Komorebi
Work About Apply
The Creative Intelligence Session Founding cohort · 2026

You didn't build this to run in circles for the rest of your life.

One half-day. One idea you couldn't have found alone. The version of your work that finally feels like the reason you started.

Apply for a Founding Session

You've built something real. The team is good. The mission is clear. And yet somewhere between the quarterly review and the Sunday night before another week begins, there's a feeling you can't quite name.

The meetings go in circles. Someone suggests a campaign. Someone pulls up a competitor's website. Someone adds three action items to a shared doc that nobody opens. You close your laptop knowing that what just happened wasn't thinking. It was motion dressed up as progress.

You've tried the strategy consultants. You got a deck. You've done the offsites — the hotel, the facilitator, the coloured sticky notes, the energy that lasted exactly four days. You've read the books. You've hired smart people. And still the problem sits there, slightly more expensive and slightly more familiar than it was six months ago.

The issue isn't your team. The issue isn't your ambition. The issue is that every tool you've reached for has come from inside the same paradigm you're trying to escape. You cannot think your way out of a problem using the same thinking that created it.

What you need isn't more thinking. It's different thinking entirely.

02 · Who this is for

A different kind of room asks for a different kind of guest.

✦ This is you

A founder in Dubai, running a values-driven business with a real team and real revenue — not a startup dream, an actual company. You've already hired the consultants, done the offsite, read the books. You're not confused about strategy. You're confused about why none of it moved the thing that actually matters. You don't lie awake asking "will this work" — you lie awake asking "is this even the right question?"

This is not for you if

You're looking for validation of a decision already made, a brand refresh, a communications strategy, or a marketing plan — or if you're not yet willing to act on what you find.

03 · The CRACK Method

"The crack is where the gold goes."
Five movements — one half-day in the middle.

C — Before the session

Crack Map

A single-page exercise calculates what this problem is actually costing you — in momentum, talent, revenue, belief. Most clients realise the session pays for itself before it begins.

R — 72 hours before

Read the Room

Every person in the room receives three questions to sit with privately. You arrive already thinking. We go deeper, faster — with zero time lost warming up.

A — Before we meet

Audit the Ecosystem

I map your business as a living system — where energy flows, where it stalls, where one shift could change everything. I walk in already knowing your terrain.

C — The session

Collide — a half-day with your core team.

We work from instinct, nature, ecological systems, and design intelligence. I read rooms — not the words people say, but the thing underneath the words. The idea someone is circling but hasn't named yet. The fear dressed as a practical objection. The person who has the answer but doesn't know they have it. I find those things. Then I hand them back.

K — Four weeks later

Keep the Courage

We reconvene for one focused hour. Not to generate more ideas — to make sure the brave version of what you found actually lands. This is where the idea becomes momentum.

04 · What's stacked in

Beyond the session itself.

The Crack Map diagnosticAED 900 value

So you know this is worth it before you commit a room full of people to it.

The Ecosystem AuditAED 1,200 value

I don't learn your business in the room. I already know it.

The Courage WindowAED 1,500 value

The follow-up that keeps the idea from dying on a Tuesday.

The Team BriefAED 600 value

A one-page written translation of what we found, for the people who weren't in the room.

Two weeks of async accessAED 800 value

For the question that surfaces three days later.

Total stacked value
AED 5,000 — on top of the session itself.
05 · Proof it works

It started with 45 minutes and two espressos.

Ajmal — the founder of Recall, a community activation platform in Dubai — came to me with conviction, energy, and a problem he couldn't name. An itch to build something with real impact, and no clear shape for what that meant.

We sat down for 45 minutes. Two sugar-free espressos. No deck, no brief. One question on the table: what does sustainability in this region actually need?

The answer wasn't a campaign. It was a citizen science programme — quarterly, hands-on, dedicated to biodiversity and regenerative practice. Built on one insight that none of us had walked in with: people here don't need to be told about climate action. They need to touch it.

Recall has now run two citizen science events. A third is coming. Summer camps are in motion.

That started with 45 minutes and two espressos. Imagine what a half-day builds. — The Recall story · told back

06 · About Ishita

I think from nature. From instinct.

I'm Ishita Das — founder of Komorebi, a design studio built at the intersection of ecology, behaviour change, and creative intelligence. I've spent fifteen years making things that carry ecological weight without losing aesthetic intelligence — across brands, campaigns, citizen science programmes, and documentary film.

I think from the kind of systems thinking that sees a recycling problem and finds a children's workshop, sees a product in a reused plastic bottle and finds a brand that belongs on Noon.

I built this session because the most important problems I've encountered don't need more expertise in the room. They need a completely different way of seeing. That's what I bring.

07 · Before you apply

Questions people ask before they apply.

Is this right for a strategic problem, not a brand problem?

The best sessions I've run have been on problems that looked operational, structural, or strategic on the surface — and turned out to be something else entirely when we got into the room. I don't come in with a category. I come in with a completely different operating system. What it cracks open tends to surprise everyone, including me.

What if we do the session and can't implement what we find?

That's what the Courage Window is for. Four weeks after the session, we reconvene to ask the one question that matters: what did you do with what you found? I don't drop an idea and disappear. I stay long enough to make sure the door stays open — and that you walk through it.

How is this different from the strategy consultant we already hired?

Strategy consultants think in strategy. I think in nature, instinct, design intelligence, and ecological systems. The difference isn't methodology — it's the angle of entry. Every tool your consultant used came from inside the same paradigm you're already in. I come from somewhere else entirely. That's not a criticism of what you've tried. It's the reason this works when other things haven't.

We're in the middle of three things right now. Is the timing right?

The teams that get the most from this session are almost always the ones who feel they don't have time for it. Being in the middle of things isn't a reason to wait — it's the reason to come. The Pre-Session Questions mean your team arrives already thinking. We don't waste a minute getting warmed up.

What if the answer challenges everything we're comfortable with?

It might. The best ones usually do — for about thirty seconds, and then it feels like relief. The session isn't designed to confirm what you already think. It's designed to find the thing you couldn't see from where you were standing. If you're ready for that, this is the right room.

08 · Founding clients

The people who said yes first.

Founding client · 01

"What came out of those 45 minutes became the entire shape of Recall. We didn't get advice — we got an answer none of us had thought to look for."

Ajmal
Founder · Recall
Dubai, UAE
Founding client · 02

Reserved · Apply

Available
One of three founding seats
Founding client · 03

Reserved · Apply

Available
One of three founding seats

Two seats remain at the founding price. After that, the price moves — and the founding client list closes.

09 · The Founding Three

Three founding sessions. Then this price is gone.

AED 4,460per session

Three founding sessions. Then this price is gone — not as a tactic. As a fact. After the founding three, the next cohort opens at AED 11,100 per session.

In exchange, I ask for your full honesty in the room and permission to share what we build together as a case study.

If something on this page made you sit up — that feeling is the signal.
10 · Apply

Tell us what you're building — and what it would mean if it actually worked.

Applications are reviewed personally. You'll hear back within 48 hours. Send to hey@komorebidesign.com or use the form below.