Understand across
cultures.
Explore how words and ideas change across cultures, places, and digital environments. Make room for multiple interpretations before drawing conclusions.
A cultural intelligence & technology lab
Culture shapes
what comes
next.
We work with organizations and communities to understand how culture shapes their relationship with technology. Through research, dialogue, and collaborative design, we develop ideas people can test.
Explorethe work↘
FIG. 01 / INTERDEPENDENCEPAST ↔ PRESENT ↔ POSSIBILITY
interbeing.
Knowledge carries memory. Every future begins somewhere.
01 / THE PRACTICECONTEXT BEFORE SOLUTIONS
Many ways of knowing.
New ways of being.
Technology is always part of a larger story.
Of people, place, power, and the ideas we inherit. ism works across those relationships, bringing cultural intelligence into how we imagine, design, and live with technology.
Our work makes room for different knowledge traditions, community priorities, and the long view.
01See the system.
STRATEGY & SENSEMAKING+
Examine the assumptions, narratives, and relationships shaping a challenge. Bring cultural and systems perspectives into the decisions that follow.
Questions before answers. Context before action.02Make room for difference.
DIALOGUE & CO-DESIGN+
Gather people with different experiences and ways of knowing. Through workshops, foresight, and collaborative design, explore possibilities that no single perspective could surface alone.
Shared inquiry. Thoughtful participation. New possibilities.03Build with responsibility.
TECHNOLOGY & CULTURE+
Explore technology through cultural meaning, community governance, and data sovereignty. Develop design directions that consider who decides, who benefits, and what endures.
Community priorities. Cultural continuity. Long-term care.Bring a question into a workshop, research dialogue, or advisory conversation.
Discuss an engagementEXPLORE THE APPROACH
Ideas you can
put to work.
Explore three connected approaches to understanding people, asking better questions, and developing a practical response.
01 / VISUAL GUIDE
Cultural context mapping
Explore the people, practices, value, and relationships shaping a challenge before deciding what to design.
Explore the approach →Stories of culture & technology
Use interviews and storytelling to explore how technology changes identity, knowledge, and everyday life.
Explore the approach →03 / VISUAL GUIDE
Collaborative research & design
Bring different perspectives together to develop an idea, review it, and agree on a practical next step.
Explore the approach →OUR RESEARCH HORIZON
Where the inquiry
is headed.
Alongside workshops and collaborative research, we are exploring how cultural intelligence can shape more thoughtful tools and decisions.
Understand across
Bring context
into AI.
Investigate how AI can account for cultural context, surface embedded bias, and respect people’s agency in how they are represented.
Imagine change
with intention.
Use cultural and systems perspectives to explore emerging change, strengthen dialogue, and inform decisions about technology, work, and shared futures.
These research directions guide our future work. We welcome collaborators who want to help shape them.
02 / SELECTED WORKIDEAS, IN COMPANY
From conversation
to possibility.
A selection of gatherings and collaborative explorations. Open the stories and read the documents behind the work.
Community governance, cultural meaning, and digital sovereignty, explored through four collaborative foresight scenarios.
A gathering at the intersection of ancestral knowledge, artificial intelligence, biodiversity, and Indigenous data autonomy.
These explorations produce questions, conceptual frameworks, and design directions. The work continues through relationships and shared inquiry.
03 / PERSPECTIVESWIDEN THE FRAME
IN CONVERSATION WITH EY / 2023
What kind of ancestor
do you want to be?
Marques explores ancestral intelligence, purpose, and the future of meaning at EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year in Monaco.
READ & REFLECT
The reading room.
Go deeper into the questions, frameworks, and conversations behind the work.
A QUESTION WE KEEP COMING BACK TO
What becomes possible
when we design from
relationship?
With communities.
With living systems.
With generations still to come.
04 / PEOPLE & CONNECTIONSTHINKING ACROSS BOUNDARIES
A practice shaped
by many worlds.
Marques and Chris bring cultural inquiry and systems design into conversation. Their work with ism creates space for researchers, knowledge holders, designers, and organizations to explore together.
CO-FOUNDER / CULTURE & TECHNOLOGY
Marques D. Anderson
A cyborg anthropologist, founder, and strategic advisor, Marques explores the evolving relationship between people and technology. His work connects cultural understanding with questions of identity, governance, and possibility.
CO-FOUNDER / STRATEGY & SYSTEMS DESIGN
Chris Krohn
Chris works at the intersection of technology, innovation, and systems design, developing collaborations across organizations, investors, and startups. He brings that perspective to ism’s workshops and shared inquiry into cultural and technological futures.
05 / AN OPEN INVITATION
Bring your
next question.
Have a challenge that crosses disciplines, cultures, or ways of thinking? Let’s explore where a conversation could lead.
Discuss a collaborationWorkshops · Research dialogue · Strategic inquiry