We have Omar Ansari, Founder, Surly Brewing paired with Andy Pearson, VP of Creative Liquid Death. Both of these individuals and brands have been swimming upstream, defying the norm and breaking the molds of their respective categories.

We think this pairing is so good, Apple Pie and Ice Cream are going to be jealous.

Areas of learning from this episode:

One: What it takes to question authority and norms of culture, and do something dramatically different from standard.

Two: The importance of creativity in our community, in whatever form it takes and how that is changing in this current economy.

Three: Creativity in a world where risk is measured in social media, cancellation and polarization.

We’ve been rather proud of our pairings at Think & Link; Pants Optional, but we’ve outdone ourselves this time. We’re pairing Château La Mission Haut Brion Bordeaux red wine with the best meal you’ve ever enjoyed. We have Vince Voron, formerly of Apple, Coke, Dolby and now with Ripple, he is known for designing iconic elements into brands. And, Soon Yu, Author, Innovator, Formerly VF Corp; and Soon Yu has written a best selling book, Iconic Advantage which showcases brands and designers who have proven what iconic design delivers for brands. If you’re not enjoying this one, check your pulse.

In this episode we are excited to have Amanda Brinkman of Sunshine Studios and Lisa Armstrong formerly of Resideo on the podcast. Amanda started the show Small Business Revolution while helping all of us question why we can’t do more good while doing well. Lisa has led marketing in large technical organizations, earning herself icon status in our community. 

We cover some very interesting topics with this pair of dynamic marketing and creative minds. We chat about the design of culture, creativity inside organizations and marketing innovation. 

On our stage we have former client, Dan Buettner of Blue Zones and our friend Scott Lien of GrandPad. Dan is a researcher, author, Netflix special host and Founder of Blue Zones, a company studying and implementing evidence-based ways to help people live longer and better. Scott is the Co-Founder of GrandPad, a technology company reshaping the way seniors connect with their loved ones. Together, our two guests discuss how to live a vibrant and long life, exploring the importance of our relationships and daily choices, and how they can impact our lifespan and quality of life.

In today's episode, we have a representative from FabFitFun, Ryan Waymire, on the Think & Link podcast to talk about what they are seeing. Along with Ryan we have Kara Goldin, the founder of Hint Water and the only person we know who has had a drink with Maria Shriver. We’ll be talking about women in entrepreneurship and what the near future looks like through their lenses.

This episode, we are going deep into the world of bike culture with Rich Tauer, President of QBP (Quality Bike Products) paired with Erik Saltvold, Founder, Erik’s Bikes. We will discuss a number of other topics related to bikes, like org culture, marketing, entrepreneurship, leadership and saddle soreness after your first century ride.

On today’s episode, we have Kate Lynch our client at Curaleaf (the largest and most reputable cannabis brand) and Vince Kadlubek, the founder of Meow Wolf, a unique arts inspired immersive experience taking people to new places and spaces. We’ll be talking hallucinogens, brands, cannabis in Minnesota, art inspired immersion, and so many more fantastical subject areas.

This week on the podcast, our two speakers will take us into sustainable design, beauty products and entrepreneurship through the lens of two inspired founders, Susan Griffin-Black founder of EO Products and Nora Schaper founder of HiBAR. If either of these brands is new to you, we’re here to get you caught up with some good happening in the world.

We have Joe Pine and his co-author Maureen Bosh of The Experience Economy- he one of the books that inspired Aaron Keller and Brian Adducci to start Capsule in the first place. Maureen is most known for leading the Minnesota Super Bowl experience, but has also led the Mall of America, an experience visited by guests from around the world. If we could guess, there’s  likely some talk about experience design on this one.

On this episode we have the co-founder of Oatly oat milk, Björn Öste and TD Dixon the Chief Growth Officer at Post Consumer Brands and formerly of Jack Link’s where he turned a dried protein brand into a cultural icon. We will cover topics about how aged brands can become relevant again and new brands can hit a cultural stride and face exponential growth. And, if you’re unaware of the oat milk revolution, you might want to call up Oprah, Natalie Portman or Howard Schultz to ask what they’ve invested in recently.

Food and clothing, what more is there to life?

How could a pairing be better than Jessica Appelgren from Impossible Foods and Erin Wallace from thredUP. We may have to end Think & Link on this episode, retire our airpods and call this one our grand finale. Here’s why.

We will be talking about the most important and innovation driven brand in meats, a non-meat food company (Impossible Foods). Combine this with the brand (thredUP) helping us see secondhand before we buy new in a circular economy where that’s a really, really, really good idea.

Don’t want to over hype this one, but yes, that last sentence had three “reallys”.

What do Delta Airlines and the National Gallery of Art have to do with each other? Any guesses? We’ll give you part of the answer- they are both thoughtfully designed experiences. Joining us today to talk more abundantly out this is Gail Grimmett, Sr Vice President at Delta Airlines and the Chief Experience Officer at Wheels Up. She will be on the stage with Eric Bruce the Head of Visitor Experience at the National Gallery of Art. If you’re looking for a bit of inspiration to improve your experience design effort, this conversation will serve you well.

If you’re a fan of behind-the-scenes brand stories, we’ve got you covered in this Think & Link pairing. We have Guy Kawasaki and Lisa Mann on the stage and their combined experiences have influenced this fantastic list of brands; Apple, Kind, PepsiCo, StumbleUpon, Canva, Motorola, Oreo, Chips Ahoy!, and Trident.  And, those are just the public ones, there are certainly more unlisted.

Food and fuel, what gives you the motivation to design your life.

Both food and inspiring food for thought are sources of fuel that allow us to seek new experiences and live more fulfilling lives. Our next Think & Link features two great stories of go-getting leaders in their respective fields to speak on motivation, food and the fuel we use to craft our own future.

We have Tori Johnston, Chief Marketing Officer at AKT and former marketer at SoulCycle. Tori is joined by Mike Fata, founder of Manitoba Harvest and investor in ten of the next food brands you’ll likely find in your cabinets in the very near future.

We’re always up for a treat at Capsule and certainly when it comes to good mission-driven food. This episode we have Katie Marston the Chief Marketing Officer from Once Upon a Farm and Rita Katona the Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of So Good So You. Food has become a central part of the purpose-driven brand movement and these two inspired leaders are at the center of it. With a mind for design and a purpose driven mission, we hope this conversation leaves you inspired and maybe a little hungry.

We are pairing Edwin Wong from Vox Media with Phil Graves of Wild Idea Buffalo and formerly Patagonia. The lines we will draw between media, the metaverse and responsible protein will likely surprise you. 

This episode we have the fashion, actress and business mogul who has built a multi-billion dollar empire, Kathy Ireland,  paired with Emily Culp, CEO and cultural hero of Cover FX and former CMO of Keds. Listen in as we talk design in all forms along with beauty and business. 

This episode we’re talking about the future of food with Moira Cullen and Tom Simmons. Tom is the CEO and founder of Supplant, an organization central to the field of upcycled food ingredients. Moira is an iconic design leader from a variety of food brands including Coca-Cola, The Hershey Company, PepsiCo. If you eat food and care even a little bit about what you’re eating, this one's for you. 

We’re talking about the design of culture, creating a sense of place and a new fashion line by Houston White for Target. We have two entrepreneurs who have come together on a project that will certainly have a lasting impact on our community.

Houston White of Camdentown Minneapolis, founder of Houston White Men’s Room, and a gregarious entrepreneur turning a Mpls neighborhood into a cultural hub. He is also adding The Get Down Coffee Cafe that has been described as a morning-time happy hour.

Chris Manley of Decor Apparel and co-founder of Surfside Apparel heads the team behind Houston White, helping bring his vision to life. This pair came together in a rather elegant manner and will certainly deliver an hour of inspiration for our audience.

Sometimes the stars align perfectly, and we do mean the celebrity version. We have Kate Ancketill of GDR, the global leader in retail and business futurism. And, she will be on our virtual stage with Ravi Hampole, the SVP of Global Brand Creative at lululemon. Bring an open mind, your stretchy pants and a deep craving for knowledge on the future of retail.

If this doesn’t get your creative juices flowing, you might need to check the heart rate monitor.

This episode we have a treat for you, Doug Bouton, co-founder of Halo Top ice cream chats with Ann Hand the CEO of Super League Gaming about imposter syndrome and company culture. What else do these two have in common? That’s a very good question, you’ll have to tune in to find out.

Our first guest, Krupa Koestline, is the founder of KKT Consultants, a clean beauty lab and innovation center. She is paired with friend and past client of Capsule, Christopher Gavigan, co-founder of both The Honest Company and Prima, a transparent beauty brand.

While these two guests have not worked together, they are founding members of the mutual admiration club and that always sparks a beautiful conversation on our series.

The world of designed experiences has nothing without great food, the chefs who create and the tools they use. We have an inspired pairing of three, our first trifecta, for this month’s Think & Link. We’ll be talking about a new experience designed by our client and friends at Cooks of Crocus Hill in neighborly partnership with Gavin Kaysen.

We have the acclaimed chef Gavin Kaysen with an iconic duo here in Minneapolis Marie Dwyer and Karl Benson, the stewards of Cooks of Crocus Hill. If you haven’t heard of Gavin, we’d like to ask if you’ve named the rock you’ve been hiding under? And, while Marie and Karl are a bit more “behind the scenes” compared to their internationally recognized chef friend, they are two of the most amazing design driven entrepreneurs in our community.

We’ll be talking about the importance of activity, getting outdoors, connecting with nature, entrepreneurship, loved brands, designed experiences, and so much more with this inspired global leader.

Joy Howard is one of our favorites we met while working with Patagonia. After leaving Patagonia, she went on to lead marketing at Sonos and Lyft before launching her own venture, Early Majority—a beautifully responsible active outdoor gear company.

In this episode we are joined by Michael Fanuele and Jackie Hermes. We talk about the power of leather pants, how inspiration works, delusional confidence, and small things like our human destiny and our amazing imagination. Yes, this was no small conversation, and  if you’re not inspired after this one, check your pulse. 

This episode is with Mark Ritson, the contrarian professor of marketing from the London School of Business and many other properly aged institutions. Mark talks about “bothism”, how the internet has evolved as we grayed and the role of a marketing discipline in the digital economy. I hope you enjoy the snark of Mark sprinkled in between all the insights.

This episode with James Damian, the gentleman of design, and Mauro Porcini, our favorite Italian designer, was our first virtual session in July of 2020. We cover what inspires them about design, empathetic leadership, each of their Apple stories and how to design a transformational culture.

There’s something intuitively elegant when these two founders are on the stage. Ashley Sumner is the founder of Quilt, an audio social app designed to be a safe space and started a meme in the founder community with “I am a XFemaleX Founder”. Jann Parish was an iconic CMO and left it behind to become a co-founder of GLU, Girls Like You, a beauty brand with her daughter Lila.

In this episode, we have the iconic David Rubin, Chief Marketing Officer of The New York Times. Yes, that little known publisher has agreed to grace our show. David’s only requirement was a pairing with a legend in marketing Fernando Machado, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Burger King and Activision Blizzard. Fernando and David will be talking about digital transformation, returning vibrancy to experienced brands and the role design has played.

In this episode we cover retail, design and the arts, a trio of subjects delivered perfectly by this duo of founders. We have Megan Tamte, founder of EVEREVE and Mercedes Austin, founder of Mercury Mosaics on the show, just in time for some Black Friday retail therapy blended with art and design.

If you’re at all interested in a creative model of retail growth, designed by Megan, this will be a great listen. And, if you have any affection for handcrafted, beautiful works of art and the adventurous world of entrepreneurship, Mercedes is certainly an inspiration. Enjoy the conversation. 

In this episode we explore leadership and culture, the flour and water in a recipe for an exceptional organization. 

We have the pleasure of welcoming our client from Zurich, Switzerland based venture, Katadyn and Shawn Hostetter, who led the North American organization and delivered amazing results with our Capsule team. Shawn is paired with DeAnna Murphy, an organizational development leader at People Acuity. 

In this episode, we show our love for product and experience design. Angie Tebbe of Rae Wellness and Kate Lubenesky of W&P are two amazing entrepreneurs who have used design to improve the little things in our lives.  And, by little, we don’t mean unimportant.  In fact, these bits of how we live make a big impact on how we thrive. We hope you’ll see why we admire these two founders for their contributions to the design and entrepreneurial community.

In this episode we are taking the Think & Link discussion to intellectual curiosities born of blending science and design. We thought of no two better representatives than Eric Quint of 3M Design, paired with the co-director of Science House, Rita J. King. In her words, Science House is a cathedral of the imagination in Manhattan focused on the art and science of doing business. Eric is the former head of design at 3M and the author of Design Leadership Ignited: Elevating Design at Scale. If this isn’t a pairing as good as peanut butter and jelly, then we ask, what is?

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.

We have Bruno Singulani, global brand identity and design from Nestle along with Nicole Atchison, CEO of PURIS Holdings here in Minneapolis. PURIS is cultivating the future of food through a plant-based approach using peas. And Nestle is a global brand in food as a key to enhancing the quality of life for everyone.