What is TFLabs?
TFLabs is Touchfoundry’s quarterly innovation day – a chance for the whole team to step away from client work, form cross-discipline pods, and spend a day exploring ideas that excite them. Every pod uses Claude as their AI partner – with additional credits added to the pool for the day. TFLabs is as much about learning to collaborate with AI as it is about winning. From there, anything goes – prototypes, frameworks, creative concepts, new tools. The only rule is that the thinking has to be real. At the end of the day, each pod presents what they’ve built. There’s up to R10,000 in cash value prizes on the table, subject to evaluation results against the rubric criteria. The best ideas make it into client rooms or become real products.
How TFLabs Works
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01
Pods form
Teams break into cross-discipline pods ahead of time. Review the rubric, get to know your team, and start thinking about how you want to work together.
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02
Theme drops
On the morning of TFLabs, the theme is revealed. It could be anything – a technology, a challenge, a question. That’s when the ideas start flying.
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03
Build & create
One full day with Claude as your AI tool of choice – your team’s credits will be topped up for the day, so use them strategically. No constraints on format – prototype an app, design a framework, craft a concept, build a tool. Smart collaboration means splitting resources across the team, not burning through them solo.
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04
Pitch & review
Each pod presents to the panel, followed by a live Q&A. Scored against the rubric. The winning team(s) takes the prize – and bragging rights until next time.
Results and feedback are shared with all teams the following week.
The Day
- 08:30 Arrival and coffee
- 09:00 Welcome and theme reveal
- 09:15 Building begins
- 12:30 Team lunch
- 13:30 Building resumes
- 15:30 Pencils down
- 16:00 Presentations and Q&A
- 17:00 Wrap-up
Winners and detailed feedback will be announced the following week.
What You Deliver
A working demonstration
Show what you’ve built. Prototype, tool, concept in action – something the panel can see and interact with.
A pitch with clear value
Present the thinking behind it. Who is this for, why does it matter, and what’s the opportunity? Motivate your output against the rubric criteria.
An implementation roadmap
How does this become real? Outline the steps, resources, and timeline to take it from concept to production.
The Rubric
Published in advance so every team knows the game. This is how we measure the quality of the thinking.
- 9-10
- The insight reframes a familiar problem in a way that makes you think “why hasn’t anyone done this?” – well-evidenced and specific
- 6-8
- Solid observation with clear logic, but the insight itself isn’t especially surprising or novel
- 3-5
- Surface-level reading of the brief – your team responded to the theme but didn’t dig deeper
- 0-2
- No discernible insight; solution presented without a problem
- 9-10
- Approach is genuinely novel – unexpected angle, creative use of emerging trends, or a combination no one has obviously tried
- 6-8
- Incremental but differentiated – meaningfully better than the obvious answer
- 3-5
- Competent but derivative – familiar response in familiar framing
- 0-2
- Table stakes; the obvious answer to the theme
- 9-10
- Clear value for an identifiable buyer or audience; makes a compelling case for why this matters commercially or strategically
- 6-8
- Interesting opportunity but the value case is underexplored – who benefits and how isn’t fully articulated
- 3-5
- Interesting idea with no commercial or strategic anchor
- 0-2
- No consideration of value creation
- 9-10
- Clear thinking on what it would take – resources, partners, technology, timeline – with realistic constraints acknowledged
- 6-8
- Some thought given to execution but key dependencies left unaddressed
- 3-5
- Concept floated without any consideration of what making it real would require
- 0-2
- Pure ideation with no path forward
- 9-10
- Could walk straight into a client pitch or be published as a case study / thought piece – polished, positioned, credible
- 6-8
- Strong bones but needs refinement before it could be shared externally
- 3-5
- Internal value only; not ready for an external audience in any form
- 0-2
- Would not survive scrutiny outside the room
- 9-10
- Tight narrative, punchy delivery, handles Q&A with depth – the idea lands the way it deserves to
- 6-8
- Clear pitch with some gaps in either story or delivery; Q&A handled reasonably
- 3-5
- Pitch is hard to follow or over-reliant on the artefact rather than the thinking
- 0-2
- Unprepared, incoherent, or the idea doesn’t survive basic questions
- 9-10
- Multiple team members actively contributing through a shared Claude project with distinct roles – research, design, development, strategy happening in parallel, with AI usage distributed for maximum impact across the team
- 6-8
- Team collaborating through shared tools with some distributed AI usage, but not fully leveraged – contributions happening sequentially rather than in parallel, or AI usage concentrated among fewer members
- 3-5
- Limited team collaboration – AI usage concentrated with one or two members, minimal use of shared project workspaces, most of the team not meaningfully contributing through Claude
- 0-2
- No meaningful collaboration; AI usage siloed to a single person with no distributed impact across the team
- 9-10
- The theme is central to the entire solution – not just referenced but deeply integrated into the insight, the approach, and the outcome. Remove the theme and the idea falls apart.
- 6-8
- Clear connection to the theme with genuine engagement, but the solution could exist in a slightly different form without it
- 3-5
- Theme acknowledged but treated as a loose wrapper – the idea was likely pre-formed and retrofitted to the brief
- 0-2
- No meaningful connection to the theme; could have been built for any prompt
The Prize
Up to R10,000
in cash value prizes subject to evaluation results against the rubric criteria.
Where there is no singular categorical winner, the prize pool may be divided and shared amongst the top-performing entries.
Great ideas come from giving people space to explore.
TFLabs exists because curiosity and creativity need room to run. Once every edition, the team sets aside the day-to-day, picks up a theme, and builds something from scratch. No briefs, no client constraints – just the freedom to explore an idea and see where it goes. The best thinking often comes from these moments, and every now and then, something genuinely brilliant comes out of it.
Editions
June 2026
September 2026