Brewdog, IBM and others team up to solve problems in midst of Covid-19

Bringing together design thinking, business leadership and technological acumen to create solutions to insurmountable problems, London-based creative studio Made Thought is focusing on responsibility and ethics in a changing world.

Made Thought launched a new innovation lab in a bid to design solutions to the biggest global challenges faced by businesses in 2020 and beyond. Made Thought Labs aims to help find answers to the social, environmental, and economic threats posed by Covid-19 and the climate change crisis. 

“The coronavirus crisis has seen the future accelerate into view. At Made Thought we believe co-creation is key to transformative design to fast-forward change,” says Ben Parker, co-founder of Made Thought and its labs. “We believe hardship provides the conditions for the kind of miraculous progress that takes us all to new levels of being. The future belongs to those societies, businesses and people bold enough to use adversity as their oxygen.”

The Made Thought Labs have teamed with tech giant IBM and environmental campaign group ‘A Plastic Planet’ to create the world’s fist online encyclopaedia of plastic-free materials, which provides an invaluable resource for product designers wanting alternatives to single-use plastic. The platform will provide a vital link between product and packaging designers and the manufacturers of sustainable materials.

“In the last few months. human beings have proved once again what amazing things can be achieved by individuals collaborating in companies and communities - and how fast we can move,” says Jessica Douglas, UK and Ireland blockchain services leader at IBM.

Made Thought Labs is also working with craft beer company BrewDog on reframing sustainable business practices through an ambitious sustainability charter that includes carbon neutral production process and distilling beer from waste bread products.