American businesses are on notice: To be competitive in today’s market, you must diversify your workforce.

One way to widen the talent pool is to pay closer attention to people who have acquired their skills through alternative routes. Millions of Americans learn on the job, in community colleges, at boot camps, or through life experience. According to Opportunity@Work, more than 70 million Americans are overlooked because of degree requirements. Despite their abilities, these “STARs” (those who are skilled through alternative routes) find themselves stuck in jobs for which they’re overqualified and underpaid.

Opportunity@Work, an innovative social enterprise, reached out to IDEO to help collaborate with companies, talent developers, and STARs seeking career growth. To make this overlooked talent pool more visible, we created a campaign and video to rally companies. We also designed a data dashboard to help regional employer networks identify qualified talent and potential partnerships with skill-building programs. And to provide STARs with direct support, we scaffolded the job-seeking experience, focusing on key moments like the interview process.

It’s time for businesses searching for talent to open their eyes, look to the STARs, and see what they’re missing.

83% of HR professionals said they had difficulty finding suitable candidates in the past 12 months.

62% of Black people, 55% of Hispanic people, and 50% of non-Hispanic white people have become skilled through alternative routes, such as community college, workforce training, boot camps, certification programs, military service, or job experience.

Over the past 40 years, inflation-adjusted wages have increased 8% for college graduates with a bachelor’s degree while decreasing by 15% for people with only a high school degree.

Thousands

of state jobs in Maryland no longer require a four-year college degree

skills-based

The White House is adjusting educational requirements for I.T. professionals in favor of a skills-based approach

For many organizations, frontline workers like grocery store clerks, nurses, hospitality workers, and transit employees are an essential part of doing business.

So much so that they continued to show up at the office throughout the COVID-19 pandemic even as everyone else went remote. As the point of contact with customers and key systems, these workers often know exactly when, where, and why things don’t work, and they come up with powerful hacks and workarounds to make things better. Yet these insights and innovations rarely make it to the corporate office. And that’s a problem: large organizations often hire design and innovation consulting firms while not taking advantage of a latent source of deep, in-house expertise. It’s equally discouraging to workers who would gladly share their ideas if they were only asked. No surprise, then, that frontline workers are quitting their jobs in droves.

What could companies learn by listening?

IDEO partnered with the Ford Foundation to create the Worker Voice Design Lab, where leaders from a port authority, an airline, and a health care provider worked alongside frontline workers. That led to the planting of a seed of innovation in each organization, with interventions designed with and by workers implemented operationally at the core of the business. In one case, a group of workers zeroed in on specific problems with such clarity that they were quickly able to develop a digital prototype for testing. No one was less surprised than the workers themselves, who simply said: Well, nobody ever asked us before. Sometimes the most innovative idea a leader can have is to listen, learn, and act on their employee’s smart ideas.

A large portion of the job churn since March 2020 has been concentrated in frontline services such as accommodation, food services, and retail.

Lack of career growth is the number one reason people leave their jobs according to more than 18,000 frontline workers across 150 companies.

2 pilot initiatives

being led by frontline workers in 2022

The climate era demands new offers and new ways of working.

Would you like to be able to plug your jigsaw into your truck? How about taking a fully reclined snooze after a long day of fishing? Questions like these led to quick prototypes that ended up in Ford’s new, electrified F-150 truck, which has more outlets than the average apartment and can power your entire home. This was no small update. The way Ford reimagined the truck experience from powertrain to power nap is emblematic of how much customer-centricity is now embedded in Ford’s culture.

For well over a decade, we’ve partnered with Ford in the U.S., the EU, and China to help the organization bring to life a shared vision of the future of mobility. Together we scaled new capabilities throughout the company by running proof-of-concept “beacon” projects and, to embed this new customer-centric mindset, built a human-centered-design hub called D-Ford. This organization within the organization has become a magnet for talent and is spread across six global locations: London, Shanghai, Melbourne, São Paulo, Palo Alto, and Detroit. Ford’s commitment to serving the needs of people and the planet is what propelled the rethink of the F-150, the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for over 40 years. It was a high-stakes move, and one that represents a major turning point for the automaker: For the first time, its primary profit source would be electric. The new Lightning is still built Ford tough, but also built for the future.‍

Passenger vehicles produced 41% of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in 2020.

One in every 20 passenger vehicles sold in the United States is a Ford F-150.

Before going electric, the Ford F-150 emitted about 100 tons of CO₂ over a 200,000-mile lifespan.

200,000

pre-orders of the electric F-150 truck, named one of Time's Best Inventions of 2021

Most Innovative Design Company of 2022

according to Fast Company

America’s leading retailers share a common goal—doing less harm to the planet.

The systemic challenges standing in the way require a bold new approach, and no single company can solve them alone. So Closed Loop Partners convened a group consisting of founding partners CVS Health, Target, and Walmart, along with 12 other leading retailers. As the innovation partner, IDEO helped launch a global search for breakthrough sustainable ideas that yielded more than 450 submissions from startups and entrepreneurs to reinvent the single-use plastic retail bag, with nine finalists entering a six-month accelerator.

New alternatives ranged from biodegradable solutions to systems that kept reusable bags in rotation. IDEO teams not only facilitated collaboration between startups and sustainability leads from partner retailers, but also provided a boost of additional expertise from industrial, data, and business designers. In a matter of months, teams were able to launch prototypes in select CVS Health, Target, and Walmart stores in California and New Jersey.

Everyone involved in the consortium knew that replacing single-use plastic retail bags is a problem that won’t be solved quickly or easily. But the Beyond the Bag challenge helped them learn that designing for the policy and infrastructure of tomorrow requires tangible steps, taken together, today.

A hundred billion plastic bags are used in the US every year, and less than 10% of them are recycled.

Every year, plastic retail bags are among the top ten items found on beaches and waterways worldwide.

9

stores tested solutions across Northern California

Millions of dollars

raised by two startups

2

startups acknowledged by Fast Company's World Changing Ideas Awards

‍

‍

I grew up in Singapore, the ultimate small-but-mighty island at the tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. As I grew up, I watched it transform from jungle kampongs and a river so dirty that it glowed neon green, into the ultimate modern metropolis.

Singaporeans now enjoy some of the best quality of life in an integrated society. It is home to the world's best airport and has become a sophisticated financial hub, and even made history in the universe of gastronomy, receiving the first ever Michelin star for street food. The river itself is now so clean that dolphins and fish have returned in droves.

Fast forward 50 or so years. My partner and I have found ourselves living in Iceland for the last three years, the literal polar opposite of Singapore, but equally impressive. You need only pick up any quality-of-life index to find Iceland near the top of the safest, most egalitarian, most tolerant civil societies in the world. The country has taken a leading-edge approach to climate science, with bold plans for its domestic geothermal energy and the electrification of its transport system.

To be sure, it’s a rather isolated island with a population under 400,000 in the middle of the Arctic Sea. Nonetheless, Iceland was led with a calm and steady hand through the COVID-19 pandemic, achieving a 91% vaccination rate in record time. It’s a society that is well read, well informed, and one in which citizens revere nature, considering themselves guardians of the wild environs they've inherited.

A word I often use to describe life here is “sane”. Icelanders are pragmatic, do not hyperbolize or dramatize, and work together to achieve collective goals. Icelandic businesses feel it is important to do their part, too. The national flagship airline, Icelandair, recently announced that they will decarbonize all internal flights by the end of the decade, the first national carrier in the world to do so.

In the years between inhabiting these two islands, I have lived, studied and worked around the world, spending considerable time in Norway, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and the UAE, all of which play at a much more significant scale on the world stage than their geographic mass would suggest. It helps that all of these nations are well led, with crisp, long-term plans and goals. And it is no coincidence to me that in many cases they are led by women.

Other small nations that I watch from a distance, like Estonia, are digital pioneers, transforming an antiquated governmental system into an e-Residency – their human-centred, digital citizenship program. Way back in 2014, Estonians described themselves as a “start-up country”. Rwanda has followed suit with similar initiatives: one-stop digital services designed to incentivize small commercial enterprises and entrepreneurs to launch businesses there. Finally, we must shine a light on Ukraine which, whilst in the midst of war, are making plans to regenerate themselves, building a greener, more modern society out of the ashes and carnage.

So, what do these Small Awesome Nations (SANs for short) have in common, and what do they have to teach us all?

SANs act faster: COVID-19 taught us all, especially governments, that cumbersome bureaucracy and endless consensus-building wasn’t just unnecessary, it was life-threatening. To be able to quickly assemble task forces as information came in and cut through red tape was critical. Smaller countries mobilized at record pace, and in many cases got essential supplies to the frontlines faster. Taiwan, China, for example, immediately activated contact tracing and phone tracking to make sure that those in quarantine were actually fulfilling their end of the deal. The fact that Taiwan's vice president is an epidemiologist didn’t hurt.

SANs talk like people, not governments: To me, this is critical. Early in the crisis, the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, broadcasted a specific COVID-19 address to the children of Norway, saying: “Many children are finding this scary. I can understand that. It’s quite OK to be a bit scared when so many big things are happening at once.” Taking a direct, matter-of-fact tone, she assured them that their parents would likely be fine, but acknowledged that they might miss birthday parties and life at home would be “a bit boring.” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden declared on national TV that the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny were both considered “essential workers” in New Zealand, but that they might also be at home, “tending to their own baby bunnies.”

SANs value the perspectives of the next generation: The human-first, sure-handed leadership of both Solberg and Arden is especially compelling in a time when so many young people express apathy about politicians who “don’t speak to us.” Addressing that lack of engagement, the UAE government hired 23-year-old Shamma bint Suhail Faris Mazrui as its first minister of state for youth affairs in 2016. At the time, she was the youngest serving minister in the world. She is now one of the most outspoken advocates for youth voices and perspectives, ensuring her generation and the next are shaping government programs and policies. When asked at Davos why the ideas of Emirati youth were so important to her government, she said: “Hopelessness results when youth are not seen as resources, and apathy results when they’re not seen as assets.”

Then there is Sophie Howe, Wales’s first future generations commissioner. Described by The Guardian as the world’s first “Minister for the Unborn”, Sophie’s role is to provide independent advice to the government and other public bodies on delivering social, economic, environmental, and cultural wellbeing for current and future generations. She’s a committed champion of the next generation and, in particular, for tapping into youth culture as a resource for creating societal change. I was part of an event she created at COP26 in Glasgow where they brought together youth with poetry, music, conversation and politics. It was a potent mix, more akin to a Taylor Swift concert than a governmental think tank, and I watched the young audience members' eyes glow with pride at the end, feeling both spoken to and heard.

What's become clear (and really exciting) to me is that these Small Awesome Nations are gathering momentum and growing in influence. These nimble countries have, in many ways, responded to the conditions of the larger world with its attendant chaos by reinventing traditional ways of doing things. And in the process of disrupting themselves, they’ve learned valuable lessons that their bigger cousins would do well to follow as they look toward the future.

If there was to be an actual League of SANs, what would you want its mandate to be? Which country would get your vote as a founding member and why? We'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Republished from the World Economic Forum's Agenda

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with small countries. Specifically, small nations with superpowers that larger nations covet.

一般的に「新しいものを生み出す」仕事は、いわゆる企画職、デザイナー職などの職種の人が行い、データアナリストやデータサイエンティストと呼ばれる人たちは、事業が回り始めデータが溜まってきた「今あるものをより良くする」タイミングで価値を発揮することが多いのではないだろうか。新しいものを生み出そうとしている段階ではまだデータもなく、そこでのデータ活用はイメージしにくいだろう。

しかし、実は、このフェーズにおいても、データを分析し活用することに知見を持つ人と協業することで、よりよいモノを生むことにつながる場合がある。IDEOでデータサイエンティストとして働く私の経験も踏まえ、新しいものを生み出す仕事におけるデータ活用の可能性について紹介したい。

データを通して人のニーズを理解する

IDEOのプロジェクトでは、デザインリサーチという手法を用い、人にとって高い価値や有用性を持つアイデアを探るのが一般的である。インタビューやシャドーイング（ユーザーの生活環境に身を置き、存在を意識させないように観察すること）など、定性的なアプローチを通して、「狭く深く」人やその人が生活している環境と向き合い、インサイトを見つけ出す。元来、このプロセスにおいてデータを活用することは、今までIDEOでもあまり取り組んでこなかったことであった。しかし、実はデザインリサーチのプロセスにおいてもデータは有効な使い方があることがわかってきており、近年データサイエンスも手法として取り入れる例が増えている。

データの使い所の１つ目は、定性的なアプローチに、データによる定量的な観点を取り入れることだ。例えば、過去にIDEOで乳がん患者と医療従事者両者向けのサービスのコンセプトを作るプロジェクトに取り組んだ際、定性リサーチを通して患者さんと医療従事者双方にとってどういったコンセプトにニーズがありそうか、いくつかの方向性が見えてきていた。しかし、どのコンセプトも、医療従事者に現在の業務の流れを少し変更してもらう必要があるものであった。日々忙しい医療従事者に業務の流れの変更を強いるのはハードルが高い。そこで、コンセプトごとのハードルはどのくらい高いのか、そしてそのハードルを超える工夫としてどんなものが考えられるか、ということが次の焦点になった。ここで、チームは定量的なリサーチを組み込むことにした。アンケート調査を行い、医師、看護師、薬剤師の三者が、我々が考えていたそれぞれのコンセプトを導入するとした際にどれだけ負担を感じるかを調査したのだ。

その結果、「コンセプトAを進めるときには看護師の協力を得ることが鍵になる。看護師の協力を得るためにはどのような仕立てが必要か？」、「コンセプトBは、導入をスタートすること自体の負荷は低いが、継続的に運用していくとなると負荷が高い。継続の負荷を減らすためにはどのようにしたらよいか？」といった形で、定性調査での学びに加えて、また別の角度から理解を深めることができたと同時に、新たな仮説や問いを立て、そこからまた次の定性調査でリサーチすべきことを練ることができた。一般的には、定性リサーチで得られた知見や仮説を定量的に裏付ける一方通行の進め方が多いと思うが、重要なのは、振り子のように定性と定量を行ったり来たりしながらアイデアや仮説をどんどん発展させていくことだ。

２つ目は、データは定性リサーチに赴く際の一つの武器にできるということ。IDEOで、農家に向けた経営支援サービスを開発していた際、畑で得られたデータを、農家の経営をサポートする形に変換し、可視化するサービスの企画・デザインを行っていた。農家にデータを入力してもらう部分のUXについては概ね固まってきていた一方、どのようにそのデータを農家さんにとって有用な形で見せることができるかが定まっていなかった。そこで用いたのが、紙とペンを使ったデータビジュアライゼーションである。取得したデータを可視化する方法のアイデアを考えられるだけ考え、それらのグラフをすべて紙に描き、農家さんのところに持っていった。一枚一枚グラフを見せながら話を聞くと、どれが有益でどれがそうでもないかを教えてもらえたとともに、なぜそうなのかを深堀りして聞くことができた。サービスがまだ存在していなければデータも存在しない。分析するデータがなければデータ活用などできない、と思うかもしれないが、このように想像をもとに可視化されたデータを見せるだけでも、人はいろいろな反応を見せてくれる。

サービスの体験にデータの蓄積と活用を埋め込む

前節でも紹介したデザインリサーチの過程を通じて人のニーズや人が抱える問題の理解が深まったあと、そのソリューションを考えるフェーズに入る。このときに、大きなテーマとして比較的頻繁に登場するのが、「感覚的に物事を判断することが常態化していて、それにより様々な機会を逸している」ということだ。細かいニュアンスはその時々や業界によって違えど、特にtoBのビジネスアイデアを考えているときに、この問題はよく発生する。

例えば、以前IDEOで飲食チェーン向けの経営支援SaaSのデザインを手掛けるプロジェクトがあった。リサーチを通して浮かび上がってきたのは、本部と店舗のコミュニケーションと連携の問題。現場では短期的な売上達成を目指すためにその場の勘と経験の判断でオペレーションが回っている一方、本部ではその実態を正確に把握できずに売上と日報を確認する程度のことしかできず、組織として過去を振り返りながら次の施策に活かしていくということができていなかった。連絡方法も、FAX、メール、電話、LINEなどいろいろな手段がバラバラに使われている状況だった。

ここでIDEOチームはさまざまなアイデアのスケッチやプロトタイプを作り飲食業界で働く人々に見てもらいながらアイデアを練っていったが、最終的なコンセプトは、飲食店で発生するさまざまなデータの蓄積と分析を自動的に行い、インサイトを抽出し、それをもとに店舗で行う施策の発案、実行、振り返りを本部と店舗間で行いやすくするプラットフォームだった。コミュニケーションの問題をそのまま解消しようとするコミュニケーションツールではなく、データを軸にしたコンセプトになっていったのは、データにいくつかのポテンシャルが秘められていることがわかったからだ。それは、人間が感覚的にやっていて気づかない部分を可視化して気付かせてあげる力、関係者間で同じものを見させて認識の差を埋める力、過去を自信をもって振り返ることで次なる施策に向け背中を押してくれる力、などだ。これに限らず、データはうまく使えば、あらゆる形で人の行動を変える力を持っている。いかに自然な形で人にデータの記録や蓄積をしてもらうか、そしていかに自然な形でそれを使ってアクションをとってもらうかをうまくデザインするのは難しいが、成功すればそのサービスを非常にユニークで魅力的なものにしてくれる。

データを通じて未来のシナリオを想像する

リサーチを通して人々のニーズがわかり、それらをコンセプトの形に昇華し、さらにプロトタイプを通して具体的なサービスの形やUXが固まっていくと、次第に議論の焦点はビジネスの持続性の観点に移っていくことが多い。新しいサービスやプロダクトの開発とその市場投入には大きなコストがかかるため、決裁者に投資判断を仰ぐ際には、マーケット規模はどれくらいか、ターゲットは誰か、収益性はどれくらい見込めるのかなど、いろいろなことを問われる。こうした場合、担当者はネット上の記事やシンクタンクなどの調査レポートを参照しながら、仮定に仮定を重ねてそれらしい数字を作って説得を試みることが多いのではないだろうか。ここでもデータをうまく使うことで、事業の持続性に関して考えを深めることが可能だ。

IDEOが以前、別の農業系のプロジェクトを手掛けていたときだ。サービスのデザインが大枠固まってきた段階で議論の焦点になったのは、「ユーザ数、売上の推移はどうなるのか」「いつ頃から利益が出てくるのか」「データはどれくらい溜まっていくのか。それを使ってビジネスを新たに考えるに足る量はいつごろ溜まるのか」「カスタマーサポートにはどれくらいのコストがかかるのか」などといったビジネス方面のものだった。誰もやったことがないので正確にはわかるはずもなく、なんとかそれらしい仮定を置きながらもっともらしい数字を出そうとしたが、どうしても根拠が弱く、空中戦の議論に陥ってしまっていた。

そこで、私はいくつかのイメージしやすいパラメータをもとに、ユーザ数の推移をシミュレートし、可視化するものを作った。ここでいうパラメータとは例えば、「営業による月間新規顧客獲得数」「口コミがどれくらい発生するか（一月あたり何人のユーザにつき一人の新規ユーザが獲得できるか）」「サービス利用開始1ヶ月の間で何%の確率で解約するか」といったようなものである（実際にはもっと多数のパラメータが用意してある）。こういったパラメータの値に応じて、擬似的にユーザを生成して、ユーザごとにいつからいつまでどれくらいサービスを利用していたかを確率的に決定し、それを集計することで数年後の未来でそのサービスがどの程度の規模で使われているかをイメージしやすくした。

これにより決裁者に向けて、より説得力をもって事業計画を伝えられるという効果はあったが、最終的に算出された値が正しいかどうかは実は重要ではない。それよりも興味深かったのは、この取り組みにより事業計画に対するチームの考えと議論が一段深まったことだった。ユーザ数や売上を直接考えるよりも、それらをイメージしやすいパラメータに分解し、それらの積み上げで数字を作ると、よりリアルに感じられる数字になる。この「リアルに感じられる」というのが大事で、これが人の想像力を刺激し、未来をより具体的にイメージするきっかけになる。そこから、例えば「口コミを生むにはUXのどの部分が大事なのか」「カスタマーサポートに電話がかかりすぎないようにする工夫はどのようなものが考えられるか」など、より具体的な問いが次々と生まれ、ビジネスの観点での検討がぐっと前に進んだ。フェイクなデータを作ってそれでビジネスの議論をする、というのは普通の「データサイエンティスト」だったらやらないことだが、目的を「問いと仮説の精度を上げて思考を前に進めること」とおけば、こういうのもアリなのである。

過去を分析するデータ活用から、未来を作るデータ活用へ

IDEOでは、まず人にとっての価値・有用性を軸にアイデアの方向性を探求し、方向が定まったらその後コンセプトをより具体化していきながら、同時に技術的な実現可能性とビジネスとしての持続可能性も満たすような設計を模索していく。

「新しいものを生み出す」フェーズにおけるデータ活用というのは、データ分析を生業にしている人からすれば邪道的で“変”かもしれないが、大事なのは、なるべく短期間・低コストで問いと仮説の精度を高めていきながら、効果的に有用性、実現可能性、持続可能性についての解像度を高めていき、よりよい結果に繋げることだ。クリエイティビティをもって臨めば、データ活用にはいろいろなアプローチが有り得るのである。

今回紹介した事例がすべてではないし、状況によって全く異なるアプローチの仕方があるだろうが、可能性はまだまだ広い。実データを分析することももちろん大事だが、データがまだ存在しない「新しいものを生み出す」フェーズにおいても、工夫次第でデータからいろいろな示唆が得られる。データがまだ存在しないからと、そこで思考停止になってこのチャンスを逃してしまってはもったいない。少しの想像力と柔軟な姿勢を持ってデータを活用することで、新しい未来の可能性が切り拓かれる。

世の中の変化のスピードが速くなり、いつどこから自社の事業を脅かす存在が出現するか読めない昨今の状況において、企業はますます「イノベーション」を求めている。その中で、新商品の開発や新規事業の創出を仕事にしている方も多いだろう。こうした仕事はつまり、「新しいものを生み出す」仕事だ。近年トレンドになっているDXと呼ばれる取り組みも、その一つといえるだろう。こうした仕事は、どれも不確実性が高く、前例がないことも多い。

一方で、仕事の中には「今あるものをより良くする」仕事もある。つまり既存のビジネスやサービスに改善を重ねあげて大きく育てていく仕事だ。こうしたフェーズにおいては、データ活用の重要性が高まっている。既存のビジネスを運用していく中で生まれるデータを蓄積し、そのデータを分析、活用することで、意思決定の質を高めたり、新たなソリューションを作ったりすることは、すでに多くの企業が導入しているし、今後も拡がっていくと思われる。こうした取り組みの延長にあるAIも、日々普及度が高まっている。

One of those conversations was with the country of Wales, and in particular Sophie Howe, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, and her team. Described by the Guardian as the “world’s first Minister of the Unborn,” Sophie’s role is to provide independent advice to the government and other public bodies in Wales on delivering social, economic, environmental, and cultural wellbeing for current and future generations. She’s a committed  advocate for the voices of young people and, in particular, for tapping into youth culture as a tool for creating societal change.

Sophie invited me to take part in an event she was hosting at  (COP26), the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow late last year, and so off to Scotland I went. My mother, who passed away a few years ago, was from Glasgow, so returning there was bittersweet. I had not been back for over 50 years. I hardly recognized it.

To enter the conference itself, you were granted a pass to one of two “zones”—the Blue Zone or the Green Zone—loosely bundled as policy and culture. My role was to represent government and creativity in equal parts, so I was granted access to both. The contrast was startling.

The Blue Zone teemed with heads of government and policymakers. Everyone in skinny suits and pointy shoes. Cohorts walking with tremendous urgency, discussing their “key talking points.” I attended a few sessions—lots of clip art of globes, lots of numbers, lots of rhetoric, lots of the same old same old. Death by mathematics. I left the sessions thinking they were necessary, but overwhelmingly incremental, data-driven, and to be frank, massively unimaginative.

The Green Zone was the unplugged, acoustic version of the conference. Even outside, the energy was different. As I walked in, a lady dressed as Evita, sang“Don't feed the greed, Argentina. The truth is you give them nature. All through your wildlife, your green resilience. Just keep your glaciers. And save the planet!” This zone  was full of color and life, installations of melting ice, and a whiteboard entitled, “What is The Feminist Future We Are Fighting For?” filled with wishes, poetry, and art. It had a kind of plaid-and-braids Taylor Swift “Evermore” vibe. I heard the participants of this zone referred to as “youth with claws.”

Back to Wales. I’d  been invited by the Welsh team to moderate a conversation alongside their Poet-in-Residence for the Future Generations Commissioner of Wales, Taylor Edmonds. She was young and filled with heart and energy. They paid homage to a deep-rooted Welsh tradition called “Chairing of the Bard'' that dates back to an 1176 Welsh storytelling festival wherein the Chief Bard tells stories and reads poems about the future. Edmonds’ chair, made for the occasion, was carved with the future hopes of school children. We called the event “Climate, in the Visceral Sense.” Before she spoke, we screened a short film, “Ynys Blastig Blot-Euwedd,” made by Welsh school children, about a girl who befriends and then loses Mother Nature. Then Taylor composed and recited a poem on the spot, called “Riverbank Guardian.” It ended thusly:

Our town was built around the Oak Tree,
her underground map of roots,
her peeling bark, her curling branches.
Each day I walk to the riverbank,
standing guard, my still sanctuary
of ground where in Spring,
acorns will sprout green.

Ask yourself – will your great grandchildren
dip their feet to the low river of summers
and walk the streets you walk today?

As I walked around the Green Zone I was struck by the fact that so many businesses had a presence—IKEA, Sainsbury’s, many others. They’d built artful exhibits out of cardboard and other natural materials; there were posters inviting participation, seeds to be taken away and planted, pledges to sign, stories to carry with you. It felt hopeful, modern, joyful even.

I kept thinking to myself, why have we set up this polarity between the Blue and Green Zones? One math, the other poetry. To understand the complex systems challenge of climate change, and start a global movement to address it, don’t we need both?

A New Zone. Let’s call this aspirational plane The Turquoise Zone—a place where the logic of blue meets the imagination of green. Looking toward COP27 in Egypt and COP28 in the U.A.E., I’m hoping for a more holistic, integrated approach: imbuing the science, rigor, and public and private sector leverage with what makes us feel alive—music, art, movement, poetry.

This new thinking will help us design events that address the climate crisis and the movement it is giving rise to. The language of this plane is dynamic, sometimes lashingly so. It contains a million colors. The Turquoise Zone turns the flatness of linear and binary thinking into something immersive and incandescent—azure, glinting, shimmering, alive in its depths—like the ocean itself.

As human-centered designers, our mathematicians and poets know that durable climate solutions must appeal to both the head and the heart. Would you join us in bringing the brightest blue and green thinking together to create a vibrant turquoise future? We’d love to hear from you.

https://cantwait.ideo.com/climate

After years of Covid darkness, I was fortunate enough to be able to spend the end of last year traveling around and talking to people about design and its role in the future of social welfare, business, and issues related to climate.

How can we shape our businesses to live up to the challenges of the climate era?

That’s a big question, but right-sized for this moment. Like the digital and industrial eras before it, the Climate Era will shift industry and enterprise. It will also change our day-to-day lives—the way we work, live, and relate to one another—in a profound way.

This era calls for us to think regeneratively. If we are to heal the human and environmental costs we’ve incurred over the past 250 years, we need to take the sum of what we’ve learned—from every era—to redesign energy, transport, finance, agriculture, retail, travel, fashion, construction, and yes, even sustainability itself.

We believe this is the biggest design challenge we face as a species. It’s work that simply can’t wait.

With that urgency in mind, we invited executives and sustainability leaders from across sectors to a series of events in our European outposts to talk about how businesses are thinking about sustainability.

Aside from the necessary efforts to decarbonize business operations, we drew our attention to how organizations must evolve if they are to boldly innovate their way into this new era. Here are five takeaways that emerged:

1. Bring sustainability to the design stage

What we heard from leaders is that the mindset around corporate sustainability efforts has shifted from "Why should we do this" to "How do we do this?".

That’s good news, as 80 percent of sustainability-related challenges go back to the design stage. Today, the majority of energy and investment is still spent cleaning up the mess downstream. That prevents businesses from seeing sustainability as a driver of regenerative growth.

What we know from our work with Ford and many other companies is that sustainable design choices are not at odds with growth. Producing an electric version of the best selling vehicle in America—the F-150—meant, first and foremost, designing a better truck. The point wasn’t to convince their customers to go electric. It was to design vehicles that drivers love that also happened to be better for the planet.

The F-150 Lightning was so popular, Ford had to shut down its preorders. By building Climate Era decision-making into its earliest design decisions, Ford was able to deliver upon their sustainability goals and deliver shareholder value.

Such success stories prove that we can do well in business by doing  good for people and the planet. But only if climate-friendly decisions are made at the design stage. It’s time to think about making your chief sustainability officer your chief innovation officer. Or vice versa. All innovation going forward has to be fit for the Climate Era.

This raised the questions:

1. “How might businesses invite sustainability teams to participate in their most strategic decisions? And what would have to change about those teams for them to be invited to sit at those tables?”
2. “What skills are necessary in a Climate Era executive team and how might we build those capabilities?”

2. Start small and scale fast

Among the executives who felt their businesses were already making a positive impact, one theme emerged: start small.

Redesigning smaller brands or introducing smaller product lines is a low-risk way to challenge key assumptions without disrupting the core business—yet. Once you have a few small wins, it’s easier to persuade executives that Climate Era innovation pays off.

Catharina Frankander and Hanna Lumikero from the H&M design studio described how they started by testing out new sustainable packaging. Taking a customer-centric, iterative approach, they introduced paper packaging concepts to customers even before they understood whether or not the packaging was feasible at scale. The project’s overwhelming success helped clear a path to adopt the approach across the organization.

This raised the questions:

1. “How might we select the right starting point to show the business value of sustainability?”
2. “How might we translate smaller wins to platform- or system-wide innovation?”

3. Focus on human solutions

Humans caused this problem. We’re also the ones who need to fix it.

There was consensus amongst this group that climate change is not just an environmental crisis, but a crisis of human behavior. If we continue to promise short-term exponential growth to shareholders and unlimited consumption to customers, we’ll never be able to reign in extractive practices.

But aside from assigning a strict regimen of behavioral therapy, how can businesses break the perverse cycle of short-term gratification?

The circular economy offers a paradigm shift that, combined with regulation, can help us start uncoupling extraction from growth. That’s not just a technical challenge. To help organizations become more circular, we must look through a broader human lens—one that considers the collective and longer-term desires of customers, employees, and shareholders without ignoring short-term rewards.

Companies like On, a Swiss-based athletic apparel brand, are taking that approach with sub brands (starting small as advised!). They’ve introduced a running shoe made from beans. To make sure the sneakers don’t enter the waste stream, On offers a monthly magazine-like subscription model. Runners use the shoe until they’re worn out, send them back for recycling, and receive a replacement pair. Such circular models reward consumers with the short-term pleasure of enjoying something trendy and new, while upholding the longer-term shared value of a product that won’t end up in  landfill.

Balancing long- and short-term thinking is a key behavior shift in the b-to-b world as well. A publishing executive shared the story of a client who would only sign a large contract to produce its books if the publisher could report on its environmental footprint at every stage of production, down to how paper scraps were recycled at the printer station. Requiring that level of accountability helped the publisher to examine its own behavior and invest in long-term change—even if it meant incurring a short-term cost.

This raised the questions:

1. “How do we embrace collective, long-term thinking to become fitter for the Climate Era?”
2. “How do we build sustainability into more of our workstreams, knowing they’re the most creative and exciting projects for our teams to work on?”

4. Collaborate or die alone

Connecting the right people to drive green solutions is already difficult. When we broached the idea of collaborating with competitors and regulatory bodies, there was a loud cry of almost impossible.

Companies that are built to compete for market share are not set up for collaboration, so when it happens it is often underfunded and clumsy. And yet, we know that systemic Climate Era problems can not be solved by any one business alone.

One recent partnership designed to break the paradigm is Beyond the Bag, an effort to address the problem of the millions of plastic shopping bags that end up in our streets and waterways.

Closed Loop Partners, a circular-economy-focused investment firm and innovation center, convened a Consortium with IDEO and a group of America’s largest chains including CVS Health, Target, and Walmart. The Consortium worked with a select group of startups who are taking an innovative approach to replacing plastic bags. Those teams were able to pilot in mass retail environments where our designers worked with them to iterate their ideas to get to market faster.

CVS Health, Target, and Walmart typically compete with one another. But to tackle a challenge as large-scale as plastic bag waste, they knew they’d have to join forces.

This raised the questions:

1. “How do we incentivize and fund more cross-industry innovation? Could the public sector play a bigger role here?”
2. “We have developed operational excellence in vertical, extractive processes. How do we develop operational excellence in cross-business collaboration?”

5. Attract talent who give a damn  

Many senior leaders described a major crisis in retention, and without smart, passionate talent, no transformative work can be done. Everyone agreed: We must engage and retain the best and brightest.

A recent survey done by the Pew Research Center points out that students and young professionals are more sensitive to the climate crisis than previous generations.

One executive described how working on sustainability projects across functions has led to unseen levels of motivation amongst employees. Companies that can clearly show they have a purpose and a plan for climate action will find it easier to recruit and retain those who can help us address the challenges at hand.

This raised the questions:

1. “Can sustainability teams partner with HR to attract top talent?”
2. “How do we make climate challenges a platform to activate talent across the organization?”

This work can’t wait

These conversations, which felt less varnished than the typical business roundtable, were revealing. While leaders are committed to becoming more sustainable, they often feel stymied and unable to make substantial progress. My conclusion is that we need more of these forums to share progress and speak candidly about what’s holding us back.

How is your organization designing itself for the Climate Era? I’d love to hear from you.

We are living in the shrinking window of time when our awareness of climate change can still be matched by our ability to act.

I help organizations cut through complexity by shaping how they show up, through brand strategy, identity, and storytelling.

Working at the intersection of brand and business, I bring an editorial eye and a bias toward making—turning ideas into tangible experiences that people can understand, trust, and believe in.

My work spans government, healthcare, financial services, media, and consumer goods, from launching Gen Z-focused ventures to building innovation labs and reimagining legacy brands. I relish moments of ambiguity and enjoy translating across teams, perspectives, and priorities to move ideas forward.

I started my career in editorial and digital design, shaping cross-platform experiences and identity systems in publishing and agency environments. That foundation still shapes how I work today: I’m detail-oriented, collaborative, and overreliant on the Oxford comma. I hold a BFA in Visual Communication from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For 25 years, I've asked the same question: Who does this design exclude—and what are we going to do about it?

My work spans human-centered strategy, inclusive design, and qualitative research, with clients ranging from Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to the National Science Foundation, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Before IDEO, I taught elementary school in East Palo Alto and spent a decade doing design work with social service organizations—where I learned firsthand what it costs people when systems are built without them in mind.

I am currently writing User Error, a nonfiction book about digital access and the design decisions behind it. I live in Oakland, California.

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My expertise spans brand, communication, and product design across tech, education, the arts, and social impact.

I believe great work demands both high-level vision and obsessive attention to detail, and only happens through collaboration.

I bring an inclusive, hands-on approach and a deep understanding of business, which enables me to consistently deliver excellence while always asking why.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at the brand firms Pentagram and VSA Partners. I began my career as a designer, leading teams at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I hold an MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in communication design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and have taught at some of the best design schools in the US.

I am responsible for IDEO’s long-term success in China and working with clients to use design as a tool to enable growth. Specifically, I have helped Chinese companies design holistic brand solutions through the development of their products, communication, services, and innovation teams, and I have helped multinationals expand their presence and influence in China.

I advise global leaders on developing China-led innovation and capabilities.

In over 15 years in IDEO Shanghai, I have worked on projects that use design to elevate the quality of the experience of healthcare products and services, streamline processes that increase productivity, create spaces and programs that promote and enable inclusive communities, and build next generation mobility solutions that are planet-positive.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at Philips Electronics and the Electrolux Group in Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore on a number of breakthrough commercial products. I am a member of the Young President Organization in Shanghai.

Most AI products today are built for work—a space with clear problems and established systems. One founder noticed a gap: personal life is messier, harder to systematize, and mostly left behind by the AI boom. So she built Cue, a personal AI that lives inside iMessage and group chats, to go where the other tools haven't.

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In this episode, Becca Carroll, IDEO's Chief Strategy Officer, talks with Sida Li, co-founder and CEO of Shared Context Lab, about staying anchored to a human need while the technology around her keeps changing shape, why she treats her business model with the same rigor she'd bring to a product, and what it feels like to build a company at this particular, disorienting moment in AI.

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The conversation also gets into how Sida makes design decisions: the language Cue uses to describe itself, the tradeoffs behind building inside iMessage instead of a new app, and a real story about a business idea that didn’t pan out.

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This is the second in a two-part series profiling founders from IDEO's Startups-in-Residence program. The first conversation is with Johannes Seemann, founder of Sooner, on designing GenAI for the emotional side of money.

Most personal financial tools are built to run the numbers and optimize towards a budget. While that works for some, most people experience money as a lived relationship that does not neatly fit into a spreadsheet. Johannes Seemann and Becca Carroll discuss why money is emotional before it is mathematical, and what a human-centered approach to building a generative AI financial product looks like in practice.

Mina Seetharaman talks with Scott Shigeoka, author of Seek and Head of Curiosity Cultivation at the Eames Institute, about what distinguishes genuinely curious leadership from performative curiosity, how power dynamics shape curiosity, and why practicing curiosity can restore energy rather than drain it.

Mina Seetharaman talks with David Epstein, author of Inside the Box and Range, about why total freedom often produces average work, how leaders can design useful limits on purpose, and what organizations such as General Magic and Pixar reveal about the relationship between boundaries and creativity.