About
Chris Flink, a Partner at IDEO, considers innovation a team sport and dives into interdisciplinary challenges with generative optimism and a balanced, strategic perspective. In his 15 years with IDEO, Chris has played a variety of roles, from heading the firm’s Consumer Experience Design practice to cofounding its New York office. He has led diverse programs in collaboration with such clients as Apple, Handspring, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Target.
Today, Chris continues to thrive at the intersection of great design, business, and people. He leads key client relationships, guiding portfolios of innovation projects in retail, education, and consumer products. Chris also oversees global recruiting for IDEO, promoting a strategic focus on top talent and ensuring that the firm continues to attract truly extraordinary people. Additionally, he leads internal efforts aimed at stoking IDEO’s dynamic and empathic creative culture.
Chris teaches at Stanford University with adjunct appointments from both the Graduate School of Business and the School of Engineering—the same institutions that granted him degrees and helped inform his ever-expanding view of what it means to be a designer. He’s taught courses on human-centered innovation since 1999 and more recently cocreated what students call the “BEST” (Brands, Experience, and Social Technology) class. Chris helped establish and is now part of the leadership team for the d.school, a renowned institute for design at Stanford. He’s also delivered guest lectures at Wharton and Columbia business schools and presented at TEDx and the World Economic Forum.
Prior to IDEO, Chris designed and patented products as an independent inventor and sought activities for which excessive creativity or physical height offered some kind of notable advantage. A proud father, Chris devotes most of his free time to conspiring with his daughters: their latest scheme aims to distribute their art via a national network of repurposed cigarette-vending machines.