Luxury Futurist
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Master Class

Luxury Futurist

An eight week online master class in reading the future from inside the room

Eight weeks, eight principles, eight guest practitioners. A live seminar for builders, strategists and creative leaders who want to use luxury culture as an early warning system for the rest of the economy.

Duration
8 weeks, one live session per week
Live seminar
90 minutes, Thursdays, 12:00 ET
Guest hour
45 minutes with a practitioner, on the record
Cohort
Capped at 40 participants
Work
One field exercise per week, one final briefing
Outcome
A publishable intelligence brief in your own category
01A Studio, Not a Classroom

The syllabus runs as a living venture studio. Every week is a mission with a room to enter, a set of AI tools to work with and an artefact that becomes evidence. Nothing is submitted, everything is built.

Fig. 01What changes, the old model against the studio model
Old modelThis studio
StudentBuilder
ClassroomVenture studio
Reading listField access
HomeworkEvidence
CertificateCapability portfolio
Case studyLive mission
Fig. 02Four operating frameworks, select one to read its practice
01Empathy02Synthesis03Pattern04Storytelling
01 / 04

Empathy

Read the person before the market.

Deep observation inside real rooms. You learn to record what people do rather than what they claim, and to separate a preference from a performance.

  • Silent observation, twenty minutes, no questions
  • Self image interview
  • Friction inventory

Taught in week 01 and week 04

Fig. 03One week inside the studio, hover a node to read the block
MonTueWedThuFriSatMission dropBrief, constraints, success test
  1. Mission dropBrief, constraints, success test
  2. Live seminar90 minutes, principle and method
  3. Field tripImmersive visit, notes logged
  4. Guest hourPractitioner, on the record
  5. BuildAI tools, artefact assembled
  6. CritiqueCohort review, evidence tested
Missions, not modules

Every week is a real assignment in your own category, graded on evidence.

AI as cofounder

Two or three tools per week, used inside the work rather than demonstrated at it.

Immersive field trips

A guided visit each week to a room the cohort could not otherwise enter.

Proof of work portfolio

Eight artefacts, tracked live, that become your capability record.

Guest practitioner

One operator per week, on the record, answering the cohort's own findings.

Studio hours

Open room between sessions for troubleshooting, critique and swaps.

Fig. 04Proof of work portfolio, tick an artefact to see the record build
02The Curriculum
01Week

Luxury Futurist

Proximity is the research method.

Why the room precedes the market, and how to value access as a measurable asset rather than a social perk. We build the map of rooms in your own category and rank them by signal density.

Sessions

  • The access ladder: from spectator to participant to author
  • Signal density, how to score a room before you enter it
  • Field note discipline, one phone, no crew, everything logged

Field workMap twelve rooms in your category and score each on signal density.

Private to this browser. Written before the seminar, read back in week eight.

01Which room in your category are you currently locked out of, and what is the honest reason?

Name the room, then name the reason without flattering yourself.

Not answered yet

02What did access cost you last time you got it, in money, time or obligation?

Access is never free. Write the invoice.

Not answered yet

03What have you learned inside a room that you could not have learned from a report?

One specific detail, not a general lesson.

Not answered yet
Guest speakerMarianne DevauxFormer director of private clienteling, Parisian maison

On how invitation lists are actually built, and what a house is really measuring when it opens a door.

02Week

Craft as R&D

The workshop is a laboratory with better manners.

Ateliers, shipyards and coachbuilding floors run continuous experiments under the cover of tradition. We study how craft organisations protect long horizon research inside commercial businesses.

Sessions

  • The atelier as tolerated skunkworks
  • Materials science hiding inside heritage language
  • Costing patience: how slow work gets financed

Field workDocument one craft process in your industry and identify the hidden experiment inside it.

Private to this browser. Written before the seminar, read back in week eight.

01Where in your work does slowness actually buy something, and where is it just habit?

Separate patience from inertia.

Not answered yet

02What experiment is hiding inside a process your organisation calls tradition?

Look for the step nobody can explain but nobody will remove.

Not answered yet

03Who in your business is a maker, and when did you last watch them work?

A date, not an intention.

Not answered yet
Guest speakerTobias RennMaster joiner, superyacht interiors, Northern Europe

On prototyping in one-offs, and why a single commission can carry a decade of technique forward.

03Week

Performance Systems

Racing is the fastest form of product development.

Motorsport, aviation and endurance environments compress feedback loops into hours. We extract the operating logic of pit walls and control rooms and translate it into ordinary teams.

Sessions

  • Telemetry culture, deciding with data you do not fully trust
  • The debrief as institutional memory
  • Constraint as a creative instrument

Field workRun a full motorsport style debrief on a project your team recently shipped.

Private to this browser. Written before the seminar, read back in week eight.

01What was the last decision you made with data you did not fully trust, and how did you decide?

Describe the moment the doubt appeared.

Not answered yet

02Where does your team lose its institutional memory between projects?

Name the gap, not the tool.

Not answered yet

03Which constraint has improved your work more than any resource ever did?

One constraint, one outcome.

Not answered yet
Guest speakerDr. Amara OyelaranVehicle performance engineer, championship racing programme

On the twenty minute decision window, and how race teams keep judgement intact under pressure.

04Week

Experience Architecture

Space is the first draft of a brand.

Members clubs, flagship houses and private islands are behavioural instruments. We take apart how sequence, threshold and light are used to produce a feeling on schedule.

Sessions

  • Threshold design, the first eleven seconds
  • Choreography of service, scripts that never read as scripts
  • Measuring a feeling without ruining it

Field workStoryboard the threshold sequence for a space your customers already use.

Private to this browser. Written before the seminar, read back in week eight.

01Describe the first eleven seconds a customer spends with you, honestly.

Write it as a camera shot, not a claim.

Not answered yet

02Which part of your service is scripted, and does it read as a script?

Where the seam shows.

Not answered yet

03When did a space last change how you behaved without telling you to?

Recall the room and the behaviour.

Not answered yet
Guest speakerYuki MatsudaHospitality experience designer, Tokyo and Kyoto

On omotenashi as a system, and the difference between service and anticipation.

05Week

Scarcity, Access and the New Economics

Ownership is becoming the least interesting form of access.

Fractional models, membership, waitlists and resale markets have rewritten what value means. We model access economics and stress test them against your own business.

Sessions

  • Pricing the wait, allocation as a product decision
  • Membership mechanics, renewal as the real revenue event
  • Secondary markets as brand infrastructure

Field workBuild a one page access economics model for an offer you own.

Private to this browser. Written before the seminar, read back in week eight.

01What are you selling that would be more valuable if it could not be owned?

One offer, reframed as access.

Not answered yet

02What is the real revenue event in your business: acquisition or renewal?

Answer with the number, not the assumption.

Not answered yet

03Who resells you, and what does the secondary price say about your pricing?

If nobody resells you, say what that means.

Not answered yet
Guest speakerPriya RaghunathanInvestor, consumer and marketplace businesses

On how capital reads scarcity, and which access models survive their first downturn.

06Week

Narrative Systems

A story is infrastructure, not decoration.

Houses that endure run narrative the way factories run logistics. We build a narrative system with a canon, a cadence and a set of allowable variations.

Sessions

  • Canon, apocrypha and the archive
  • Cadence, releasing meaning on a calendar
  • Translation, holding a story across markets

Field workWrite the canon document for your brand, one page, no adjectives you cannot prove.

Private to this browser. Written before the seminar, read back in week eight.

01Write one sentence of your canon that you can prove with evidence.

No adjective you cannot source.

Not answered yet

02What part of your story do you repeat because it is true, and what because it works?

Be specific about the second one.

Not answered yet

03Who outside your company can retell your story correctly?

Name a person, then test them.

Not answered yet
Guest speakerIdris CallowayCultural strategist and former music label creative director

On myth building at speed, and how to keep a story true while it scales.

07Week

Technology with Manners

The best technology in luxury is the technology you never see.

AI, sensing and automation arrive in luxury quietly, judged on restraint. We set a standard for intelligent systems that increase human attention rather than replace it.

Sessions

  • Invisible systems, where automation belongs and where it insults
  • Data dignity in high trust relationships
  • AI as an apprentice to a master, not a substitute

Field workRedesign one automated touchpoint so it reads as attention rather than efficiency.

Private to this browser. Written before the seminar, read back in week eight.

01Which automated touchpoint in your business would insult a client if they saw the logic behind it?

Name it plainly.

Not answered yet

02What data do you hold that you would be uncomfortable explaining to the person it describes?

If none, say why you are confident.

Not answered yet

03Where could a machine give a person more attention rather than less?

One touchpoint, one mechanism.

Not answered yet
Guest speakerDr. Lena FischbachHuman centered AI researcher, applied lab

On designing intelligence that defers, and why deference is a luxury signal.

08Week

The Briefing

Intelligence is only real once someone can act on it.

The final week converts eight weeks of field work into a briefing: thesis, evidence, shifts, and a playbook that a decision maker can run on Monday. Live review with the cohort and the guest panel.

Sessions

  • Structuring a briefing that survives a sceptical room
  • Evidence hierarchy, what counts and what merely impresses
  • Presentation and cohort review, briefs read aloud

Field workDeliver your final intelligence brief, twelve minutes, live.

Private to this browser. Written before the seminar, read back in week eight.

01What is the weakest claim in your brief, and why have you kept it?

The panel will find it. Find it first.

Not answered yet

02Who is the decision maker for your brief, and what will they do differently on Monday?

A name and an action.

Not answered yet

03Which of the eight weeks changed your mind, and about what?

One week, one reversal.

Not answered yet
Guest speakerGuest panelSelected speakers from weeks one to seven

A closing panel that reviews the strongest briefs and challenges their assumptions on the record.

Enrolment

Forty seats, eight weeks, one brief that changes how your team reads the future.

Cohorts open twice a year. Applications are read in the order they arrive.

Request an application →