Poem works across strategy, insights, and innovation. For more than a decade, we have helped organizations adapt in real time by combining business intelligence with social sciences, cultural studies, and design inquiry.

  • A systems view maps the deep structures and dynamics.

    Business intelligence traces the economic logic of possibility.

    Social sciences uncover how people and institutions act and adapt.

    Cultural studies expose the meanings and narratives that bind worlds together.

    Design inquiry turns insight into models, form, and concrete ways of acting.

Interdisciplinary Sensemaking

  • The day mode explains, measures, and structures. It works through numbers, models, and logic to define the visible reality and make deliberate choices within it.

    The night mode senses atmospheres and emerging meanings. It attends to how people actually behave, how cultures shift, and how the future begins to take form before it can be fully described.

    Both are essential in complex and fast-shifting worlds. Depending on the strategic question, they interweave throughout the work: in how we gather insight, use embodied methods, reimagine futures, reframe narratives, and redefine possibility.

Day/Night Thinking

  • This artful way of thinking about strategy and transformation has guided our work for more than a decade.

    Our experience spans five continents and the shifting frontlines where poiesis takes place and culture and technology reshape each other.

    Founded in New York, now in Helsinki, we work globally to expand what institutions, businesses, and brands can become.

Our Origins and Credo

Operating across the creative, cultural, and technology worlds, we work with leading art institutions, global companies, lifestyle brands, and public organizations. A selection below.

MUSEUMS AND ART INSTITUTIONS

TECH AND LIFESTYLE COMPANIES

PUBLIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS

We partner with leaders and teams on the questions that redefine categories, open futures, and require new ways of thinking. A few examples.

How does an ART MUSEUM evolve its OFFERINGS for a new building?
What is the PURPOSE of a CONSUMER TECH BRAND today?
What defines the next-era BUSINESS MODEL of a MUSIC HALL?
How can a MUSEUM act as a MEDIA PLATFORM?
How does a DESIGN BRAND grow by enabling BETTER WAYS OF LIVING?
How can an ART BIENNIAL create new PARTNERSHIPS and FUNDING LOGICS?
What is a credible PATH TO SUSTAINABILITY for an ART UNIVERSITY?
What role can a TECH COMPANY play in IMPROVING LIFE at scale?
How does a LIFESTYLE BRAND stay relevant in CULTURAL FLUX?
What are the FUTURE DIRECTIONS for PUBLIC INVESTMENT in the creative sectors?

Our team brings together strategists, researchers, curators, artists, and designers who work fluently across analytical and creative modes.

This interdisciplinary mix lets us read systems with clarity and sense their subtler shifts. It is how we combine strategic precision with creative depth, and why we can work comfortably with both complex organizations and experimental cultural practices.

Ville Tikka
Founder, Strategy Director

Ville Tikka is a strategist and advisor to leadership, strategy, and creative teams across sectors ranging from art and culture to technology, lifestyle, and the public sphere. His work focuses on helping organizations dance with complexity, design adaptive strategies, and build meaningful futures.

Before founding Poem, Ville led strategic innovation and foresight projects as a Senior Futures Specialist at Nokia Design’s Insight & Innovation unit. Working from New York, London, and Helsinki, he collaborated with global business, design, and brand teams across five continents.

Ville has written extensively on the future of cultural institutions, strategic and circular design, and business transformation. His practice also extends into curating, exploring AI ethics, and developing world-building frameworks emerging from web3 culture.

He holds an MA in Psychology and Media Studies from the University of Turku and has pursued PhD studies at Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

STRATEGY
INSIGHTS
INNOVATION