Speakers’ Corner gives you a preview of the voices you’ll hear at upcoming PI events, straight from the people shaping fashion and footwear.
In this edition, Natacha Alpert, Founder and Tech Innovation Educator at Miras3D, IED and Washington University, shares her perspective on what's still holding digital product creation back. From why interoperability across PLM, 3D and supply chain keeps her up at night, to why sustainability has stopped being a constraint and started being a design driver.
What’s one challenge in digital product creation that still keeps you up at night?
Interoperability between PLM, 3D software and Supply Chain.The ecosystem is still very fragmented. Designers, developers, and manufacturers are often speaking different digital languages with so many different solutions.
Until tools and platforms truly connect seamlessly, we are not unlocking the full potential of digital workflows with competing softwares and platforms.
What innovation do you think will define the next five years of footwear?
On demand localized production powered by AI, customization with Digital Twins and additive manufacturing. Not just for prototyping but for final product. Combined with body scanning and personalization, this will redefine inventory, fit, and waste.
What’s the most underrated capability or mindset teams need to build today?
Systems thinking. The best teams are not just designing products they are designing ecosystems. From materials to end of life, from digital to physical, everything connected. Without that mindset, innovation stays superficial and cannot scale with meaningful impact.
If you could wave a magic wand and fix one industry bottleneck, what would it be?
The disconnect between design intent, supply chain, and manufacturing reality. Too much translation happens between those stages. If we could unify that pipeline through shared digital twins, we would eliminate enormous inefficiencies.
What’s one misconception people have about digital design or 3D workflows?
That they remove creativity. In reality, they expand it. When iteration becomes faster and less costly, designers can explore more ideas, not fewer. The limitation is not the tool. It is how we choose to use it.
How are sustainability and circularity influencing the way you design or source products?
They are no longer constraints. They are design drivers. Material selection, modularity, and traceability are shaping the product from the beginning. We are designing with the end of life in mind as much as the first wear.
What does great collaboration between design, development, and manufacturing look like to you?
It looks like a shared digital environment where everyone is working from the same source of truth. Decisions are made in real time, not passed along in stages. It is less about handoffs and more about co-creation.
What’s one lesson you wish you’d learned earlier in your career?
That technology is only as powerful as the practical narrative behind it. Innovation needs storytelling to drive adoption.
How would you sum up where the footwear industry is heading next year?
Human Centered Design coupled with the utilization of AI. That blend will set brands apart as they combine the past with the future.
Finish this sentence: In 2026, great footwear design will be...
...human-centered, intelligent, and deeply connected to both the body and the planet.
Natacha will be joining us at Stride Europe, taking place 28-29th April in Venice, where she'll be leading two interactive roundtables — 'Preserving Artisanal Identity While Embracing Digital' and 'Teaching Tech to the Analog Artisan' — and chairing our closing all-female panel, 'What Nobody Tells You About Making Digital Work'.
