Where real conversations shape the future of design and technology.
Nivan brings together practitioners through conferences, debates, and experiences that connect what we've learned with what comes next.
In their words
What it felt like to be in the room
Nivan Live 2026 at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech. Speakers, sponsors and attendees on one day of Innovating Across Time, Together.
More conferences need less hype and more signal.
What stood out was the quality of the questions people were willing to ask. A noticeable absence of performative AI hype.
I’ve been to many conferences over the years but this one felt completely different. After just one day, I feel more inspired, energized and hopeful than I have felt in a long time.
When I got home and opened my conference bag, there was a handwritten note from Niketa Jhaveri. That detail tells you everything about the thoughtfulness and intention behind this event.
The programming was thoughtfully curated to spark conversations about innovation through a focused, human lens.
Humanity is the strategy! Everyone came as a person, just people who care about humans, trying to figure it out together.
The care behind every detail and every conversation was deeply felt.
Easily one of the most fun formats I’ve been part of: no slides, no script and real time pushbacks.
#NivanLive #Nivan2026
Mini Mic at
NIVAN FLAGSHIP CONFERENCE
We’re back.
And we’re thinking bigger.
CHICAGO · MAY 2027
Date + Venue To Be Announced
The future doesn't
stay the future.
What is happening now was once the future. Soon, it becomes the past.
The Nivan Experience
One day.
Three eras.
Nivan moves across time to give emerging ideas the context they deserve. We learn from what came before, challenge what is happening now, and imagine what should come next.
Reflect.
Revisit the decisions, breakthroughs, and overlooked lessons that shaped the ideas we now call new.
Question.
Put competing perspectives in the same room and examine the tensions shaping technology, design, research, and work today.
Reimagine.
Turn reflection and debate into better questions, new possibilities, and more intentional ways of shaping what comes next.
Different ways to
look again.
Nivan creates experiences that challenge how we see an idea now and give us reasons to return to it later.
Creative Duel
Practitioners defend opposing perspectives on questions with no easy answers, challenging assumptions and opening up new ways of thinking.
Time Capsule
Capture what you believe today. Encounter it again later and ask what changed, endured, or surprised you.
Message to the Future
Write something from this moment and send it forward to a version of yourself who hasn't arrived yet.
Upcoming Events
What's Next.
Join us as Nivan travels across cities and conversations, bringing together thoughtful practitioners to reflect, question, and reimagine the future.
Nivan Chicago 2027
Our flagship annual conference returns with new speakers, new experiences, and a renewed exploration of how the past informs the future of innovation.
From the Stage
Creative Duel | Nivan 2026
Human Judgement vs. AI Assistance
Why I started Nivan
A personal note on curiosity, two decades spent in research and design, and why I eventually built a place where innovation is examined across time rather than only at the front edge of it. Nivan did not start as a business idea. It started as a way of thinking I could not switch off.
Why I Started Nivan: Looking at Innovation Through the Lens of Time by Niketa Jhaveri
2027 Waiting List
Don’t be the last one to know! Join the updates on 2027 now.