After dropping out of MIT in 1970, Bran Ferren became a designer and engineer for theater, touring rock bands, and dozens of movies, including Altered States and Little Shop of Horrors, before joining Disney as a lead Imagineer, then becoming president of R&D for the Walt Disney Company.
In 2000, Ferren and partner Danny Hillis left Disney to found Applied Minds, a playful design and invention firm dedicated to distilling game-changing inventions from an eclectic stew of the brightest creative minds culled from every imaginable discipline.
“For former Disney Imagineer Bran Ferren, being an inventor means creating just about anything that makes the world a better place.” — Fast Company, May 18, 2011
Bran Ferren’s life pivoted on a trip to Rome at age 9. He’s the son of two passionate abstract expressionist artists, who taught him that art wasn’t just decorative but about communicating ideas, and the grandson of a cabinet-making factory owner, who often took him on field trips to buy electronics to take a apart […]
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