The Year of Connectedness: Kin + Carta’s Evolution
2018 was a momentous year for Kin + Carta.
In July, we welcomed our new CEO, J Schwan, previously the founder of Kin + Carta’s innovation firm, Solstice and launched our new business model to the market under the newly minted brand (previously St Ives) in October.
And while these new announcements are exciting in their own right, it’s the profound meaning behind the evolution of the business that truly excites us for the year ahead…
The Evolution to Kin + Carta
For the past year, we’ve been focused on the question of how to best organize the diverse and specialized talent of the group while not losing what’s made each company successful in its own right.
The most forward-thinking individuals want to work for specialist agencies that put culture first. Until now, they haven’t had access to the necessary breadth and depth to create increasingly large and sophisticated digital experiences on a global scale.
Introducing the Connective
We believe we’ve found the balance in what we’re calling The Connective.
The Connective is a global team of over 1,500 specialists across four continents, connected by culture and shared ways of working. The Connective allows specialists to thrive in specialist “tribes” whilst connecting them to deliver joined-up transformation for clients.
‘In a world where consumers are currently inundated with experiences that are broken and frustrating, we’re taking a radical approach to how we’re organized in order to help the world’s largest organisations achieve a more unified result.’
- J Schwan, CEO of Kin + Carta
Ultimately, Kin + Carta is global team-of-teams integrating the talents and expertise from seven unique strategic consulting, digital innovation and creative communications businesses: strategic consultancies Pragma, Hive, and Incite; digital innovation firms TAB and Solstice and communications agencies Edit and AmazeRealise.
Once we identify a transformation program, we mobilize a purpose-built team of Connective agents and specialists across the Kin + Carta ecosystem to own and drive both the client’s business outcomes and transformation goals. The individuals working on a project are unique to those outcomes, and project structures and methodologies are well-defined. This guarantees the right mix of autonomy and accountability. You can read more about The Connective here.
Kin + Carta Named a Leader by Forrester
We’ve spent the last six months validating this organizational design with our clients, and we are excited to announce that in November, Forrester Research awarded Kin + Carta highest marks amongst our peers.
After evaluating sixty-seven digital experience agencies and twelve midsize digital experience providers across twenty-one criteria, Forrester named Kin + Carta a Leader, which is the highest of four categories within the Forrester Wave™ listing. Kin + Carta scored the most points possible in experience design services, artificial intelligence services, authenticated experience services, emerging touchpoint services, digital experience technology services, program management services, client co-innovation strategy, active digital experience clients, and employee experience criteria.
We’re honoured that our vision and our delivery of The Connective has received this outside validation.
Focus + Collaboration
Our end goal with Kin + Carta is simple: To enable our teams to focus and collaborate in a seamless manner as The Connective and offer our clients a fluid model that helps them build complete, end-to-end customer journeys, where each element reinforces the others.
Undoubtedly, it’s early days. But what’s clear is that while we might have built a new working model for our business, what we are actually creating is a modern working environment that our people want to be a part of, and more importantly, enables our clients to thrive.
We can’t wait to continue to bring you along our journey in 2019!
