Every organization we work with is trying to answer some version of the same question: How do we grow, adapt, and stay relevant when the ground keeps shifting under us? There’s no single answer. But there is a pattern. In our 2026 IDEO Innovation Quotient (IDEO IQ), we studied leaders at 100 of the world’s largest companies and found that the difference between the companies pulling ahead and those falling behind was behavior. Specific, learnable, repeatable behaviors.

Our core practices are built around that finding. Each is designed to strengthen a specific behavior from the IDEO IQ’s POWER Dynamic, whether that means aligning a leadership team around a shared vision, building a culture where people feel free to experiment, or designing a customer experience that actually reflects what people need. We don’t hand you a generic playbook. We help you build the specific muscle your organization is missing.

Here's the short version. We help organizations:

Drive new growth by identifying and designing new revenue streams and business models.

Accelerate digital transformation by leading digitally driven operating models and AI adoption.

Transform culture by shifting workforce mindsets and embedding design thinking into how a company operates.

Build capability by developing the internal innovation muscle that outlasts any single engagement.

Elevate customer experience by designing end-to-end experiences around what people actually need.

Elevate employee experience by designing the internal experiences that drive retention and engagement.

Strengthen brand relevance by repositioning brands to resonate with shifting expectations.

Align leadership by helping executive teams build a shared language and vision for change.

Future-proof the business by preparing strategies and products for AI-driven and technological disruption.

Driving new growth

When 2% year-over-year growth isn’t enough, the instinct is usually to work harder inside your existing business model. We take a different approach: we help you find new revenue streams and business models sitting just outside your current line of sight. It’s the same instinct that drives Experimentation and Perspective, two of the five behaviors in our POWER Dynamic. Companies that excel at both, what we call Drivers, realized $10 billion more in profit last year than companies that excel at neither.

When the cycling brand Fizik wanted to make headroom in a new product category, we helped them expand their offering into a full line of helmets, a new business built on the same design language customers already loved and trusted.

Accelerating digital transformation

AI is moving faster than most strategies can keep up with. We help you get a handle on the signals that matter and turn them into a digitally led operating model built around your people, not just your tech stack. This is Perspective and Experimentation at work again: only 41% of leaders in our IDEO IQ study said their company has successfully adopted AI to meet customer needs, compared with 52% of Drivers.

With FEMSA, we built a digital retail ecosystem that now reaches more than 20 million people across its OXXO store network, proof that digital transformation works best when it’s designed around real behavior, not just new software.

Cultural transformation

Culture is the hardest thing to change and the thing that determines whether anything else changes at all. We help organizations shift workforce mindsets and embed design thinking in how decisions are actually made, not just how they’re described in a values deck. This is our strongest practice today, and for good reason: it’s the work closest to what IDEO has always done.

When Ford set out to rethink its future in mobility, the real work wasn’t a single product. It was building a culture of creativity and innovation that could keep producing new ideas long after our engagement ended.

Capability building

Projects end, but the need to keep innovating doesn’t. We build the internal capability that lets your teams keep doing the work themselves, long after we’ve left the room. In our IDEO IQ research, fewer than a third of leaders said their teams have genuine freedom to try new things. That’s the gap this practice is built to close.

With Moderna, we helped define the Mindsets that would let the organization keep turning culture into a catalyst for growth, well beyond any one project.‍

Customer experience

Most companies think they understand their customers. Our research says otherwise: 58% of companies in the IDEO IQ scored well on customer promise, but that alone didn’t predict growth. Good intentions aren’t the same as a good experience. We help you design end-to-end experiences that reflect what people actually need, not just what your org chart assumes they want.

For Sephora, that meant reinventing the in-store experience for digital-first shoppers, closing the gap between how people shop online and how they expect to be met in person.‍

Employee experience

The experience your employees have shapes the experience your customers get. We design the internal moments, tools, and interactions that drive retention and real engagement, not just satisfaction scores.

At Newton-Wellesley Hospital, we redesigned the hospital experience from the inside out, starting with the caregivers themselves, to build a foundation for world-class patient care.‍

Strengthening brand relevance

Consumer expectations shift faster than most brand guidelines can keep up with. We help you reposition your brand so it resonates with where your audience is headed, not where they used to be.

When IHG wanted to reach a new kind of traveler, we helped them build Garner, an entirely new midsize brand elevated by thoughtful design from the ground up.‍

Leadership alignment

Growth stalls when a leadership team is technically aligned but not actually speaking the same language. We help executive teams build a shared vision and vocabulary for change, so strategy doesn’t get lost in translation between the boardroom and the front line.

Through Leading China, our year-long innovative leadership program with Tsinghua University, we collaborated with senior executives from over 30 companies to establish a unified strategic direction, using design as the shared language.‍

Future proofing

The businesses built to last are the ones that built the muscle to adapt to whatever future actually arrived. We help you prepare your strategy and products for AI-driven technological disruption before it forces your hand. Our research shows that companies that pair Perspective with Experimentation consistently outperform.

With Boom Supersonic, we’re helping accelerate the future of air travel itself, reinventing supersonic flight for a generation that assumed it was a thing of the past.

Every practice above maps back to one or more behaviors in the POWER Dynamic: Perspective, Ownership, Wavelength, Experimentation, and Resonance. These are more than abstract values. They’re the five behaviors our research found actually predict business performance, drawn from a study of 266 leaders at 100 of the world’s largest companies. When you know which behavior your organization is missing, you know which practice can help you build it.

What practice areas does IDEO specialize in?

IDEO works across nine practice areas, from driving new growth to strengthening leadership alignment, each grounded in a specific behavior from our IDEO IQ research.‍

How does IDEO decide which practice fits a client’s challenge?

We start by identifying which POWER Dynamic behaviors are strongest and weakest in your organization today, then match that gap to the practice designed to close it.

What is the POWER Dynamic and how does it relate to IDEO’s practices?

The POWER Dynamic is the set of five behaviors—Perspective, Ownership, Wavelength, Experimentation, and Resonance—that our 2026 IDEO IQ study found predict business growth. Every practice we offer strengthens one or more of these behaviors.‍

Does IDEO work across industries or specialize in specific sectors?

We work across healthcare, technology, consumer goods, mobility, and more. Our practices are organized around behaviors and outcomes, not industry verticals, which is why the same approach that helped a hospital redesign patient care also helped a supersonic aviation company rethink air travel.