The Trend Report

Send us Fan Mail Sid looks past the celebrity and fame and identifies practical business lessons from Taylor Swift’s strategic playbook: turn adversity into fuel, build customer loyalty that beats price, and grow with a team that elevates the work. Let's challenge ourselves to stop reacting, start learning faster, and create relationships that compound over time. The Trend Report is your inside look at the people, products and ideas shaping the future of workplace design. We explore the...

Send us Fan Mail We talk with Avanto leaders Matt Danyliw and Leonardo Vargas about what “operationalised innovation” looks like when AI moves from talk to execution across the contract interiors ecosystem. We break down the shift from AI tools that only automate alerts to AI agents that take real action with humans reviewing results. Listen to learn: • What Avanto does and why the intersection of workplace, technology and data matters • The three outcomes they optimise for: reduced risk, red...

Send us Fan Mail Sid connects sustainability, design, and the future of work with Todd Bracher of Humanscale, tracing his craft-first roots in Europe to a clear framework: form follows function, and function follows context. They unpack the Path Chair’s net positive story, fast assembly, flat-pack efficiency, and what it means for the industry in the next decade. • how European craft cultures shape design choices • hands-on manufacturing lessons and material literacy • contextual design as u...

Send us Fan Mail Senior Interior Designer, Krystal Lucero, and Sid explore how to earn trust and build durable relationships between product sellers and the design community. From fast, accurate support to visible thought leadership and inclusive mentorship, the conversation maps a clear path to relevance for sellers and designers. • integrating work and life for sustainable energy • coaching lessons that sharpen patience and leadership • the power of mentors and long-game relationships • II...

Send us Fan Mail Hunter Jensen of Barefoot Solutions, and Sid unpack why AI is moving so fast and the important basics leaders skip during implementation and use: data quality, governance, and a focused strategy that targets real ROI. Hunter shares practical use cases across support, HR, and sales, plus how to deploy secure, private LLMs with RAG for reliable answers from your own data. • Three Cs of data: clean, current, complete • Difference between generative AI and legacy machine l...

Send us Fan Mail We kick off season seven with Bryce Stuckenschneider, CEO of Loftwall, to explore how privacy-first design, flexible architecture, and AI-forward practices can reshape the workplace while keeping people at the center. We also unveil DesignStage, a new on-demand CEU platform built to fix the broken continuing education system. • doubling down on privacy as a product, not just partitions • why speed, flexibility and human support win dealer loyalty • lessons from O...

Send us Fan Mail We're doing things a bit differently today. In an effort to show you practical uses for AI, I've put all of the transcripts from Season 6 in and AI platform called Notebook LM. It then created what it calls "The Deep Dive", a podcast episode with AI voice actors who have a conversation wrapping up this season. I'm interested to know what you thought about the Notebook LM recording. Did you like it? Did you come up with any ideas while listening to the conversation that you c...

Send us Fan Mail We sit down with Heartwork founder Karen John to explore how travel, Italian design culture, and a love of craft shaped a U.S. manufacturing brand that treats storage as a culture-building tool. We chat about: • curiosity, travel, and multidisciplinary Italian design • why Heartwork chose storage and makes it in the U.S. • color strategy with Laura Guido-Clark and moving past gray • quality, customization at scale, and installation simplicity • enterprise clients, culture th...