About

Why CROSSDIVE

Matters Now

We are living through a period of compounding transitions.

Geopolitical realignments are reshaping trade, technology, energy, and supply chains. AI is advancing faster than institutions can adapt. Economic assumptions that guided decision-making for decades are being challenged. Technology now diffuses through society in days rather than years, compressing the time available to respond.

The deeper challenge is not the pace of change alone. It is the collision of multiple shifts unfolding simultaneously. Geopolitics influences everyday consumption. Demographic transitions are redefining work and longevity. Urbanisation is creating new pressures on infrastructure, attention, and wellbeing. Resource constraints are becoming strategic concerns. Intelligence is becoming abundant while judgement remains scarce.

In this environment, traditional strategic planning becomes increasingly fragile. Linear forecasts assume continuity. Categories assume stability.

Institutions assume time to adapt. Leaders, however, are making decisions within systems that are volatile, interconnected, and often contradictory.

Strategic failure today rarely stems from lack of information. Organisations have more data than ever before. The challenge is interpretation. Assumptions about people, markets, technologies, and systems can become outdated long before they are visibly challenged.

CROSSDIVE exists to help leaders update those assumptions.

The summit combines two complementary lenses. Strategic foresight helps identify emerging signals and explore multiple plausible futures. Human insight helps ground those futures in lived realities, changing behaviours, and evolving expectations.

CROSSDIVE is not about predicting the future. It is about improving the quality of interpretation that shapes decisions today.

Presentations at foresight and megatrends conference organised by Turian Labs
Participants at foresight and megatrends conference organised by Turian Labs in Mumbai

Turian Labs

& CrossDive

Turian Labs is a strategic foresight, design research, and innovation  consulting firm based in Pune, India.

For over a decade, we have helped organizations across the world understand changing human needs, discover emerging opportunities, and design strategies for an uncertain future. Our work combines strategic foresight, ethnographic research, UX research studies  and Design Thinking to help leaders make better decisions in complex environments.

We believe that meaningful strategy begins with understanding people. Yet insight alone is not enough. Organizations must also make sense of the larger forces shaping markets, technologies, societies, and institutions. This intersection of strategic foresight and deep human insight lies at the heart of our work.

Over the years, we have also created platforms for dialogue and collective sensemaking, including IndiaNxt, one of India's early conferences on megatrends and innovation strategy, and DIVE, an ongoing series of conversations exploring creativity, innovation, science, technology, and society through diverse lenses.

CROSSDIVE builds on this legacy. It brings together researchers, designers, technologists, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders to explore the shifts shaping India and the world, and to collectively imagine strategic responses for the years ahead.

At Turian Labs, we see the future not as something to be predicted, but as something to be interpreted, designed, and shaped.

Conference Images
A conference room with attendees sitting at round tables listening to a speaker at a presentation. Megatrends. Foresight. Strategy. 2019

Researchers

✳︎

Founders and Entrepreneurs

✳︎

Business Leaders

✳︎

AI Enthusiasts

✳︎

Decision Makers

✳︎

Researchers ✳︎ Founders and Entrepreneurs ✳︎ Business Leaders ✳︎ AI Enthusiasts ✳︎ Decision Makers ✳︎

WHO IS IT FOR?

CROSSDIVE is designed for professionals who shape decisions at scale, including:

  • CXOs and senior business leaders

  • Strategy, foresight, and transformation teams

  • Government officers, policymakers, and public-sector leaders

  • UX researchers and design leaders

  • Product managers and innovation heads

  • Designers working at product, services, systems and policy levels

  • International participants seeking a deep, grounded understanding of India’s transitions

The diversity of perspectives is intentional. CROSSDIVE thrives on cross-sector and cross-disciplinary dialogue, where business, design, technology, and governance intersect.

What Participants

Take Away

Participants leave CROSSDIVE with:

  • A clearer understanding of the signals shaping India and the world

  • Refreshed mental models grounded in user insight and lived reality

  • Practical foresight frameworks that can be applied within their organisations

  • New strategic questions to guide decision-making under uncertainty

  • A peer network of leaders and practitioners thinking seriously about the future

Black and white portrait of a smiling middle-aged man with curly hair and a beard, wearing a button-up shirt and a watch, with arms crossed.
Group of seven people standing in a semi-circle, engaged in a discussion in a modern office space.
A woman giving a presentation in a conference room with a group of people seated and a screen behind her displaying slides.

Concept

& Curation

CROSSDIVE is curated by Manoj Kothari, Founder & Chief Strategist at Turian Labs.

Manoj is a strategist, researcher, designer, and serial entrepreneur with over three decades of experience spanning design, branding, innovation, and business strategy. Prior to co-founding Turian Labs in 2015, he co-founded and led Onio Design, a product and industrial design company, and ITERNIA, a digital branding and communication firm.

An alumnus of IIT Bombay and the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, Manoj's work sits at the intersection of human insight, design thinking, innovation strategy, and strategic foresight. Over the years, he has advised corporations, startups, and public institutions on understanding emerging human needs, identifying future opportunities, and navigating complex change.

Through initiatives such as IndiaNxt, DIVE, and now CROSSDIVE, he has consistently sought to create platforms that bring together diverse disciplines and perspectives to make sense of the future.

A man giving a presentation to a group of people in a conference room with a large screen displaying a slide and a camera on a tripod capturing the session.
A woman giving a presentation to an audience in a meeting room with a large screen behind her, displaying a slide with text and graphics. The attendees are seated, facing the presenter.