KYU is a collective—one with a strategically curated and deliberately limited number of partner organizations. Each organization shares a belief that creative collaboration yields new solutions to the world’s toughest problems. The KYU collective comes together to invent, create, prototype, and design. Its partner companies harness their creativity as a force of positive impact for the constituents they have always served—and the firms join together on key issues to propel the greater economy and society forward. KYU represents a new way to look at creative businesses.

The KYU collective consists of carefully curated companies that represent deep expertise and accomplishment in their fields of expertise, but who feel that together, they can have a higher-order impact. Members of the KYU collective include C2, a global convener; DK-Digital Kitchen, an entertainment and communications firm; IDEO, a global design company that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organizations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow; Red Peak, a place where creativity, design, and strategy meet to transform brands; Sid Lee, a creative services firm with 600 professionals working globally; and SYPartners, who help businesses transform by helping organizations, leaders, teams, and individuals unleash greatness to make a positive impact.

With more than 20 years in communications and marketing services, Michael Birkin is one of the most respected names in marketing and has been hailed for his role in developing the concept of brand valuation as well as global marketing operations. Attached to firms that have a maker mentality, Michael has been an innovative voice in the industry calling for service providers to become “makers and doers” not just advisors. His leadership at KYU has been responsible for the firm’s collaborative spirit that believes collectively organizations built on deep expertise and accomplishment in those fields can together have a higher-order impact.