What if the next exhibition you visit was shaped by an algorithm? What if your museum’s archive could speak forty languages by tomorrow morning? What if the next “revolutionary” tool turns out to be a fad — and the real shift happened somewhere quieter, five years ago?

These are the kinds of questions we want to sit with. Not to answer them neatly, but to open them up.

Today, we are launching What If? — a new podcast series exploring the emerging pathways of digital technology in the cultural sector.

Why this podcast, why now

At our Forum last November, one thing became clear: the cultural sector doesn’t need more hype about digital technology. It needs better conversations about it , ones that hold both the promise and the friction in the same breath.

That’s the premise of What If? Each episode brings together two voices, one from the digital world, one from the cultural world — and asks them to think out loud together. Not a pitch, not a panel. A real conversation about what’s actually changing, what it opens up, and what it demands of us in return.

Every episode follows the same arc:

• Discover — what’s actually happening right now: a tool, a shift, a case worth knowing
• Reframe — what new pathway does this open for museums, archives, heritage institutions?
• Respond — the harder question: what do we do with it, ethically and practically?

Our goal isn’t to leave you with a verdict. It’s to leave you with sharper questions — and a few real ideas you can bring back to your own institution.

Episode 1: What Do We Actually Mean by Innovation?

On YouTube: 

You can listen to it directly on our website: 

Our first episode opens the series with the word everyone in the sector uses and almost no one defines: innovation.

We’re joined by Marc Hernández Güell, founder of La Tempesta, which positions itself as a “translation layer” between technological innovation and cultural commons, and Lluís Bonet, teacher at the University of Barcelona whose research examines digitalization’s economic and organisational logic inside cultural institutions. One brings the practitioner’s view from inside the room with institutions. The other brings a structural, research-based lens on why some organisations embrace change and others quietly stall.

The conversation keeps its aperture wide: innovation as a broad concept, not only a digital one,  but narrows to digital specifics whenever it sharpens the point.

We start from a tension both guests have raised independently: the gap between genuine innovation and superficial imitation — the immersive experience that’s really a copy-paste job, the technology installed as window dressing rather than as a real rethink. From there, the episode moves in layers:

• What innovation actually means, in the sector’s own words, before jargon takes over
• The practitioner’s reality — what “translating” between tech and cultural commons actually looks like at the table with an institution, and where the tension between openness and commercial sustainability shows up
• The structural view — why two institutions in near-identical situations can land on opposite responses to the same opportunity, and whether that’s a mindset problem or a conditions problem
• Digital sovereignty — European infrastructure, open-source standards, alternatives to Big Tech — and whether it’s genuinely reshaping institutional decisions or still mostly a talking point
• The reluctance that persists — innovation touches meaning, formats, and business models all at once; which of the three does the sector resist rethinking the most, even when the need is obvious?
• Where AI draws the line — what a responsible boundary actually looks like for a private company embedded in how heritage is accessed and interpreted

And as with every episode, we close on the question the series is named for: what if? — each guest steps back and imagines what a genuinely healthy relationship between innovation and the cultural sector would look like, if we got it right.

It’s less a conversation about tools, and more about the conditions — mental, institutional, and economic — that decide whether innovation actually takes root.

Who this is for

What If? is made for the people navigating this terrain day to day: curators, digital teams, directors, technologists, and anyone in the cultural sector who’s tired of choosing between blind enthusiasm and blanket skepticism. We think there’s a more interesting conversation in between — and that’s the one we’re here to have.

Stay tuned

Episode 1 on innovation cycles drops soon. Follow us on YouTube so you don’t miss it — and get ready to ask your own “what if.”

What If? is produced by Michael Culture, connecting professionals and institutions across the digital and cultural sectors.