OuterBound

IX’s OuterBound delivers a strategic 10+ year innovation runway rooted at the epicenter of change: communities that have been overlooked by mainstream culture. Partnering with these change-making communities provides foundational opportunities to grow the brand at the speed of imagination, and at the depth of lived experience.

  • A design dead end? For most, developing strategies and designing to address future market and social needs is a never-ending cycle of just catching up. So often it ends in versioning out existing ideas, not products or experiences that offer something new.

  • OuterBound connects culture’s changemakers to your organization’s decision-makers, setting the stage for your brand(s) to co-lead the change, earn the right to advocacy, and have a positive impact in shaping the future.

  • Communities on the margins of culture face challenges that spur innovation and adaptation unlike anywhere else. In the process they are shaping the future of culture itself. We make that influence visible so our clients can see what’s coming.

Three ways to get OuterBound

  • Rich inspiration from the world’s greatest changemakers.
    Delivered right to your inbox


    - Monitor life on the margins from our participant-generated portal, carefully curated to inspire and inform, while keeping specific identities safely anonymous.

    - Includes photos, videos, texts, and links to the most current changes they’re experiencing

    - Quarterly custom digest for your brand, with recommendations on opportunities to serve, to learn, and to engage more directly.

    $5k per month

  • Get deeper with Cohort Learning
    Discover a personal connection
    Find the hidden opportunities when you get closer and go deeper.


    - Get a more intimate look at life along the edges by joining other sponsors in one of our more established communities.

    - All learning conducted and concentrated in a 3-month window

    - Learn the adaptations made in the face of hardship, motivations and aspirations, and the relationships that hold it all together

    - Identify key opportunities to create immediate impact, and gather key points to extrapolate into future scenarios planning.

    $60k per cohort

  • Get fully immersed with Premium Learning.
    Choose your community and your timing.
    Meet with them face-to-face to co-create and co-lead the future.


    - Love the cohort model but don’t want to wait for other sponsors? Maybe there’s a specific community you want to explore that isn’t currently offered? No problem!

    - This option opens up the possibility to explore where you like, when you like.

    - Additionally, there are opportunities for your team members to arrange in-person visits in the community, getting a first-hand feel for what impact could look like.

    $120k per your choice of communities