We started the day with Soon Yu from VF Corp who shared his credit score with us and gave us a horrific list of his failures. It has always been my belief that a leader should put themselves out there and make their own humanity transparent. But, Soon Yu did the equivalent of walking out on stage naked. Considering VF Corp owns Wrangler, The North Face and Smartwool, his nakedness was impressive on a couple levels. Soon Yu pulled us into his story with a story around selling an idea versus sharing a vision. He was a great way to open our brains to accept the morning list of keynote speakers.
Soon Yu then introduced Alexa Clay who took the stage with a modest start and then took us through a story of misfits, hackers and the ingenuity of the fringe. Alexa concluded a worldwide anthropological study with a book, The Misfit Economy. While that was interesting and sounds like a worthy read, the intriguing part of Alexa was her stories of taking the role of Futurist Amish to research innovators and leading thinkers. Though, her lessons from misfits were likely the most written down by the audience leaning into the conversation. You can find these in another blog post here and more depth on these packets of content from Alexa. These are worthy of taking back to the office and perhaps even conduct a LARP event in the backwoods behind your office. Please invite us along if you do.
These writers are quickly learning Alexa was an oasis in the bleak landscape of over churned corporate words and ideas. Alexa shared a view inside gangs looking to change their label to mentorship organizations. Alexa also gave us a look at why buttermilk should not be innovated. Alexa gave us a view of those who disagree with the present and see a new future. And, seeing a new future is certainly fertile ground for the next speaker, Dr Vijay Govindarajan.
The trifecta of Dr. Vijay, Alexa and Soon Yu was an intellectually intriguing way to start the day.
Thank you three for the start to the conference and our day.
Aaron Keller @KellerOfCapsule
Managing Principal, Capsule
Author: The Physics of Brand
Angela Dirks @CapsuleDesign
Director of Digital and Social, Capsule