Cultural Research & Intelligence

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.

The challenge is not finding signals. It is understanding the relationships that make them meaningful. scenarioDNA combines semiotics, ethnography, structured analytic techniques, and foresight to examine how language, codes, behaviors, actors, and narratives interact as culture changes.

  • Distinguish signals from broader shifts by examining the codes, behaviors, and tensions around them.

  • Understand how language, symbols, beliefs, and cultural codes migrate across people, institutions, and contexts.

  • Compare plausible readings rather than forcing ambiguous evidence into a single trend narrative.

  • Examine relationships among actors, narratives, behaviors, technologies, and institutions as they respond to change.

  • Translate cultural analysis into strategy, innovation, communication, design, and foresight.

Generative Intelligence for Cultural Research

StoryEngine Sandbox extends scenarioDNA’s research methods into a modular generative intelligence environment. Its role is structural and relational: helping researchers organize signals, examine competing meanings, test assumptions, and explore how narratives and cultural systems may change. Custom Skills for ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity Computer extend the research process across evidence gathering, analysis, and internal workflows, using each model’s strengths within a more structured sensemaking process.

 

Cultural intelligence begins with interpretation. Founded by Tim Stock and Marie Lena Tupot, scenarioDNA leads the application of cultural analysis and applied semiotics to generative intelligence models.

Tim Stock | Co-founder & Partner

Tim has spent more than 30 years developing methods for understanding and anticipating cultural change. His work combines cultural semiotics, machine learning, social science, and strategic foresight to identify the codes, narratives, and behavioral patterns shaping markets and institutions. He is co-author of Story Systems and Cultural Research and co-inventor of scenarioDNA’s patented culture-mapping methodology. His current research examines how artificial intelligence can extend cultural analysis without separating patterns from their social and historical contexts. He is an Associate Teaching Professor at Parsons School of Design and a Global Community Professor at the Center for Future Studies at Universidad de Monterrey.

Marie Lena Tupot | Co-founder & Partner

Marie studies how language, subcultures, and digital communities register changes in identity, dissent, and belonging. Her work uses information science and computational linguistic analysis to distinguish lived shifts in meaning from the aesthetic recycling of older movements. Her recent research traces punk discourse across cyberpunk, cypherpunk, anarchist, anarcho-capitalist, and cryptopunk communities, identifying new forms of individualist and influencer rebellion. She holds an MS in Information Science from the University at Albany’s College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity.