Known as the “SNAX-seer,” Andrea Hernández has an uncanny knack for predicting trends and shifts in all things consumable. In this talk, she shares an overview of the trends across the consumer packaged goods space, how our (collective) relationship to caffeine and coffee is changing, and what this means—at a generational level—in terms of how the coffee businesses of the future might think about their consumers.

Scholars and business people have long sought the source of value, and have come up with various models and theories about value creation. These perspectives can help us think about the components of value, but they all come up lacking when applied to coffee. In this talk, Prof. Fischer looks at how the specialty coffee market confounds theories of value. In the end, valuation is not a science and cannot be understood based on any single formula or equation: creating value is, rather, an art, creatively combining different sources of worth into unique configurations.

Not-knowing is everywhere, but it's never been more visible—or tangible—than it has been the past few years. Although this can feel daunting, everything new—ideas, products, business models—begins from a place of not-knowing. Businesses that know how to stay productive in the uncomfortable space of not-knowing are the ones which are able to innovate and adapt. And in rapidly changing industries like specialty coffee, these are the businesses which survive and thrive. Vaughn’s talk will help you reframe not-knowing as a productive tool for innovation, the obstacles you might face when trying to stay in a place of not-knowing, and what you can do to surmount those obstacles.

In order to map new, possible futures, we must first build a shared awareness of the cultural forces at play which will likely shape our journey ahead. Like the air we breathe, these concepts exist all around us, but we often take them for granted–and sometimes forget to take them into account when we’re trying to decide which path to take. In this session, we’ll deep-dive into some of the key concepts–uncertainty, value, and generational shifts–that have driven so much of our collective decision making over the past few years, and which seem poised to continue to play an active role in the years to come.

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