who is best known for the phrase “the butt brush” -- and you’ll have to ask him what that means, or read the book.

Todd Allard and Jeremy Ericson are back together again. In the high school yearbook of life these two characters were voted most likely to work together, find their way to leadership positions and push the boundaries of their respective organizations. These two have fulfilled all the promises made in the margins of their respective yearbooks   Together, we rebranded a tarnished education institution, (a name we shall not mention) to what it is now, Altierus Career College. Todd left for larger aspirations and more challenging brand efforts, a rebrand of Lumber Liquidators. An organization no longer in business of lumber or liquidation. The new brand, LL Flooring, which you can find here, was an epic effort, comparable to getting a boardroom of executives to climb Mt Everest together.   Jeremy remained at Minneapolis-based, ECMC Education, but never to be outdone by a friend and colleague, he took on one of the largest challenges we have as a society; the middle skills trades gap. Yes, Jeremy, perhaps inspired by the size of the challenge, continued on the journey to not only transform a brand but the industry of career & technical education at large.

AI is here. Resistance is futile. Ignorance is not bliss (in this case). And, every industry will need to work out its relationship, adoption and perhaps even leveraging of Artificial Intelligence. It is predicted to be a larger revolution than the Internet and will change the value of nearly everything.   We have two guests, Paul Allen and Dan Mallin, who have been swimming in the deep end of the artificial intelligence pool for longer than most. They are here to give some insight into how you can work out your relationship with this new organism.   Paul Allen is the co-founder of Ancestry.com and Soar.com while Dan Mallin is the co-founder of Lucy.ai, the Mn Cup business plan competition and many other ventures.

We are going cycling for this episode of Think & Link; and we’ll have the joy of Phil Liggett as our voice. He is the NBC Sports Commentator for cycling, and happens to be friends with Edward Wimmer, Founder/CEO, Road ID, a technology and fashion item for marathoners, cyclists, and extreme athletes who may sometimes put themselves in a situation where an ID like this is a necessary caution. We are certain to be talking shop about the Tour de France, the expansion of cycling with everyone getting outside and onto a bike, and perhaps we’ll even talk about Lance Armstrong in a kind manner.   As always, this will be an interesting conversation about marketing, sports, culture and the designed world.

Question: What do the Catsup Crapper, Think the Unthinkable, Sparking Creativity, and The Aeron Chair have in common? Answer: Topics that will likely come up when Barry and Luke take the Think & Link stage in October.   We’re talking creativity, innovation and design in October with two authors, professors and grand thinkers. We have Dr Barry Kudrowitz paired with Luke Williams on the Think & Link stage for this one and based on past performances this looks to be a creatively curious conversation.