Slide 01 of 09 · 15s
Digital Futures Symposium 2026
Fifteen seconds. Leave this on screen while people settle.
Say the workshop name and the promise beneath it. Do not explain the method yet.
Dr. Milena Head and Bradley Hartwick co-lead the workshop for the McMaster Digital Transformation Research Centre and the Smith School of Business AI Product Community of Practice.
Slide 02 of 09 · 50s
The stakes
Fifty seconds. The governing thought is that important problems need accountable teams, not another collection of ideas.
Product work is strongest when teams own a meaningful problem and an outcome. Today gives that idea a workshop-sized beginning.
Do not promise a finished solution. The outcome is an accountable commitment, with people willing to carry it.
Sources on this slide
Slide 03 of 09 · 80s
Why Gambit
Eighty seconds. This is the first-person origin story. Project the product thesis; speak the experience behind it.
I built Gambit after years of planning, stakeholder alignment, military operations, consulting, transformation, and product work. Too many sessions produced attractive artifacts without creating accountable movement.
Tools such as infinite canvases are excellent for exploration. The frustration is that abundance can make it easier to avoid the moment of choice. Gambit adds enough structure and constraint to keep the group focused on the outcome.
The AI is a thought partner, not an orchestrator people have to learn how to prompt. It identifies patterns, preserves the thread, and brings Socratic lenses that may be missing from the group. People still make the decision.
Be exact on deployment. The current local mode stores workshop data in local SQLite and sends model requests through the operator’s Anthropic API credentials. It is not provider-agnostic and model calls do not remain on the local machine.
Sources on this slide
Slide 04 of 09 · 45s
Why the name
Forty-five seconds. Courage is not certainty. It is naming a next move while the future is still unclear, then changing course when the evidence says the original bet was wrong.
Do not romanticize risk. The bet is bounded by an owner, a first trigger, and evidence. Those are what make learning usable rather than anecdotal.
A group may commit to more discovery, coalition building, a prototype, a test, or implementation. The form follows what the situation can honestly support.
Sources on this slide
Slide 05 of 09 · 55s
Work with the situation
Fifty-five seconds. The first click introduces the four decision contexts. The second adds their matching response loops.
This is an original, workshop-facing rendering of the Cynefin framework, not a diagnostic test or a prescription. Match the commitment to the context rather than forcing every problem into a build plan.
In complex work, run a small safe-to-learn probe. In chaotic work, act to create stability before analysis. In disorder, first decide which context applies.
Sources on this slide
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The Cynefin Company, n.d. What it says
Cynefin supports matching action to the nature of the situation. Ordered work can be analysed or executed, complex work needs safe-to-learn probes, and unclear work needs further sense-making before a solution is forced.
The Cynefin Company. (n.d.). About the Cynefin Framework.
Slide 06 of 09 · 90s
From question to story
Ninety seconds. Make the boundary clear: today completes the Double Diamond and ends with a commitment. The follow-through begins after the workshop.
The Double Diamond gives the rhythm: widen and narrow in the problem space, then widen and narrow in the solution space. The Design Council popularized it in 2004 and emphasizes iteration rather than a one-way conveyor belt.
IDEO names the wider learning journey: frame the question, gather inspiration, synthesize for action, generate ideas, make ideas tangible, test to learn, and share the story. Today completes the Double Diamond; the final two IDEO steps happen through the follow-through.
Commit is the bridge. At three, six, and nine months we test and learn. At twelve months and DFS 2027, the aim is to share what changed, what failed, what was learned, and who helped carry it.
Cagan’s value, usability, feasibility, and viability risks become later evidence gates. They are not four more exercises to complete today.
Sources on this slide
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Design Council, n.d. What it says
The Double Diamond was created in 2003 by the Design Council’s Design and Innovation team led by Richard Eisermann, and first shared publicly at conferences in 2004. The 2019 Framework for Innovation is a later refresh, not the original. Worth knowing: the Design Council popularised the model rather than invented it, with antecedents in Dewey, Osborn and Parnes, Bánáthy, Simon and Schön.
Design Council. (n.d.). History of the Double Diamond.
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Design Council, n.d. What it says
“Put people first”
The 2019 refresh keeps the diamond and adds four principles: put people first, communicate visually and inclusively, collaborate and co-create, and iterate.
Design Council. (n.d.). Framework for Innovation.
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IDEO, n.d. What it says
IDEO describes seven non-linear phases: frame the question, gather inspiration, synthesize for action, generate ideas, make ideas tangible, test to learn, and share the story. The workshop begins this learning journey and Commit carries it beyond the room.
IDEO. (n.d.). The design thinking process. Retrieved August 2, 2026, from https://designthinking.ideo.com/process
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Cagan, 2017 What it says
Cagan distinguishes value, usability, feasibility, and business viability as the risks product teams must address before scaling an idea. Gambit treats these as evidence gates after the workshop, not as four boxes to complete in the room.
Cagan, M. (2017, December 4). The four big risks. Silicon Valley Product Group.
Slide 07 of 09 · 75s
The Gambit workflow
Seventy-five seconds. Walk the five phases with the clicker and keep the focus on how the group’s notes move through the workflow.
Every participant can enter notes from their own device. Those notes are shared context, not a replacement for the group’s conversation or judgment.
Discover and Develop use the four lenses: Skeptic, Systems Thinker, Futurist, and Responsible Innovator. A lens generates one Socratic question to help the group widen its thinking.
Define and Deliver converge. The group consolidates notes, constructs a statement or next move, then uses the four gates to challenge it before carrying it forward.
Commit creates a path for change. Awareness makes the need visible; Desire comes from choosing to carry the problem; Knowledge is exchanged across the group; Ability grows through tools, practice, partnerships, and networks; Reinforcement sustains the change through check-ins, recognition, and shared stories.
The Smith School of Business AI Product Community of Practice will partner with innovation champions over the next twelve months and celebrate successes, lessons, and evidence at DFS 2027. Cagan and Baxley’s distinction still matters: generative capability can accelerate output, but product judgment, coherent experience, and responsibility remain human work.
Sources on this slide
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Cagan & Baxley, 2025 What it says
Cagan and Baxley argue that AI accelerates production but does not replace product judgment, coherent interaction design, or the work of deciding what should be built. Gambit uses AI to challenge and synthesize while people retain the decision.
Cagan, M., & Baxley, B. (2025, March 24). Product, design and AI. Silicon Valley Product Group.
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Ashkinaze et al., 2025 What it says
Seeing AI output did not flatten the range of ideas people produced. Generating with it did. That distinction is the whole reason one person runs the prompt and reads the result aloud while everyone else keeps talking.
Ashkinaze, J., Mendelsohn, J., Qiwei, L., Budak, C., & Gilbert, E. (2025). How AI ideas affect the creativity, diversity, and evolution of human ideas: Evidence from a large, dynamic experiment. Proceedings of the ACM Collective Intelligence Conference.
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Sharma et al., 2024 What it says
Assistants trained on human preference reliably tell people what they want to hear, including agreeing with a position the user has already stated. So no card in the deck asks the AI to pick a winner, rank options, or say whether an idea is good.
Sharma, M., Tong, M., Korbak, T., Duvenaud, D., Askell, A., Bowman, S. R., ... Perez, E. (2024). Towards understanding sycophancy in language models. International Conference on Learning Representations.
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Chiang et al., 2024 What it says
An AI cast as a devil’s advocate improved group decision quality and made reliance on the AI more appropriate. This is the evidence behind the four-lens gate: the AI asks hard questions and never hands down a verdict.
Chiang, C.-W., Lu, Z., Li, Z., & Yin, M. (2024). Enhancing AI-assisted group decision making through LLM-powered devil's advocate. Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces.
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Prosci, n.d. What it says
Prosci frames individual change as five outcomes: Awareness of the need for change, Desire to participate and support it, Knowledge of how to change, Ability to implement the required skills and behaviours, and Reinforcement to sustain the change. We use the sequence as a plain-language follow-through lens for innovation champions, not as an assessment.
Prosci. (n.d.). The Prosci ADKAR® Model. Retrieved August 3, 2026, from https://www.prosci.com/methodology/adkar
Slide 08 of 09 · 40s
Five things to remember
Forty seconds. Read the five rules once and do not add another framework.
Keep confidential and proprietary information out of the workspace.
Think and speak together before asking AI. Use it to surface patterns and challenge assumptions, never to make the decision.
A valid next move may be to learn, convene, test, or deliver.
End with the action line: Bring the problem. Leave with a path, a partner, and a promise.
Slide 09 of 09 · 15s
Sources
Fifteen seconds. Leave the references on screen as the room moves into the product.
Do not read the list. The sources are here so the claims can be checked after the session.
Final spoken line: Bring the problem. Leave with a path, a partner, and a promise.