Learning in action
Emerging technologies like AI promise transformative potential, yet their practical applications remain largely unrealized. The path to master their potential is filled with unknowns. Creative exploration is needed to materialize what was previously impossible. The challenge is not about a lack of talent, ideas, or tools, but rather the need for a dedicated and structured space where people with different perspectives can frame problems, challenge assumptions, build artifacts, and learn together.
Enter Próximo Lab.
Próximo Lab is a club to learn through prototyping ideas. Similar to a gym for the perpetual learners, our members receive the theory, structure and tools needed for hands-on exploration with emerging technologies. They experiment, collaborate, bring ideas to life, and share their learnings publicly. We carefully match people to ensure meaningful experimentation.
Besides their commitment to expand their technological expertise, members' contributions take many forms depending on the person, timing, and focus area. Some members participate in experiments, present emerging tools, invite others to join, or develop ideas into working prototypes. Others serve as critical voices—offering unexpected perspectives, strong feedback, and guidance that challenges assumptions.
Benefits of membership include:
- Build essential modern skills: Develop confidence working with ambiguity and cultivate an intuitive sense for what one can make AI do.
- Learn concepts and tools at the edge of current AI development.
- Keep your mind fresh with unexpected perspectives.
- Get into conversations that do not take place in your organization.
- Form valuable connections with experienced professionals.
- Be active and develop prototypes in a domain you are curious about.
- Return to your organization with prototypes that showcase your ideas and learnings.
Curious to join?
Our founding cohort of members has already joined. These are people from our network or those who were enthusiastically referred to us. We plan to welcome new members in waves, with timing determined by our ability to properly onboard and connect each person who joins.
If you're interested in being part of our next cohort, please contact us.
Sponsor Próximo Lab.
Próximo Lab offers sponsors access to its creative community, where they can preview promising concepts and unexpected prototypes from topics they suggested. This is learning in action. In other words: not every exploration yields a commercial breakthrough, but every exploration guarantees that sponsors will gain knowledge to shape their future.
Benefits for sponsorship include:
- Use prototypes to give a shape to ideas and drive your business forward.
- Connect with fresh perspectives and concepts.
- Receive guidance from experienced professionals.
- Get inspired by 'what might come next' beyond your core activities and understand how that might transform your organization.
What are the domains of exploration?
Our focus areas evolve based on member curiosity and sponsor suggestions. Current exploration domains include:
- Augmented reading: Develop unique lenses and discover unexpected insights from your reading.
- AI model transparency: Improve accountability and trust through AI labeling.
- Sensor storytelling: Create video narratives using data from your real-world adventures.
About us: We believe in making things to think
Próximo Lab is a self-funded partnership founded by Lisa Gansky and Fabien Girardin. We are design-forward technologists active since the early days of the web. Some might call us "misfits" because we are driven by our curiosity and the intent to shape our future rather than conform to styles imposed by others.
Our driving force is to challenge the status quo including biases, assumptions and static culture in organizations. Throughout our careers, we experienced first-hand what it means to lead teams of creative people and to integrate emerging technologies into products, solutions, business models and movements. With our network, we have developed a know-how that relies on prototyping techniques to provoke thinking, fuel imagination, shape strategies and lead transformations in the near future.
Lisa Gansky, Founding Partner
Lisa builds and advises projects that ask better questions—about trust, access, ownership, and the systems that shape our lives. Her bestselling book The Mesh, along with its TED Talk, anticipated the rise of platform models and helped bring ideas like access over ownership into the mainstream.
Fabien Girardin, Founding Partner
Fabien is a multidisciplinary technologist active at the interface between people and software. He is best known as a pioneer in the domain of futures design and the development of the practice of Design Fiction.
Rohit Gupta, Limited Partner
Rohit is a designer and an engineer who builds things for creative enquiry.