Reverie Innovation Summit 2026: What It Means to Evolve

This year, DSC® was honored to once again attend and sponsor Reverie’s annual Innovation Summit. The theme, Evolve, could not have felt more fitting.

Change has always been a part of business, but lately, it can feel as though everything is evolving at once. Technology is advancing at an incredible pace, the way we work and communicate continues to shift, and an already fast-moving news cycle is amplified by social media, where the same story can take on entirely different meanings depending on who is seeing it. For businesses and individuals alike, it can be difficult to know what deserves our attention, what is simply noise, and where we should be heading next.

As a company built on innovation, DSC® is constantly evolving too. Developing materials that meet changing needs requires us to stay curious about what is happening beyond our own industry and understand how the way people live, work, and interact with the world is changing.

That is part of what makes the Reverie Innovation Summit such a valuable experience each year. Reverie brings together speakers and attendees with different perspectives who are positioned to look at what is happening in business, technology, wellness, and the world around us. There is not always one shared opinion or a single answer. Instead, the Summit creates space for open-minded conversations about what is changing, why it matters, and how we can thoughtfully move forward. That came through in many different ways throughout the day. 

Evolving Without Chasing Every Trend

Guy Metter of Passionfruit opened the Summit with a conversation about how businesses stay relevant, cleverly tying his perspective to the evolution of Led Zeppelin. One takeaway was particularly simple but important: when something works, you cannot expect to keep repeating it forever and get the same result. Staying relevant requires continuing to evolve, finding new ways to be creative, and giving people a reason to keep paying attention.

His perspective on AI followed a similarly practical approach. Rather than rushing to implement AI into every facet of a business simply because the technology is available, he encouraged a more intentional “crawl, walk, run” approach. If something is already working well, there may be little reason to rebuild it around AI. Instead, look for the areas that actually need improvement, determine where the technology can add value, and make sure it is working for your particular needs before expanding its role.

Technology With a Human Purpose 

Later in the day, Cyrus Mistry offered another perspective on AI, this time through the lens of the evolution of education and what learning could look like for future generations. Rather than focusing solely on what AI can automate, his presentation explored how technology could give students and educators back more time and allow learning to become more tailored to individual needs. Ultimately, the goal is not simply to create students who are better at using technology, but to use technology in ways that give them more opportunity to learn, grow, and become better humans. 

That idea of starting with people, rather than the technology itself, carried into other conversations throughout the Summit. Eve Weston, experience design consultant, approached it from an entirely different angle, exploring the role that storytelling and emotion play in creating meaningful experiences. Whether you are designing an immersive experience or communicating with a customer, it is not enough to think only about what you want people to know. You also have to consider how you want them to feel.

Using examples from theater, virtual reality, and even a familiar story as simple as “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” Weston demonstrated why certain experiences stay with us. Stories create emotion, and emotion helps create meaning. For businesses, that raises an important question: How does what you are offering make your customers feel, and is that feeling aligned with the experience you intended to create?

When Technology Changes the Human Experience

In many ways, her presentation brought the conversations about technology into perspective. Technology can create new possibilities for how we learn, work, communicate, and experience the world, but the technology itself is rarely the point. Whether improving an educational experience or creating a stronger connection with a customer, the more meaningful question is what we are trying to accomplish for the person on the other side. And while so much around us continues to evolve, some of our most fundamental human needs remain the same. Dr. Dawn Dore-Stites, a clinical psychologist specializing in improving sleep among children and adolescents, brought that idea into focus through her discussion of the modern sleep environment. With so much attention placed on the latest approaches to health and wellness, her presentation was an important reminder of the role that something as fundamental as sleep plays in our overall well-being.

Technology was an important part of that conversation as well, but from a different view. As technology has become more integrated into everyday life, particularly for younger generations, it has also changed the environment in which we sleep. As Dr. Dore-Stites discussed, bedrooms have increasingly become spaces for everything from homework and gaming to entertainment and communication. Devices, notifications, noise, and other disruptions can make it more difficult to separate the activities of the day from the environment intended for rest.

Dr. Dore-Stites explored how being more intentional about the sleep environment and the behaviors surrounding it can help create better conditions for rest. Her presentation offered an interesting counterpoint to some of the earlier conversations about technology. Innovation can create tremendous opportunities, but progress also requires us to understand how those changes are affecting people and recognize when we may need to adjust our habits or environments along with them.

What Evolution Means for DSC®

For DSC®, these conversations reinforced something that is central to how we think about innovation. New technologies and materials are most meaningful when they improve the way people live, enhance comfort, and help people achieve their goals. Ultimately, innovation should serve people, not the other way around.

As conversations around AI and other emerging technologies continue, it can be tempting to view the future in extremes, either resisting change altogether or rushing to embrace every new advancement. Evolution does not have to mean leaving behind what already works or adopting something new simply because we can. It can mean understanding what we are trying to improve, embracing technology where it adds meaningful value, and remaining conscious of how those changes affect the people using it.

By the end of the Summit, there was a collective feeling of inspiration, clarity, and optimism about the future. The world may be changing quickly, but maybe evolving successfully is less about keeping up with everything and more about understanding what is worth changing, what is worth preserving, and being thoughtful about what we choose to carry forward.