Chris Flink
Chris is a partner at IDEO and currently heads its largest practice, Consumer Experience Design, for the eastern United States. He believes innovation is a team sport. After more than a dozen years with IDEO, he remains in awe of his insanely talented colleagues and continues to revel in good, daunting interdisciplinary challenges. At IDEO he has led relationships and diverse programs in collaboration with such clients as Target, Motorola, P&G, Palm/Handspring, OXO, PepsiCo, and Apple. With an approach that integrates design, engineering and business perspectives, he has helped companies realize growth opportunities, shape strategy, and guide a broad range of successful consumer products to market.
Chris holds an MS in Management and a BS in Engineering/Product Design, all from Stanford University, where he was awarded the Chilton Memorial Prize for ‘Excellence in Product Design’. Today, he’s a Consulting Associate Professor at Stanford where he has regularly taught courses on innovation and has served on the Strategy Board for the Institute of Design (‘d.school’) since its inception. He’s also delivered guest lectures at Wharton and Columbia Business School, and had the honor of presenting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
After an inspired decade of bouncing between IDEO’s San Francisco and Palo Alto studios, Chris moved eastward to IDEO Boston and, most recently, to found our office in New York City where he now lives with his charming wife and their two remarkably advanced little girls.
Topics Chris speaks on:
- Consumer Experience Design
- Design Thinking
- Human-Centered Design
- Innovation Strategy