Exec summary · For Oli Shaw + DS SLT

Sprint Zero.
The London AI Hackathon.

An immersive week of Creativity powered with AI. Four squads of four, sixteen builders, five intensive days in London. Every squad ships a working POC, a Product Plan, and clear next steps. The AI Lab's first build cycle — landing a month before the July Governance Session arms the decisions.

When Week of 22 June
Where London · in person
Shape 5 days · Mon–Fri
Bar POC + Plan + What's on
01 / The frame

An immersive week of Creativity powered with AI.

Four squads of four — three Creative Technologists plus one CD each. Sixteen builders in one room for five days, working in parallel on the highest-leverage tracks DS could ship. Every squad walks out with a working POC, a Product Plan, and named next steps.

Sprint Zero is the AI Lab's first Accelerator Sprint — the pilot that locks the bi-monthly cadence in. The Foundation set the bar: real outputs, real direction, real consequences. The Hackathon name carries the energy. The Sprint format carries the rigour.

The week lands a month before the Foundation's July Governance Session. By design. Sprint Zero is the build that arms it. SLT walks into July with four POCs, four Product Plans, a Marketplace direction, and a film already in hand. The Sprint produces the material. Governance makes the calls.

One event, two names — each doing different work. Sprint Zero sets the bar. The London AI Hackathon sets the energy.

Formal · sets the bar
Sprint Zero
Used in this paper, in Governance comms, in the calendar invite, and in anything that touches the Foundation framework. Honours the rigour Oli has already written into the architecture.
In the corridor · sets the energy
The London AI Hackathon
The warm internal handle. Memorable, distinctive, social. Carries the pulse of what this is: the moment DS takes the BCG Creative AI space.

Two names, one event. DS doesn't enter the BCG Creative AI space cautiously — it sets the standard, and Sprint Zero is the moment it does.

02 / The bar

Four squads. Four POCs. Four plans to ship.

Sixteen people, four squads of four, one bar. Every squad walks out of London on Friday with the same four things:

  • 01
    A running POC
    Demonstrable, on the screen, with an owner.
  • 02
    A Product Plan
    What it does, who it's for, criteria, scale/iterate/set aside.
  • 03
    Next steps · time needed
    What it takes to get to v1. Sized in weeks, not hand-waved.
  • 04
    What's on
    The commitment. Who picks this up after Friday. Named, not implied.

The Foundation calls this "the evaluation standard". If a squad can produce a credible POC, it ships. If it can't, the Product Plan documents why — and "set aside" is a successful output, not a failed track. That's how four tracks fit into five days without dilution.

This also resolves the Section 10 KPI gap in the Foundation — at the Sprint level. Outcome-based, not activity-based. Sprint Zero becomes the dry-run for the firm-wide measurement framework.

03 / The tracks

Four tracks. One per squad.

Each track has a named output: a working POC, a Product Plan, named next steps. Tracks are locked at the Day 0 kickoff call one week before London, with pre-reads and squad pairings distributed before anyone books a flight.

Track 01

Marketplace Shell MVP

The home for everything the Lab makes
01
DS Marketplace · first working shell
Build a working shell of the DS Marketplace — the CMS, the content model, the taxonomy, the first wave of inhabitants. Not the full platform (that's a multi-quarter workstream — see §07), but a functional MVP that proves the destination is real. Squad lead: Stephen Spencer & Ryan Davis — Ryan brings UX/UI craft (Cursor, Replit, Figma).
Named squad
Why this track matters: every other Sprint Zero output needs somewhere to live. The Shell MVP gives the Lab a destination from day one. Without it, the work disappears into folders.
Track 02

Products · squad picks one

Existing DS products, made sharper
02
One product, properly · defined at Day 0
The squad picks one product to advance meaningfully in five days. Candidate list: Vidio (next features), Liveslides (standalone path), HTML Newsletter (validator + brand switching), Brief Writer (intake redesign), Promotions Email Generator. One done well beats five half-done. Choice made at the Day 0 call against POC achievability and commercial leverage.
Pick one at Day 0
Why this track matters: products are what case teams actually feel. One real shipped advance is worth more than five exploratory stubs.
Track 03

Skills · Claude Projects · GPTs

The reusable AI infrastructure
03
Skill packs · Claude Project builders · GPT library
Build the reusable AI layer that sits underneath everything else DS ships. Skills (markdown-defined, versioned, governed) for DS-specific tasks. Claude Project templates case teams can clone. A starter GPT library with the most-used patterns. All discoverable, all governed, all destined for the Marketplace shell.
Foundation infrastructure
Why this track matters: every other Lab output sits on top of this layer. Without reusable infrastructure, every project rebuilds the basics.
Track 04

Creative workflows

Figma · Wave · Magnific · Runway
04
End-to-end workflows · tool to tool
Production workflows that chain across the best creative AI tools: Figma (design), Wave (motion), Magnific (image generation/upscaling), Runway (video). Document the recipes. Build the templates. Show what's possible when the tools are used in sequence, not isolation. Output: a workflow library case teams can pull from.
Cross-tool
Why this track matters: case teams keep asking how to use these tools well. This track answers that question with proof, not promises.

Four squads, four tracks, one each. Squad assignments confirmed at the Day 0 kickoff call. Pre-reads distributed. Go-in briefs signed off before anyone books a flight.

04 / The week

Day 0 sets it up. Five days earn it.

Five intensive days in London — Monday through Friday, 22–26 June. Plus a Day 0 kickoff call one week earlier. By the time the room opens in London, tracks are locked, squads are paired, pre-reads are read, and Day 1 opens with Oli's intro and a teaser, not with orientation.

Day 0 · Wed 17 Jun
Virtual kickoff · the week-before
A real event, not an admin call. Three things happen, in this order:
  1. The cohort meets the cohort. Sixteen builders + the SLT, faces on screen for the first time. The room exists before the room exists.
  2. Creative AI Lab teaser premieres. Cohort-only reveal. This is what you're about to build. Something to talk about over the weekend before flying.
  3. Tracks locked, squads paired, owners named. Per-track pre-read packs distributed — scope, constraints, what exists, success criteria, target user. Anti-brief: what we explicitly will not build.
Homework: arrive at Monday already in motion.
Day 1 · Mon 22 Jun
Arrival. Oli opens. Squads lock the brief.
Morning: arrivals, coffee, room set up. Lunch together. Early afternoon: Oli opens — agenda, direction, the standard. Recap of the teaser the cohort already saw. The bar gets named: POC, Product Plan, next steps, what's on. Q&A.

Late afternoon: squads scope. Per-squad structured session against their pre-read. Each squad ends Day 1 with two artefacts locked:

  • A written POC hypothesis — what they believe will work and why, in one paragraph.
  • A 90-second demo script — what Friday's pitch sounds like, written before the build starts.
Before dinner, demo scripts read aloud across squads. Cross-critique, sharpening, course-correction. Day 2 opens with squads building, not whiteboarding.
Day 2 · Tue 23 Jun
Build day one. The work starts.
Squads at full pace. Pair-program, pressure-test, ship the first working build by end of day. No leadership drop-ins. The day belongs to the squads. Capture crew working light-touch in the background.
Evening 2 · Tue
Dinner · the Lab gets made over food
Foundation-anchored framing, casual setting. Lab culture is set in the evenings, not the build room.
Day 3 · Wed 24 Jun
Build day two. Mid-day cross-track demo.
90-minute mid-day session: each squad shows where they are, what's stuck, what they'd kill. Squads swap critique, then back to build. The moment where most tracks either find their POC or honestly call it.
Evening 3 · Wed
Dinner · guests welcome
Wider DS leadership, Regional CDs in London, external trusted voice if available. Signals to the cohort that the work is being watched at the right level.
Day 4 · Thu 25 Jun
Build day three. POC consolidation.
Last full build day. POC consolidation in the morning. Afternoon: start drafting the Product Plan — what it does, who it's for, criteria, scale/iterate/set-aside call. Late afternoon: optional 1:1s with Oli for squad leads.
Evening 4 · Thu
Dinner · squad night
Squads eat together — close-quarters bonding before Friday's evaluation. The night the team gets sharp on what they're presenting.
Day 5 · Fri 26 Jun · AM
POC freeze. Product Plan writing.
POC frozen by mid-morning. Squads write the Product Plan — what it does, who it's for, evaluation criteria, scale/iterate/set-aside recommendation, next steps with time needed and what's on going forward. One page per squad, no more.
Day 5 · Fri 26 Jun · PM
Evaluation. Scale, iterate, set aside.
Each squad presents POC, Product Plan, next steps, what's on. Oli, me, Oscar, the cohort vote on the recommendation. The close: what carries into Sprint 1, what goes into the July Governance Session a month later, who owns what going forward. Final dinner, optional, celebratory.
05 / The room

The full SLT. The CDs. Sixteen builders.

A deliberately stacked room. Sprint Zero builds in front of the firm's senior creative leadership, not in private. The week's outputs are reviewed live, decisions made in the same room, commitments earned in real time.

Tier 1

The leadership panel

3 named SLT
Oli Shaw
Global Senior Director · sponsor and co-strategist
Global
Richa Sinha
Regional Senior Director
Region
Justin Archer
Regional Senior Director
Region
Tier 2

The Creative Directors

Regional CDs · beyond the squads
ANZ EMESA AMR APAC + practice CDs

Four CDs are in the squads (Tier 3). The rest of the regional CD bench joins as the wider voice — pressure-testing outputs the moment they're shown. This is how Sprint Zero outputs ship as firm-wide on Day 5, not as one-region experiments.

Tier 3

The Creative Technologists

16 · 4 squads of 4
Squad 01
● ● ● ●
Marketplace Shell
Squad 02
● ● ● ●
Products
Squad 03
● ● ● ●
Skills · GPTs
Squad 04
● ● ● ●
Workflows

Three Creative Technologists per squad plus one CD. The CD anchors craft, owns the brief, makes the squad-level calls. Selected, not nominated — hand-picked across regions so the Lab is born firm-wide.

Shortlist · in motion

Already nominated by Regional CDs · mapped to Lab / Practice

36 named across regions · Layer 1 pre-ticked for London · Oli confirms the final 16
Todo · for Oli
Tick the names going to London. Layer 1 is pre-selected by default — untick anyone who can't make it, tick anyone from Layer 2 you want to add. A British flag appears next to ticked names. Selections save automatically. Click Copy to Slack at the bottom to send the final list to Esteban & Rashmi.
Layer 1 14 nominated · ~20 globally
Creative AI Lab
The global expert cohort. Visible craft, AI-native ways of working, ships systems others use. Trying to represent the best from different offices, with skills and market realities in mind. Foundation §3.
  • Krishna Abhimanyu BEK → In London
  • Yoojin Choi SEO → In London
  • Yuna Moon ANZ → In London
  • Hijing GC → In London
  • Anshul Patria BEK → In London
  • Edu Hernandez NXC · AMR → In London
  • Bill Moore PIT · AMR → In London
  • JP Lopez NXC · AMR → In London
  • Ave Versteeg NXA · AMR → In London
  • Ryan Davis PIT · AMR → In London Strong UX/UI AI craft — Cursor, Replit, Figma. A unique angle for the room.
  • Stephen Spencer AMR → In London Squad lead on Marketplace Shell MVP track (with Ryan Davis).
  • Jose Eguidazu MKA · EMESA → In London
  • Paula Sanchez MKA · EMESA → In London
  • Cayetano Groz MKA · EMESA → In London
Layer 2 Leads + community · open
Regional AI Creative Practice
The regional communities. Open, voluntary. Jam Sessions, Foundations, the 1min.ai Festival. Lead nominations below; the broader community grows as people opt in. Foundation §4.
Regional Practice Lead · nominated
  • Diwakar BEK · APACME Lead · primary
  • Celestia GC · APACME Lead · primary
  • Lee Gavin GC · APACME Lead · backup
  • Nakul IND · APACME Lead
  • Pradeep Menon APACME Lead · RCD
  • Prtish Tandon APACME Lead
  • Diwakar Singh APACME Lead
  • Gema Arrieta NXC · AMR Lead · primary
  • Mariana Dominguez AMR Lead · backup
  • Nacho Rodriguez AMR Lead · backup
  • Juan Biancardi ATL · AMR Atlanta rep
  • Adam Bartczuk ECC · EMESA Lead · primary
  • Jessica Manzano MKA · EMESA Lead · backup
  • Oscar Armelles EMESA Visibility
  • Rand Samara ME Lead · region
  • Fernando Diez MKA · EMESA → Invited
Voluntary community · already nominated
  • Shivali Chandra APACME → In London
  • Kaivalya Joshi APACME → In London
  • Suranjan Maiti APACME → In London
  • Raymond Fung APACME → In London
  • Shivam Soni APACME → In London
  • Shiju B. APACME → In London
  • Marcela Amador AMR → In London
11 ticked for London. Click Copy to Slack — paste straight to Esteban & Rashmi.
Copied — paste to Esteban & Rashmi

The architecture: Foundation §3 defines Layer 1 — the Creative AI Lab as a global expert cohort, ~20 people, selected for visible craft and AI-native fluency. §4 defines Layer 2 — the Regional AI Creative Practice as open community where the field grows. Chips: Lead marks Regional Practice Lead nominations · Visibility marks senior presence without layer designation · the British flag marks names ticked for London attendance. Final Lab membership confirmed in the weeks following Sprint Zero.

Plus me (running the week), Oscar Armelles (EMESA CD, regional anchor where present), and the capture crew working light-touch. ~25 people in the room across five days. Selected, not invited.

06 / What walks out

What Sprint Zero produces.

Six concrete outputs, all sized to feed the July Governance Session and the Lab's BAU rhythm from August onward.

01
Four POCs
One per squad. Running, demonstrable, with an owner. Quality bar set by the Foundation's evaluation standard.
02
Four Product Plans
What it does, who it's for, criteria, scale/iterate/set-aside recommendation, next steps with time needed and what's on. One page per squad.
03
Creative AI Lab teaser video
Shipped before Day 0 — premieres to the cohort at the Wed 17 Jun kickoff. Sets the tone for the week and signals the Lab exists before the room has built anything. Lives on after as launch asset for the July Governance Session.
04
A 90-second film
The Lab's origin moment, captured live across the five days. Used internally to launch the Lab in July, banked as raw footage for Thought Leadership thereafter.
05
An evaluation document
For the July Governance Session. Records what scaled, what iterated, what was set aside, what we learned about the Sprint format itself.
06
A refined Sprint format
What worked, what didn't, what changes for Sprint 1. Sprint Zero is the format's first user. The format graduates from it.
+
Photo bank · supporting capture
For the Foundation's Thought Leadership Pipeline (Section 11 WIP). Documenting the origin pays compound dividends for the Lab's external voice.
07 / The Marketplace

Everything Sprint Zero produces needs somewhere to live.

Sprint Zero ships four POCs, four Product Plans, a teaser video, a film, a photo bank. Sprint 1 ships another four. Sprint 2, another four. Inside twelve months the Lab has thirty-plus pieces of validated AI work, plus all the GPTs, Claude projects, prompts and MD files that underpin them. That can't live in a folder.

DS Marketplace · Creative AI Hub

A destination, not a folder.

A platform-agnostic, CMS-driven, database-backed web product — internal-first, externally-facing-to-BCG second. Fully responsive. Up-to-date by design. The single home for everything DS makes, finds, learns and ships in the Creative AI space.

What it hosts. Seven content types, one taxonomy, one search.

Thought leadership
Editorial, articles, position pieces, internal essays.
Comms
Internal updates, external messaging, press-ready copy.
Decks & templates
Pitch decks, audit templates, story frameworks — pulled in seconds.
GPTs & Claude projects
All custom GPTs, all Claude projects, versioned and discoverable.
Products
Vidio, Liveslides, Brief Writer, every Sprint output — accessible, with status.
GTM templates
Sales enablement, pricing frames, case team handoff materials.
Skills · MD · prompts
The underlying infrastructure. Reusable, versioned, governed.

The trajectory. Internal first. BCG-wide second. External-facing (BCG audience) when the work earns it.

Phase 1 · Now
DS internal hub
The team's single source of truth. Everything DS produces lives here. Replaces the SharePoint sprawl. MVP scoped alongside Sprint 1.
Phase 2 · Next
BCG-wide Creative AI hub
Every case team in the firm comes here to find what's been built. Tools, products, GPTs, templates. DS as the named resident expert.
Phase 3 · Future
External-facing (BCG-only)
When the work earns it. Consultants surface DS Creative AI capability to their clients, with BCG charging for the creation. Client Repo lives here.
What it isn't

Not a SharePoint folder. Not a Notion page. Not a wiki. Not a Box drive. A real web product with a CMS, a database, a content model, an auth layer, search, taxonomy, and a design system that matches what DS already ships externally. Owned and operated by DS. Built for the firm.

Sprint Zero is not the build week for the Marketplace — that's a separate multi-quarter workstream. But Sprint Zero is the moment to lock the principle: every output we ship from this week lands in the Marketplace. The Marketplace gives Sprint Zero somewhere meaningful to point. Without it, the work disappears into the same folder graveyard everything else lives in.

08 / Honest risks

Four flags worth naming.

Not problems — but the things that will go wrong if we don't address them upfront. Each has a proposed mitigation.

Risk register · Sprint Zero
  • 01 · Squads of four can fragment under pressure.
    Three Creative Technologists plus one CD is the right shape on paper. In practice, a squad of four can split — three building, one drifting; or two pairs working separate angles. Either pattern dilutes the POC.
    Mitigation: CDs are accountable for squad cohesion, not just craft. Day 0 brief includes the team-shape conversation explicitly. The Wednesday mid-day demo catches drift early.
  • 02 · Building under the gaze of senior leadership changes the room.
    SLT in the room means every demo is also a moment of evaluation. The risk: squads play it safe, build the demo rather than the real thing, or stop being honest about what's broken. Building for approval is different from building toward truth.
    Mitigation: Tuesday and Thursday are closed build days — no demos, no presentations, no leadership drop-ins. Those days belong to the squads. SLT visible Monday (Oli's intro) and Friday (evaluation); deliberately absent in between.
  • 03 · The room can't honestly kill its own work.
    If the cohort feels they're being evaluated on building something that scales, no track will produce a "set aside" recommendation — even when that's the right call. The Foundation supports kill decisions; the room has to feel that's true.
    Mitigation: name it explicitly on Day 1. Celebrate a credible "set aside" in the Wednesday cross-track demo. The first track to honestly call its own death sets the culture.
  • 04 · Capture feels intrusive and dampens the room.
    Film and photo crew working a small in-person event can change the energy if they're heavy-handed. Especially in moments where people are struggling — and those are the moments worth capturing.
    Mitigation: light-touch crew — one shooter, one producer. Lav mics over boom. Capture build moments, not staged ones.

What I need from you.

Seven things to lock before invites go out · ~30-min call

01 · Naming  —  Sprint Zero · aka The London AI Hackathon. Sign-off on the two-name approach. This becomes the calendar invite, the doc header, the slack channel.

02 · Dates  —  Monday–Friday, 22–26 June. Day 0 kickoff call Wednesday 17 June. Confirm the calendar holds — and that the July Governance Session timing is fixed.

03 · The room  —  SLT confirmed (you, Richa, Justin), 4 CDs in the squads, 12 Creative Technologists hand-picked across regions = 16 builders. Sign-off on the selection list before invites go out.

04 · Track lock  —  Day 0 call with you and Oscar. Four tracks confirmed (Marketplace shell · Products · Skills + GPTs · Workflows). Squads paired against them, named owners.

05 · Teaser video  —  commission the Creative AI Lab teaser this week. Premieres at the Day 0 kickoff (Wed 17 Jun) to the cohort. ~60–90s. I'll brief production.

06 · Marketplace direction  —  in-principle approval to scope DS Marketplace as a Sprint 1+ workstream. Sprint Zero outputs land here. Owned and operated by DS — built for the firm.

07 · Budget envelope  —  separate doc. I'd like averages from you so the costed plan is credible without being to-the-pound.

This is the moment DS takes the BCG Creative AI space. Let's lock the week in.

Let's lock the week in