IDEO Eye is a monthly column written by IDEO experts for BusinessWeek online. Each month a domain or industry is explored based on IDEO’s experience innovating in that particular area. The articles aim to help business leaders visualize new directions for their companies and brands and design the offerings — products, services, spaces, media, and software — that bring innovation strategy to life. Additionally, the writers behind IDEO Eye hope to help organizations change their cultures and build the capabilities required to sustain innovation.

The first in this series comes from Ryan Jacoby, based in IDEO’s New York office, where he focuses on innovation strategy and designing for growth. In the article, Ryan shows how many big banks struggle to innovate, and he outlines how they might help consumers make better financial choices. Click to read the full story here.

Next, Iain Roberts considers some of the more promising ideas for a “car” of the future. He writes about how the automobile industry is in the midst of a huge transition. Consumers who were once lured into purchase decisions by iconic designs, strong brands, or high performance ratings now want all that and more.
Click to read the full story here.

By Aislinn Dewey

IDEO’s Aislinn Dewey writes an article titled “Re-defining Comfort: Making Energy Conservation Less Painful” for Touchpoint, a magazine produced by the Service Design Network. Touchpoint’s fourth issue tackles the topic “Service Design and Behavioural Change.”

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For the second year in a row, IDEO tops Universum’s list of MBA graduates’ most coveted employers in Fortune.

See the full list here.

In Newsweek’s article “Game Changers,” David Kelley shows how projects like Courtyard by Marriott and Kaiser Permanente bring IDEO’s process to life. He explains, “we’re helping our clients develop creative.” Mark Pensa, CEO of Pensa LLC, says “IDEO is at the forefront of promoting what designers have been pushing companies to do, which is to make design a strategic element of the business ... The same methods that we use to invent products, we can use to come up with business strategy.” Read the full article here.

On May 15, IDEO’s Owen Rogers spoke at the 2010 TEDx Tokyo event. Watch his talk here.

Fast Company’s Alissa Walker profiles IDEO’s participation in the magazine’s biomimicry challenge, What Would You Ask Nature?  In her article “Biomimicry Challenge: IDEO Taps Octopi and Flamingos to Reorganize the USGBC,” Alissa chronicles the team’s journey to solve a systems design problem for United States Green Building Council.

Read the article here.

By Sue Siddall

Sue Siddall, managing director of IDEO’s London office, is on the cover of HSBC’s 100 Thoughts, a newspaper supplement distributed throughout the UK in The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph. 100 Thoughts is a collection of the freshest business ideas from around the world.

In her contribution, Sue challenges businesses to ask, What are we giving consumers beyond the product or service we are selling? What is our higher purpose?

Download the complete set of 100 Thoughts at HSBC.

Sally Madsen takes a look at IDEO’s social innovation work through the lens of the HCD Toolkit and the Ripple Effect project on the cover of the May issue.

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