Is your brand prepared to deliver heightened
experiences of the future?
In retail, finance, CPG, automotive, entertainment, hospitality, and healthcare, our desire to indulge plays a key role in driving purchasing decisions. This in turn shapes the value propositions, relevance, and competitiveness of offerings. Brands that rely on indulgent behavior must anticipate the future of heightened experiences and learn how to apply this knowledge to their business.
Join a diverse group of innovation thought leaders from major brands on a two-day immersion into the future of indulgence. More than just observing, you will be unpacking the forces that drive change, exploring forward-thinking scenarios, and prototyping new business strategies that capitalize on the enduring principles and emerging criteria re-shaping the future of indulgence.
San Francisco
May 10-11, 2016
Price: $2,000
For more information on early signup and group rates, please contact Sabina Birgen before February 29, 2016
Why Attend?
The Insights
Build your knowledge about the past, present and future contexts of indulgence in order to integrate changing consumer behaviors, values and expectations into your strategy today
The People
Engage with insights peers, professionals and thought leaders to better understand the diverse ways other companies are embedding emerging changes, insights and strategies within their organizations for impact
The Impact
Develop future-oriented business perspectives that are industry specific (e.g. health, CPG, entertainment, retail, automotive) and can be shared and actioned within the context of your organization
Event Takeaway
The Indulgence Agenda is as much designed to facilitate strategic dialogue after the event as during with shareable materials including:
Indulgence 2030
An exclusive guide detailing the most critical signals, insights and themes shaping the future of indulgence to help attendees facilitate organizational sharing and learning post-event
Facilitators

Scott Friedmann
Chief Innovation Officer, EVP
Scott founded Idea Couture to better connect big ideas with brands, products, and experiences. Since IC's inception, he has worked with some of the world's most loved consumer brands to develop innovative products, services, and strategies that align with the changing appetites of clients and consumers.
More About Scott
Emily Empel
Co-Head of Foresight
Emily specializes in integrating the practice of strategic foresight within large organizations to help stakeholders identify emerging opportunities. Before joining Idea Couture, Emily led the Future Workforce Insights department for The Walt Disney Company.
More About Emily
Mat Lincez
Co-head of foresight
With more than a decade of experience applying foresight practices at the front-end of complex innovation projects, Mathew draws on a background in Industrial Design to inform the development of integrative, human-centric experiences. His research interests in urban space, new media, and play behaviour have been applied to client projects across industries.
More About MatEvent Schedule
Day
1

Unpacking Indulgence
May 10, 2016
A History of Indulgence: Timeless Patterns & Principles
For millennia, humans have been denying themselves the pleasures of life, but then secretly indulging themselves after the fact. This is an attempt to understand how differences in social and cultural contexts throughout history have given rise to different kinds of indulgence and the guilt that comes with it.
Indulgence Today: Current Trends & Future Projections
Is indulgence worthy of scorn and judgement? Our propensity to recognize and legitimize our desires — and grant ourselves permission to fulfill them — is inherent. But will our modern hedonism have consequences on our future?
Why We Indulge: The Psychology & Neuroscience of Indulgence
Our drive to indulge is an artifact of our evolutionary history, buried deep into our brains. Does this mean that we are simply wired for indulgence, or are there steps we can take — both as individuals and as a society — to better control our desire to indulge?
The Ethics of Indulgence: Exploring The Limits of Human Compulsion
Indulgence, at its very core, is about excess. When we indulge, we skirt and then eventually cross the fine line between good and bad, between discipline and pleasure, and between being responsible and satisfying our desires. This raises the question: Can indulgence ever be ethical? More importantly, does it even need to be?
Designing for Indulgence: Formulas for Pleasure
No longer reserved for any subset of brands, heightened experiences are fast becoming the definitive delivery mode for brand encounters, both small and large. Using best-in-class examples, we will unpack the mindset, methods, and metrics that make these experiences appear effortless and irresistible.
Evening Event: Indulgence 2030
Future opportunities or challenges are better understood when they are consumed as experience. Participants will engage with a future of indulgence through an immersive dinner event set in 2030.
San Francisco
May 10-11, 2016
Price: $2,000
For more information on early signup and group rates, please contact Sabina Birgen before February 29, 2016
[email protected]
Day
2

Prototyping Possibilities
May 11, 2016
From Signals to Scenarios of Change: Frameworks for Disruption and Transformation
Scenario development is an exercise in sensemaking, strategy, and speculative storytelling. We'll apply our learnings to generate possible, plausible, preferred, and alternative future worlds, after which we'll imagine the innovative products, services, and businesses that could inhabit them.
Prototyping Heightened Experiences: Applying Future Insights to Indulgence
The future is meant as an input for planning and taking action today. This two-day event will culminate in a business case activity. Participants will develop a future vision and near-term products or service strategies for a fictional organization, given a set of common business constraints.
Idea Couture is an award-winning global strategic innovation and experience design firm. You might know us from MISC, a design thinking and innovation magazine we publish quarterly.
Our strategic foresight team places the human experience at the core of how we imagine the future. We make tomorrow a place your business can't ignore.
For more information and to get on the exclusive invite list for this event contact:
Sabina Birgen
VP, Global Client Development
Email: [email protected]
NA: 1.800.928.9135 EXT. 212
UK: 44.800.048.8152 EXT. 212
Direct: 1.415.376.6474 ext. 212
Event Location
Idea Couture San Francisco Office
649 Front St #300
San Francisco, CA 94111
Hotel Recommendations
W Hotel San Francisco
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Clift Hotel
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