Innovating with Extended Intelligence

Step into a world where curiosity powers innovation and technology sparks the next industrial revolution. In this conversation, curiosity scientist and technofuturist Sarah DaVanzo sits down to explore everything from psycho-technology and AI-driven “nanovations” to the future of synthetic CEOs. Sarah shares her insights on leading innovation, futurism, and AI across cultures. She shares how extended intelligence, biomimicry, and reflective AI are reshaping how we think, create, and lead. Whether you’re a seasoned futurist or an aspiring innovator, prepare to challenge your methods and ignite your imagination. Live curiously—as Sarah says—and join us for a thought-provoking, mind-expanding journey.

Tell us your name, a little bit about your role at Porter Novelli, and about your career as a whole.

I'm Sarah DaVanzo. I'm a technofuturist, inventor, and innovator. I've lived and worked internationally— specifically in developing markets in Asia and Africa— for 20 years. More recently, I’m back in the US in my hometown of New York City. I'm a patented inventor who has launched agencies, start-ups, and enterprises inside Fortune 500s. I’m always building things: ideas, products, experiences, and business. My process includes Curiosity Science methods and futurism.

1. What does innovation mean to you?

Innovation is really simply four words. It's better…we're always trying to do better–that’s the point of innovation, right? It's possibility. It's solutions. Solving for a future need or tension. It's anticipation… because innovation is always about something better in the future. Better, possibility, solutions, anticipation. If these four terms had a baby (with their quadrouple parents), that baby would be called “innovation.”

2. How does your team generate new ideas?

New ideas are fostered in three ways.

The first is through intentional, designed diversity. We do our best to bring in different perspectives by making sure our teams are diverse in gender, age, culture, race, neurodiversity, and life experience. We encourage the use of diverse vendors, diverse tools, and diverse methods. In other words, diverse ways to bring diversity.

The second way we generate ideas is by cultivating curiosity. I feel very strongly that curiosity is just not about asking questions—to be truly curious, one has to live curiously. So #livecuriously is the goal. I encourage people to see, to feel, to think, and to do curiosity.

The third idea generator is encouraging courage. If you're not brave, diversity and curiosity don’t really go very far. It’s important to give people courage to stretch their curiosity muscles and invite diversity, creating safe spaces and places for ideation. It takes courage to be curious and go outside of our comfort zone. It takes courage to be actively curious, not passively curious. It takes courage to bring in the “other,” to bring in diversity.

3. Do you have any specific rituals for resetting your team to be creative?

I ritually turn to nature and biomimicry for inspiration. When I need creative inspiration, I go outside, walk in the wind, and walk in the forest (forest bathing). I also study nature and natural systems—ecology, biology, sociology, geology, astronomy, etc. So many innovative solutions can be inspired by and designed based on natural phenomena (the basis for biomimicry).

My next go-to is ancient and indigenous wisdom. What’s old can be new again. The most basic traditional solutions can solve the most modern technological challenges. Understanding how problems were solved throughout antiquity by ancient people has been really helpful in my career. Being a student of the past has helped me design the future.

4. How are you leveraging AI in your innovation process? What are some unexpected benefits or challenges you have encountered with AI adoption?

I leverage AI throughout the entire Design Thinking process, from end to end. There is a due diligence discovery process, wherein we first discover insights that lead us to the challenge we will later address with innovation. In other words, discovering the job to be done. AI is a fantastic partner for discovery. AI can also be an excellent creative partner to explore and play with what-if questioning.

The next step of Design Thinking is the design phase, and AI can help with both actual design as well as support with design principles or theory. After we design a solution in Design Thinking, we shift focus to delivering the solution. This is where we produce and manufacture the solution, and AI can help with processes, automation, efficiency, productivity, costing, business models, supply chain, and more.

The final step of Design Thinking is the optimization phase. This is where the focus is on improving and scaling the solution, potentially bringing the MVP to market. AI can help with collecting feedback, user testing (think: synthetic audiences), and developing ecosystems around the product.

AI not only automates each step of the Design Thinking process, it also elevates the work. I like to say that artificial intelligence in the hands of innovators is “extended intelligence.”

Unexpected Benefits or Challenges of Using AI in Innovation:

One of the unexpected benefits is that there are AI platforms that are open, free, and accessible (think: AI lite) like ChatGPT and Mistral. Even if one is afraid of technology, there are simplistic elementary systems for children, like Scratch and Kidgeni, that can help adults get comfortable with AI.

AI learns fast! I am very surprised at the speed with which the multiple systems I've been involved with are learning and acquiring my ways of thinking, which is what I want. That's the end game, right? To have an AI platform that actually reflects our thought processes? I want AI to calculate, “how would Sarah attack this problem?”

Despite being accessible and ubiquitous, a challenge AI presents is that it can still be very opaque and mysterious. I think the AI industry uses a lot of acronyms, which can be a barrier. It can also be a bit of a black box. We have no idea how some of these platforms are operating and learning. It can be working behind the scenes doing things we have no idea about, and therefore uncontrollable. Frightening.

5. How do you identify trends? What resources does your team use to spot trends and consumer insights?

To be good at trendspotting or trend sensing, one needs to observe. One needs to see, feel, think, and live life curiously…to be out in the world. Deeply experiencing life with all senses. Virtual worlds and real worlds. Being actively engaged in life is a prerequisite of trendspotting—because how are you going to spot signals if you're not receiving signals?

Great trendspotters expose themselves to as much as possible: concepts, philosophy, history, cultures, language, lifestyles, aesthetics, tribes, industries, business models, etc. Generally and broadly scraping the world allows one to see patterns across categories and connect dots.

Trend analytics is not tourism… meaning one can't dip in and dip out of trend work. You're either in it and doing it every day, 365 days a year, or you're not. To see novelty requires one to see everything and to become almost jaded…a really great trendspotter sees so many signals and trends on a daily basis that they are able to discern what is truly noteworthy versus just a fad.

I recommend embracing big data and AI in the world of trendspotting and strategic foresight, like crowdsourced foresight. Use AI tools that scrape enormous amounts of signals and data. Use platforms like Trend Hunter to ingest signals, and extend and diversify one’s human network to find micro-cultures and bubbling trends on the edge.

6. What is the biggest challenge you face when innovating?

The biggest challenge I always face when innovating is keeping the simplicity. We might have a solution like a piece of software, and invariably, there are lots of features that the team wants to build into this solution. Sometimes, the biggest solve can come from one new feature, not a collection of features.

I like to remind the team about the concept of simplicity in design. Elegant design comes from nature. Think about paring down—like the old adage that tells us to look in the mirror and remove a few accessories. We tend to over-accessorize in innovation, and that makes things more complex. Quite frankly, it obfuscates what you're testing in terms of the innovation. Simplify! Always remove some accessories from your MVP and strive for elegant simplicity.

7. Has there ever been an instance where another industry has influenced an innovation at your company?

I like to borrow from lateral categories and other industries. I use metaphors for innovation inspiration. I've been in the innovation space for 30 years, and looking across different categories for analogs always works. For example, I worked on an award-winning invention in the hair care space that was inspired by rug cleaning methods and techniques. We learned from deep cleaning rugs. It was a fantastic metaphor for our hair care invention.

I have a patent for something that I invented some years ago called the gold tattoo, or gold skin gem. It’s gold jewelry that sticks on your body. The invention is a 24-karat gold adornment inspired by medical adhesive bandages that keep skin taut. The inspiration came from looking laterally across categories, including medical bandages.

8. What makes an innovative culture? How do you create a culture of innovation?

In this day and age, it's challenging to cultivate a culture of innovation due to the high level of uncertainty. When you're in a fight, flight, or freeze state, you're kind of in survival mode, and it's really hard to be creative. But there is a fourth “F.” (Not the F you're thinking about, though that could work too, wink)—it's fascinate. Fight, flight, freeze, or fascinate. In other words, use your curiosity and play.

Getting away from screens is really important. We are not two-dimensional people. We live in a four-dimensional, five-dimensional world. To create an innovative culture, one needs to get out of the screen world and play in real life, using all of your senses—see, feel, think, and do.

Structure is also important. Structure and routine allow one to work and experiment in a safe space. Having processes can be a lingua franca or shorthand, so everyone has a rough framework as a guide. Create the box to think outside of it. There's no “outside” if you don't create a box.

9. Looking to the future, how will your company continue to be a leader in innovation?

Innovation is critical to our business. I am building an innovation engine in the marketing communications space. Communication innovation is pushing us to adapt to unbelievable change in the communications industry. It’s business-critical that we build a communication innovation culture.

People are priority—not only upskilling folks but exposing people to the world of innovation, creative problem-solving, and futures. I try to give the innovators I work with both courage and curiosity.

Networking our global community, our huge international human network, is core to innovating. I manage roughly 80 people across four continents and 13 time zones, and my priority is to knit them together. To build an extended intelligence network. I work hard to get folks talking and collaborating across different levels of the organization, across countries, languages, and time zones.

Open innovation has never been more important. Open innovation means broadcasting that we are “open for innovation” and inviting people and businesses to come partner with us. Come play with us. If you have an idea for an invention, a solution, or want to conduct an experiment—let's tackle it together! Unlikely partnerships are especially welcome. I’m on the hunt for the non-obvious, counter-intuitive collab. When they zig, we zag.