Why subscribe?
The Curious Path is your doorway to thought-provoking explorations into how innovation can once again become a catalyst for a more beautiful world.
Let's be honest, the way we innovate is a little broken.
Innovation was once a practice designed to bring people together - to ritualize and orchestrate our collective creativity toward solving the problems of the time. It wasn’t always about speed or scale; it was about thinking through problems. But somewhere along the way, the practice shifted. Today, we see innovation increasingly prioritizing action over thought, speed over quality and profit over real value. What was once a practice for surfacing solutions to the problems that mattered has become a machine for manufacturing demand.
We now find ourselves in a world racing forward at breakneck speed, churning out products, technologies and business models - endlessly optimized, but rarely questioned. In this rush, we leave behind the problems that actually matter: the slow, the complex, the human that can’t be optimized away. These challenges are neglected not because they’re unimportant, but because they’re inconvenient. They don’t fit the speed. They don’t deliver immediate returns.
As innovators, we are meant to inspire, but we now too often find ourselves chasing probabilities instead of creating possibilities. Trapped in a mindset of measurement, we’ve lost our appetite for risk. We’ve grown estranged from our intuition, our imaginations have atrophied. Somewhere along the way, we forgot what it is to be innovators.
But what if we could change that?
The Curious Path is for innovators who believe today’s model of innovation falls short - those who recognize their role in shaping the future and are ready to take responsibility for forging a more responsible, impactful way forward.
Our quest for certainty should be replaced with the demand for imagination. ‘Building a better future’ has primacy over the obsession about correspondence to reality.
- Richard Rorty
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Who’s behind this?
Hi, I’m Kriss
Driven by a curiosity to understand the world, my career has taken a curious path. I began as an engineer - an aerodynamicist to be precise - but soon realized I was more interested in people than in things. That shift led me into roles in research, strategy and innovation consulting.
Innovation has been a defining thread throughout my journey - from my early days in R&D using TRIZ, to facilitating design thinking with multinational clients at designaffairs’ Shanghai. To exploring at ?What If! Innovation the mindsets and behaviours that help organizations embed innovation in their culture.
My work has ranged widely: from uncovering the emotional drivers behind consumer behaviour, to mapping meaningful connections that unlock social capital for collective impact. I’ve envisioned the future of intelligent vehicle cockpits, reimagined everyday products like baby high chairs for compact urban living and explored how the role of real estate companies could evolve beyond the building of apartments and I’ve led research into the societal impact of emerging technologies.
Most recently, I stepped back to reflect on how societies and our cultures shape both our understanding and practice of innovation itself - as the focus of my Anthropology thesis.
This path has given me not only a front-row seat to the potential of innovation, but also a deeper awareness of its blind spots, contradictions and limitations.
Currently based in London, I collaborate with a network of like-minded thinkers. My focus remains clear: developing a more responsible approach to innovation and delivering it to the places it is needed most.
Some of the organizations I have worked with:
Work with me
If you’re interested in working with me, whether for innovation, research, design, strategy, workshops, talks, or other project opportunities, reach out via LinkedIn or Email or check out my studio Responsible innovation Lab.
The Little Book
If you’d like to learn more, check out my recent publication detailing guiding principles that illuminate the path to a more responsible way of innovating, click the link below:
