What Our Clients Say | Emergent Futures Lab

Workshops and Courses

Bill Whitney

Assistant Vice Provost for Experiential Learning Programs @ Lehigh University

Of all the brilliant constructs that Iain and Jason have provided which have stuck in our work with Creative Inquiry at Lehigh University, the one that we continually return to is, "if you are a bird, where is flight?"

We pull that one out with new teams of students eager to make an impact in the world...and in less than a minute, they have all undergone a radical paradigm shift and they are ready to truly unlock their creative energy.

Just one very small example of how accessible yet profound their approach can be, and how useful it has been to our pedagogy and praxis.

Rene-Oscar Ariko

BusDev Executive and Co-founder @ 3D Control Systems

"Over the past seven years, my collaboration with Iain and Jason has been nothing short of exceptional. Their extensive industry experience serves as a cornerstone for educators seeking to navigate the journey from conceptual design to tangible realization.
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In a landscape where the integration of 3D printing into educational curricula remains an evolving challenge, Iain and Jason stand out as beacons of guidance. Their insights not only alleviate the burden of initial trial and error but also pave the way for innovative pedagogical approaches.

Our partnership with Iain and Jason has proven to be a cornerstone of success, and it is with great confidence that we extend our highest recommendation to others seeking their unparalleled expertise."

Madelaine Travaille

AP Env. Science/District Supervisor - Summit, NJ

"This has been one of the best courses I have taken in 26 years of teaching!

All the strategies suggested were modeled by the instructors, and we were able to walk through the process of teaching CAD in a very simple and effective manner. Thank you for this opportunity!"

Matthew Ducker Duffy

Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School

"One of the best workshops I have attended in my 6 years of teaching.

The course addressed many different concerns that I had for my upcoming year of teaching several STEM courses. I now have so many ideas about what to teach and how to teach it. Thank you for your time, effort, and professionalism."

Jennifer Pasuit

STEM Department Head @ New Providence High School | STEM & Science Education

"If you really want to learn how to teach your students how to learn in a way they will feel invested in, take this course."

Tobias Burkhardt

CEO & Co-Founder @ Shiftschool and Shiftshape Club

"Was extraordinary! Iain and Jason kept 12 people captivated for 3 hours on zoom with just a stack of plain white paper! Participants left with a profoundly changed mindset and real tools for innovation."

Ananda Wyss

Research Associate @ University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW

Also we had the absolute pleasure of having Jason and Iain join our TT-BMI Summer School last week, to deliver a mind-blowing workshop that challenged participants to consider complex systems, unintended consequences, and the pitfalls of solution thinking in business models and Innovation for hashtag sustainability.

The feedback from participants were fantastic and it left us all with priceless food for thought to keep throughout the innovation journey!

Personally, they have had a profound effect on how I now think of and approach creativity and innovation. Particularly in staying mindful about asking better questions, considering the whole system and feedbacks, and through their process of recognizing patterns, blocking, and probing to avoid regurgitating what I already know.

It is also simply always a pleasure to engage and exchange with you, Iain and Jason, Thank You!

Victoria Matthew

Principal Consultant @ Broadening Impacts

I met Jason Frasca and Iain Kerr several years ago and since then I've been fortunate to work with them on hosting a couple of different custom workshops, and a panel discussion titled Screw Ideas.

Panel discussions can often be blah, but not with Jason and Iain. In the world of I&E education, ideation is kind of a holy how.

During the panel they kicked the ideation holy cow in the gut, and discussed how ideation will never lead to anything truly innovative and novel.
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The process of pattern recognition, blocking and probing is powerful. Once I used it in the workshop I began to see so many ways this could be applied.

Highly recommend taking a workshop with Jason & Iain. Plus they have a humorous, friendly rapport, which makes the experience feel relaxed and enjoyable.

Bernhard Weber

Managing Director @ Unicorn

“Working with Jason and Iain was transformative. I learned how powerful it is to combine structured innovation frameworks with disruptive out of box thinking methods and inspiration from every field of knowledge, science, technology, and arts. It’s a great honor to collaborate with them.”

Kevin Cardenas

Cresskill Middle/High School

"What I loved about this course is
finding techniques for teaching this to students so that they learn through 'doing and making'"

Tim Steen

Eastern Christian School

"I'd go for a whole series of these, where we could go even more in-depth: Learning through the eyes of our students and thinking about the implications of the plasticity of the software on the design process."

Bridget Day

Gregory Elementary School

"Really helpful course that makes me feel more confident in my instruction! As a new teacher, I really appreciate the way the instructors created practical applications for 3D printing, so what I learned will definitely be incredibly helpful to my teaching practice."

Corine Czepiel

Paterson Public Schools

"Absolutely love this course! I really enjoyed how the instructors broke down how to use the software in order to promote critical thinking skills. Teaching was well done and extremely helpful - thank you!"

Petia Morozov

Founder @ DesignShed

Iain and Jason tailored a workshop for our team at Dense Magazine to help us envision our brand of storytelling, leading us to reconsider how we define partnerships with leading brands. Tremendous number of takeaways that continues to guide our evolution!

Elisabeth Kaufmann

Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin @ Universität Graz

I've had the pleasure of working with Iain and Jason many times and know the Innovation Framework quite well - which is why their approach is not new to me.

But the thing is, every time I get involved in another workshop or similar with them, I have more than one AHA moment and my mindset changes and changes again.

It's the little fine details, the icing on the cake, that make the talks and workshops so special and, most importantly, different from other innovation workshops.

My personal biggest learning, which I take with me both personally and professionally is, to stop making assumptions and thinking things through - instead I just start DOING things and see where the path leads me. It's not always necessary to have a plan, it's much more important to get completely involved in something, explore situations by listening and asking questions and THEN accepting an unforeseen path and follow the flow which leads to pure innovation!

Helga Pattart-Drexler, M.A.

Managing Director @ TECHHOUSE - Architects of Digital Transformation

The workshop with Iain Kerr and Jason Frasca was a great and inspiring experience.

The approach to innovation and how I design innovation was completely new to me and made me very surprised and think why innovation sometimes doesn't work and how I can do it differently. Not only because they introduced a new concept, but also because they challenged me to think innovation in a new way.

I was particularly impressed by the idea of thinking about problems in new WORLDS and not going straight from problem to solution. We sometimes have the approach of creating solutions immediately, but we don't look enough at the possibilities that exist beyond that. Why, because we think only in the possibilities, which are also known to us. But working with Iain Kerr and Jason Frasca means to dissect the problem, to see new perspectives through discussion.

What I definitely take away from the workshop we had is to look at problems from different angles and throw out the rules of how we design solutions. So also radically doing the opposite instead of following the first impulse. 👏 Thank you so much for this experience!

Monique Dituri

Clifton High School

"As a new teacher in 3D printing, it was fantastic to learn about all of the different programs in a way that I can actually teach to my students."

Bill Ruhl

High School Physics & STEM teacher @ Golda Och Academy

"Blown away by the methodology used to introduce 3D design, establishing facility with foundation features by repetitive design exercises using these features to 'make anything'"

Lara Roy

Assistant Vice President, Continuing Education and Professional Development @ Minneapolis College of Art and DesignMinneapolis

The workshop that Jason and Iain did for leadership at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design was outstanding.

The exercises we did where we pushed ourselves beyond what we thought we could do creativity-wise completely helped me rethink my ideas around innovation.

The workshop definitely got me out of my comfort zone and introduced concepts around iterating that I continue to use in my work. Thank you!

Steven Greenstein

STEM Innovation Professor @ Montclair State University

I've read a lot of Iain and Jason's writings about their Innovation Framework (so much of their book is so good, bits of radical insight every time I open it:), but nothing beats experiencing it in a workshop, which is something I'd wanted to do for a while and finally got to do last month.

As others in this thread have mentioned, in surprisingly little time I had the profound experience of inventing something I could have never imagined.

I have never been able to imagine how one might do anything other than the "I think therefore I am" approach, so this was the most surprising and valuable takeaway for me.

As a math learner and educator for many years, I've always valued the experience over the output, and now I have new ways of talking about it and making it happen.

Eve Schaenen

Executive Director @ Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center

"[Their] powerful impact and expertise in teaching 3D design became apparent to me when our museum engaged their students for a CAD-based project. The young people coming out of their program are fully fluent in the language and methods of innovation design, confident in tackling new design challenges, and are clearly inspired to pursue future STEAM careers by the learning experience with Jason and Iain."

Jesse Wright

Educator, Eastern Christian School

"The project examples incorporating 3D Printing and Design into the classroom were phenomenal and encouraging. The presenters were great, and I appreciated their various styles."

Lisa Ponce

Registration & Event Manager @ Garnish Event Management

I had the absolute pleasure of collaborating with Jason Frasca and Iain Kerr on the opening workshop of VentureWell’s OPEN 2022 conference.

It can be very challenging to maintain the attention of participants during an online event, but Jason and Iain developed an activity that was both engaging and set the tone for the rest of the conference.

We heard nothing but exemplary feedback on their workshop from our conference participants. To top it off, they were a pleasure to collaborate with.

Justin Morris-Marano

Design Lead, Flourish LAB

"Their workshops introduce you to understanding 'things' — objects, systems, ways of being — as holding entire worldviews. 'Things' as a byproduct of those worldviews, and also 'things' as generating those worlds.

With this way of looking practiced over time, you leave their workshops with powerful tools for working through what 'things' might be produced to escape those worlds .. 'things' we can actually call innovative.
"Iain and Jason introduce critical strategies for deviation — from existing solutions, methodologies and world views. This positioning is grounds for innovation, and has supported my work as a student and professional."

Dennis Bone

Former President @ Verizon New Jersey

“We did so much together and I've watched the 'magic' that occurred so many times when they worked with students and organizations. Their approach to innovation is truly transformative and has a profound and lasting impact on clients.”

Thomas Ackerman

Great Meadows Middle School

"The practice of using tools quickly and then doing it again is the kind of big-impact approach I can add to my lesson plans. Honestly, this was everything and more than I had hoped for."

Birgit Reinhofer-Mitterer

Austro Control @ Wissensmanagement

Whenever spending time with Iain Kerr and Jason Frasca - no matter whether in a meeting, in one of their workshops or just out and about - radical is not just a word but it's in their DNA!

Every rule of nature is questioned and makes tasks at hand seem impractical. As a result, something completely new takes birth in its place.

Radically questioning everything by blocking what's considered as invariable rules not only helps me to think outside the box but outside the world as I knew it, resulting not in iterative but disruptive ideas. Really appreciate every minute with you, Iain and Jason!

Nisha Aggarwal

Leonia High School

"Thrilled to finally understand how the 3D printing process works from design to preparation to print. The instructors were extremely good, and their explanations were very clear and helpful. It gave me lots of good ideas on how to implement design thinking and 3D printing in my classroom."

Christina Leonhardt

Urban Designer

"The innovation and design skills I gained from classes with Iain and Jason have been crucial in my early career as an urban planner. By learning to "think like a crow" I now feel so confident in my ability to creatively approach complex, systematic challenges. I definitely recommend their courses to people of any discipline interested in designing novel futures."

Peter Bongiovanni

Hillside Elementary School

"I learned a much better way to begin my 3D Design courses by having students manipulate one object and giving them the opportunity to explore what can be done and what can be made with just one object from the start."

Mark Tayler

Leonia High School

"I learned quick methods for getting students started in design without overloading them with too many technical terms. Biggest takeaway: Students will enjoy 3D Design and printing more if they start realizing their designs as soon as possible..."

Nancy Mullin

Supervisor of Career Education & Library Science @ West Orange Public Schools

"Thank you to Jason Frasca and Iain Kerr for helping West Orange School District successfully embrace and grow our 3D printing program in all of our schools district wide. Their expertise has proven invaluable when it comes to purchasing printers, training on use, and integration across the curriculum for all grade levels. Our staff has learned best practices from attending their workshops and grown in their own pedagogy. We value our partnership with them and highly recommend them."

Jillian Varner

Mount Olive High School

"I enjoyed the practice of designing and the structure of how to implement teaching kids from beginning to end. This was really great. Thank you!"

Julie Chrobak

Clifton Public Schools

"I enjoyed the way this course taught – it encourages thinking and starting simply – not how I was taught CAD software."

Kim Reber

Knowlton Township Elementry School

"Both gentlemen have such a great way of instructing us newbies. Their calm, patient manner was so helpful to everyone. I loved learning a better method to help teach my own young students. I hope to do the advanced next year after I gain more experience. Thank you so much for this experience!"

Sharon Waters

Founder & CEO @ Waters Strategies

"Jason and Iain are two very opposite people. They have completely different skill sets, talents and personalities. When they work together, those differences meld into something magical, where all those different strengths become a sum much bigger than its many parts. Jason and Iain also push each other to produce the best outcomes for their clients.

I have seen firsthand the radical transformations Iain and Jason produce, as the lightbulb moment clicks with their clients, who see how innovation can improve their organizations. Jason and Iain are also personable and easy to work with. You can't go wrong in hiring them."

Bridget Looney, PhD

Teacher, Educator, Critical Scholar @ Montclair State University

"Crafted for educators, these 3D design and printing courses will help propel you into the realm of limitless possibilities. Whether you're a novice seeking to design your first object or a seasoned 3D designer aiming to further refine your skills with Fusion 360, the sessions offered cater to all skill levels with equal fervor.

At its core, these courses aren't just about 3D printing; they're about fostering a culture of creativity, resilience, and digital literacy and learning to model that for schoolchildren. It's about empowering educators to unleash the full potential of their students and inspire the next generation of innovators.

So, if you're ready to embark on a journey that will redefine the way you teach, inspire, and connect, look no further than Emergent Futures Lab's online courses. They're catalysts for change, beacons of creativity, and a testament to the transformative power of innovative teaching."

Diane Ragsdale

Director of Creative Leadership MA, Scholar and Faculty of Creative Leadership @ Minneapolis College of Art and Design

I recently participated in two workshops (one with my students in the MA in Creative Leadership program and one with some colleagues at MCAD). I think the one thing that has most changed in my mindset around innovation is that I have dropped the idea/practice of sitting by myself or others and ideating as a way to begin. I now see that radical innovation require collective embodied making (and re-making).

The process of pattern recognition, blocking and probing is powerful. Once I used it in the workshop I began to see so many ways this could be applied.

Highly recommend taking a workshop with Jason & Iain. Plus they have a humorous, friendly rapport, which makes the experience feel relaxed and enjoyable.

James Barrood

Founder and CEO @ Innovation+

Jason and Iain gave a powerful innovation talk and led a transformative discussion at a recent Innovation Salon session.

In a few short minutes, they skillfully debunked many of the common assumptions about innovation and explicated a really profound alternative approach.

They prompted a meaningful dialogue with participants and offered surprising and usable advice. Kudos guys!

Dusan Urban

Founder @ Askology AI

I had the privilege to participate in a workshop with Jason Frasca and Iain Kerr. All I can say is that it was not the typical workshop you get at every corner of the "Innovation Theater" industry.

It was very uplifting to have the experience of removing the boundaries of what we know and the way we usually do things. I am now reading their book and trying to figure out my life from a new, totally different perspective.

Bruno Ávila

Head of Digitalization, Process and Information @ City of Amsterdam

A great creative way to learn about criativity and innovation. It was a pleasure participating in your workshop in Austin!

Christian Friedl

Head of Master´s programme "Digital Entrepreneurship" @ FH Joanneum

I really enjoyed Jason's and lain's workshop and their fresh approach towards innovation.

The most precious take away for me was the "power of blocking the obvious" to make room for disruptive approaches and innovation.

Sometimes we have to force ourselves to leave the beaten paths - innovation design is a great way to do this in a playful manner.

Darragh Gaffney

Director of Growth & Sustainability @ IRDG Innovation Network

This was an absolutely brilliant session. It was a fantastic opportunity to expand the mind and think on a new approach to innovation!

Books

Robert Ransick

Vice President of Academic Affairs @ Minneapolis College of Art and Design

This powerful book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to transcend reactive and constrained approaches purporting to be innovation and move toward imagining wholly new possiblities that transcend problem solving and move into generative and creative worldmaking.

Ben Pearson

Associate Director Global Device Quality @ AstraZeneca

"From where does the new arise if it must arise from somewhere but that somewhere cannot already exist as the new?"

Answer: It involves crows.

This book is one of the best finds of my PhD so far. Thank you lain Kerr and Jason Frasca

Kevin Mackenzie

Founder @ BITS Framework

Every now and again you discover a book that alters how you engage the world. This is one of them.

lain and Jason have pulled together an eclectic body of theory, disciplines and principles into an alternative and pragmatic set of operating practices. The book draws attention to the limits of ideation and cognitively
led approaches so prevalent within many organizations. They make a strong case for the limits of human centric reductionist based thinking as a means to "discover" novel and useful transformations.The book gives visibility & structure to the always present yet invisible and seemingly unstructured mind-body-tool- environmental systems that afford us our reality.

The more I worked with the concepts expressed the more I saw them all around me - embodied cognition, agency in all things, assemblages, unintended potentiality, emergence, irreducibility etc.

If you are feeling stuck or disillusioned with your existing innovation approach this is a must read.

At the heart of their approach is the creative power of the unintended & its ability to create new worlds. This achieved via an open ended, problem centric, embodied, process led meander that recognizes potentiality within affordances & their emergent
effects.

Don Springer

Co-Founder, Chairman Of The Board Of Directors @ The Colton Group, Inc.

Innovative Emergent Futures, by lain Kerr and Jason Frasca, is itself an innovative approach to creativity and its publication is timely.

With uncertainty in high relief after a pandemic, socio-economic unrest, and geopolitical shifts, a new approach is required to meet and create the future.

The book launches by first accounting for the history of concepts like "creativity" and "ideas" in the western world. Clarifying that creativity has been human centered, awaiting inspiration, highlights the inattention to novelty continually surfacing in the emerging natural world.

Kerr and Frasca continue to delineate what that means, providing a reorientation to innovation and creativity by expounding, and literally drawing, a new process. With all of that as a needed basis of understanding, the authors then take the reader through actually using the process.

It is here that the book cements its distinctive approach to innovation by actually guiding one through the activities of emergent innovation from the middle of the entanglement.

This work is highly recommended, not only to understand the arguments of how ideation has limited creativity, but to use as a guiding workbook through one's own innovative life activities.

Dan Neitz

Principal @ COR

What a gift! This book and the work of Jason and lain is profound in my opinion. Seeking to give language and insight to something that is practically, if not literally, ineffable.

This book scratches a deep existential itch for me..and is helping me think much differently why my previous efforts to bring specific passions into form didn't yield the results I had hoped for.

Super exciting to have new tools to take up the process of birthing something novel that makes a difference for others. Chapeau!

Antonio Ivanovski (A.l.)

Senior Data Analyst @ Google

For anyone who wants to get inspiration and wants to see things from a different angle. Whether you think you are creative or not, this book will help you consider things you haven't before.

Be warned, this book isn't meant to be just read, you need to apply the principles. I like to set aside time everyday and apply the techniques in my work and life. It's not a book to give you shortcuts, you have to work for it! Highly recommend!

Diane Ragsdale

Director of Creative Leadership MA, Scholar and Faculty of Creative Leadership @ Minneapolis College of Art and Design

I have assigned this book as a required text for my course Theory and Practice of Creative Leadership because it advances a powerful framework and approach for those who want to lead transformational change. This is a book for those who recognize that to make progress with our most complex chllenges we need to build new worlds (or logics, or paradigms, or sytems) rather than simply improve exiting ones.

lain Kerr and Jason Frasca have basically called out the limits of design thinking for world-building and have created a process for imaging and realizing possibilities
beyond the rational limits of current worldviews. This is a must-read IMHO.

John Flach

Emeritus Professor of Psychology @ Wright State University

Thanks lain Kerr and Jason Frasca & for an amazing book. I love the way you demystify 'creativity' and the practical ideas you offer for stimulating design innovation. Your critique of the conventional "ideate" or "God Model" of creativity aligns well with an Ecological Approach - where cognition is not something that happens inside a head, but rather something that emerges from the coupling of perception and action.

This book is a must read for designers and others who are interested in exploring the potentials of new technologies to make our world a better place.

John Lovitt

Founder @ Getting to Value

Innovating Emergent Futures is a window into a world of possibilities that emerge from new capabilities (agencies) applied in novel ways. This is not about the usual incremental creativity that slightly improves existing ways of doing things, but rather about
whole new worlds of potential that can only be realized with a fundamentally different approach. Given that the most pressing problems we are facing today are of our own making, it's clear this new approach is badly needed.