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

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In one sentence, who are you?

I am Paul, and I run S.E.H Kelly, which is a menswear company based in London.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

We make clothes for men, every aspect of which—the cloth, the buttons, the buckles—is made by suppliers from around the British Isles. There are two of us at the company, and the other one, Sara, learned the trade in a tailoring house on London's Savile Row. I have a background in retail and design and other things, and together we cover most bases.

3 favorite possessions?

I don't really cherish possessions. I like my watch, which was a Christmas present, and—well, my bag is very much appreciated, being as it carries half my life without much complaint. My third favourite possession eludes me, sorry.

What does a typical work session look like?

Wake up, reply to emails, get train to workshop, pick up things, get train to a factory, drop off things, reply to emails, run around chasing up problems with cloth or patterns or making, eat, reply to emails, wrap and pack orders, print order documentation, walk to post office to send orders, walk back to factory, tie up loose ends, tidy up, get train home, eat, update or fix website, reply to emails, bed. Oh—and fit in some design if chance permits.

The workshop is our headquarters, and is first in a row of very small workers' units built at the end of the 1800s. It has a downstairs where we hang a selection of our garments and store various components such as buckles and horn buttons; and an upstairs, where we use a makeshift office and undertake the various more moribund duties of running a business.

It is a good little space—although rather dark—and is difficult to locate even when you're standing nearby. Visitors often remark, "Not easy to find, are you?" which I take as a compliment, since I've always enjoyed visiting places which are off the beaten track, or require some effort to discover. Always more fun, I think, and exciting, and hopefully brings a tinge more interest and character than a typical shopfront.

How do you get over creative block?

I don't force anything. If I struggle for a solution—be it a design solution or some written words—I leave it alone and do something else. I find the best ideas are those that at least appear to come naturally, even if they're the result of days or weeks of subconscious thinking.

What was the last item on your to do list?

"Remove collar from shirt for man in Norway."

How do you see the world in 2078?

Much more convergence of culture facilitated with cheaper travel, cheaper and more widely available communication technology, and hopefully much more mutual appreciation of one another rather than squabbling.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

Be absolutely, fully, and entirely satisfied, without caveat or "to-do," with every piece of our collection.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

The game developer Ojiro Fumoto.

Shopping online often feels like work. To find one shirt, you have to slog through dozens of pages of boring photos of boring people wearing boring clothes. This isn't true of S.E.H Kelly. A visit online feels like a tour through their hidden, rain-damp workshop—from photos of button jars and bolts of cloth to the quirky ways that they describe their proper attire. I absolutely adore it. For this installment of Creative Crushes, S.E.H Kelly founder Paul Vincent shared some details about his label and design process.

I’m not alone in turning to mindfulness during the design process. Here’s how my colleagues and I use mindfulness to move from overwhelmed to optimistic, even during the toughest projects.

1. Adopt a beginner's mindset

When you're approaching a new design challenge, it’s easy to bring your biases and baggage to the table. But this is the moment to stay open: The root of creativity is embracing the millions of possibilities at your fingertips.

The “beginner's mindset” is a Buddhist principle we practice at IDEO. It means starting fresh, assuming nothing, and living the question. We see a lack of deep expertise in a new topic as an opportunity to get creative. Anyone can adopt a beginner’s mindset—all that’s required is openness and receptivity.

2. Practice radical acceptance

When I first learned about acceptance, it seemed to me it was just another word for complacency. As if to say, “That’s the way things are! Why bother trying to change them?” But on closer reflection, I realized that accepting the world as it is today requires a willingness to sit with uncomfortable truths and to see problems from all angles before jumping in to solve them.

By accepting a situation, you’re able to design a better approach from a place of non-resistance. At IDEO, we have a bias toward action: We make lots of tangible designs as a way of imagining the future. But action can be so much more impactful when it’s grounded in reality and driven by clear intentions.

3. Drop your ego

Mindfulness teaches us that the ego—the part of us that demands to be “right”—is not our true self. Our true self is found in the in-between moments when we’re able to just be—the times when we take in what’s around us, quiet our minds, and open ourselves up to feedback from the people we’re designing for.

One way we try to drop our egos at IDEO is by creating “sacrificial concepts”— prototypes that we design but ultimately cast aside in service of learning. Critiquing a sacrificial concept is an invitation for people to share their reactions without hurting anyone else’s feelings.

I sometimes suffer from the “disease to please,” wanting people to like everything I’ve made. But as I’ve leaned into mindfulness, I’ve realized that my ego can slow me down, and I've learned how to set it aside.

4. Listen deeply

Have you ever noticed during a conversation that the person you’re talking to is mimicking your posture? If you put your hands on the table, so do they; if you sit up straight, they follow suit. In conversation, people are often looking for an opening to make their next point, rather than paying attention to what’s being said. But if you focus on your own replies, you miss out on the words, tone, and body language of the people around you.

In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle says that when you practice judgement-free listening, you’re giving another person the power of your presence. At IDEO, every project starts with listening. Our human-centered, interdisciplinary design approach means that the whole team learns empathy skills and joins in the design research process. Listening elevates the voices of the people we’re designing for and ensures that their dreams and worries are our starting point.

5. Meditate in order to create

One of the biggest misconceptions about creativity is that creative people always wake up feeling compelled to create. The truth is that this compulsion is often blocked by insecurities or external pressures. In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer describes these as “samskaras,” or energy blockages, which can be cleared by acknowledging them and focusing on your breathing. Tolle suggests that when you want to be creative, you should go back and forth between breathing and the task at hand every few minutes. Only when you’re clear-headed can you make.

At IDEO, we have a meditation group that meets every day, and any designer is welcome to be in the presence of others and connect inward. This ritual, and the support of the wider IDEO community, are wonderful reminders that everyone still has room to learn and improve.

By making mindfulness a regular part of my design practice, I’ve not only become a better designer, but hopefully a kinder, more patient, and more empathetic person. It’s been a journey well worth taking.

Illustrations by Cassandra Fountaine

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When I start to feel overwhelmed at work, with too much information to take in and too little time to process it all, I rely on mindfulness. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the fathers of modern mindfulness, describes the practice as “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” It’s all about tuning into your sense of inner calm so you can be a better conduit for new insights and solutions.

A San Franciscan, Jimmy worried that California’s blue state status might make residents apathetic about voting, even though there were important state and local issues on the ballot that were hardly being covered. “Luckily, there was a proposition requiring porn stars to wear condoms,” he says. “I felt I could help make the local ballot a little more interesting.”

Jimmy created a site called ballot.fyi, an online voter guide dedicated to explaining the issues in a nonpartisan way. To his surprise, it reached 125,000 people in 24 hours, and a million over the course of the election.

For the last year, he and his cofounder Yvonne Leow have been working on the next iteration, By The Bay. Thanks to a grant from the Knight Foundation, they’re helping inform younger voters. “We’re committed to turning residents into citizens by educating them on local issues and elections,” he says.

We chatted with Jimmy about how he and Yvonne designed the guide, what he’s working on for November, and how you can replicate the process.

1. Your guide looks a lot different from the boring, I mean, um, more basic, civic materials we’re used to seeing. What can design bring to a voter guide?

By putting design first, and pairing it with a casual voice, we’re hoping we can make topics like legislation engaging. As consumers, we expect a user experience to have thought behind it, but that’s not something we’re used to seeing in voter guides. We want to make this information digestible, first by making the guide as beautiful and usable as possible, and second by using approachable language.

We assume the reader is smart, but isn’t yet familiar with all the wonky terms in politics, like general obligation bond. Other guides tell you how to vote. We want people to understand what they’re voting on and make their own decision.

Proposition 7: Makes permanent daylight savings, meaning we don't change the clock twice a year.

2. What was your process, and how did you avoid partisanship?

Like any good journalist, we’re first focused on understanding as much as possible, from as many sides as possible. This means reading all relevant materials and talking to people in the orbit of each issue.

Local issues are less polarizing and ideological than national politics, so avoiding bias is easier than you might think. After we’ve done all the research, my cofounder and I are often more conflicted on where we stand on the issues personally.

We design the information to make it easy to process. If it makes sense to visualize something, we’ll create a graphic rather than explaining it with words. After I published ballot.fyi and it blew up, I received many emails suggesting corrections. As stressful as it was, I took it as an opportunity to debate the sender and absorb their knowledge and perspective.

3. What did you want to give voters in your community that wasn't already out there?

In the past, I’ve left a voting booth feeling ashamed that I was sometimes guessing on how to vote. I consider myself well-educated, but I needed to be a better educated citizen. I suspect a lot of people feel that way.

Proposition 10: Perhaps one of the most consequential initiatives, it would allow cities to enact rent control laws again. There's a huge fight from all sides about whether this is a good idea.

4. What design constraints did you need to think about?

Brevity is our primary constraint, but we also do our best to make everything mobile-friendly, because 60 percent of people will visit our site on their phone. Even if they don’t read through an entire explainer, we write our content so that people can understand both sides within a few sentences.

Above all else, we design for the busy professional, who is educated and well-intentioned, but may not have time to fully research everything themselves. We try to get to the point as quickly as possible, make navigation as easy as possible, and have fun with the content.

We picture our users as three personas: One is the diligent voter who spends hours on their absentee ballot well before election day rolls around. Another is the voter who knows they have to vote on Tuesday, so they’re going to spend some time looking into it the weekend before. Then there’s the oh-shit voter who, on election day, doesn’t want to feel stupid and researches as much as they can at work, then runs to the polls right before they close.

We actually see the most traffic the day before the election and the day of the election.

5. What was the hardest part about building it, and how long did it take? (San Francisco is a wacky place with a lot to vote on, so I would imagine a while?)

The hardest part of ballot.fyi was maintaining accurate and up-to-date information. It was just me, and it’s all manual, so I was debating people via email, researching as much as I could, and trying to wordsmith it all to be as succinct and understandable as possible.

Ballot.fyi took about three months, from concept to election day—roughly a month of design, a month of coding and design, and a month of maintenance and advertising. Knowing 20,000-30,000 people were seeing my site every day made October 2016 the most stressful and exhilarating month of my life.

Proposition 12: Mandates a minimum square footage for animals sold for meat, but there's a clause in there that makes all eggs in California cage-free (like literally, not just in minimum size) by 2022.

6. What advice would you give people in other communities about creating their own voter guide?

I’d recommend using whatever tool/medium you’re most comfortable using. You don’t have to build a whole website.

We've seen people create voter guides with Google Slides or Sheets, or simply put together a blog on Squarespace. I've also seen long FB posts, or PDFs shared around social media. The week before the election, people will be looking for the information, and different formats find different audiences. I have yet to see someone make a comprehensive and compelling YouTube series—I’d love to see that.

My best advice: Focus on a specific part of the ballot, and do it well. Don’t worry about reaching a wide audience. Write it for the people you know: your close friends, coworkers, or club soccer team. Research your way to nonpartisanship. In terms of resources, Ballotpedia is dense but can be a good starting place. When in doubt, you can also call your city hall or state government and request information. Having friends that can translate legalese is also useful.

7. What kind of feedback have you received, and what are you planning for the general election in November?

Most of our feedback is positive. I think most people want to get more involved in local politics and understand more, but people are busy and other things take priority.

For November, we’re interviewing the Supervisor candidates in San Francisco and posting the videos. We’re hoping it’s an easy way for residents to quickly get a sense of who’s running and what they stand for. We’re also beefing up a feature we released in June—the ability to take notes on our webpages and then share that with your friends via a private link. We’ve noticed that people rely on their friends to vote, and friends typically have one or two people who are their go-to political person. We want to empower those individuals and compile the research and summarize for them, so they can simply add their commentary and recommendations. By The Bay does not give recommendations, but we encourage individuals to—it helps get the vote out.

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As the 2016 election approached, and the vitriol around the presidential race grew, IDEO alum and engineer Jimmy Chion wanted to do something to keep voters engaged.

A prototype of a physical product is easy to imagine, but the process of leaving the hospital after giving birth, or having a new kind of conversation between a traveler and a flight attendant, is not easily built out of cardboard and foam core.

In my years at IDEO—and at companies like LeapFrog and Virgin Entertainment Group—I’ve seen service prototypes come in many shapes and sizes, but I’ve found the most successful ones are based on real customer needs and co-created with the people responsible for delivering the service. Whether you’re building storyboards and sketches, simulated interactions, or mocked-up physical spaces, these three tips should give you a little inspiration to help you create your own.

1. Design only the details that matter

Keep in mind that with any prototype—service design included—you’re looking to spend a little (effort and money) to learn a lot. This is especially relevant in service prototypes, which can change over time, and often involve components like people, space, and physical and digital objects. Figure out what elements of your service are necessary to show potential users what their experience would actually feel like, and eliminate the rest. For instance, if you want people to feel welcomed to an experience, you might spend more time designing the human-to-human interactions, and less time figuring out the design of the space where the interactions take place. If you want people to feel efficiently handled during a check-in moment, you might spend more time designing the digital interface for the process, and less time designing the artifacts and documents that are sprinkled throughout.

In a project with Kaiser, we created a visual checklist that nurses could use to help parents understand all the steps that needed to happen before they could take their babies home. To make sure that the new tool wouldn’t add to parents’ confusion, we hung paper prototypes in some rooms, and had nurses mark the number of calls they got from each patient. It turned out, parents who had a prototype had 60 percent fewer questions than parents who didn’t. And we were able to pick up all those insights without even worrying about what the space looked like—just a simple prototype.

2. Factor in the before and after

When designing a service moment, consider the user experience not just during the moment, but also before and after. Think about a simple moment, for example checking into a hotel. What happens before? Are guests arriving travel weary and jetlagged? Are they coming to celebrate their honeymoon? As a service provider, it’s important to remember that you’re not the only thing on the user’s mind, they’re processing this moment along with everything else going on in their day. After check in, could they easily find their room and was it clean? Were they able to quickly transition into desired activities whether to celebrate, get pampered, and relax, or get to an event like a conference?

In a project with the hotel chain Crowne Plaza, our goal was to design a lobby space that would work for all business travelers. We created a concept that would include spaces for heads-down time, places for group work, a grab-and-go menu of healthy items, and a staff member who could help with business needs. To test it, we set up a network of sensors and cameras to track traffic flow through the different spaces, and which were used most, and when. With these metrics, and interview answers from guests before and after seeing the prototypes, we were able to gauge how well we were meeting traveler needs at every stage of their journey.

3. Involve users and employees

Prototyping helps us pick apart our assumptions, see where we’ve made progress, and where we’ve failed. Designing services is a process that must be done collaboratively, particularly with those who are ultimately responsible for delivering the service to customers. That ensures that you have the right experience and depth to inform new ideas. And it helps you get crucial buy-in when you’re promoting the future vision of your service.

So who should you invite to create and test your prototypes? Think about employees, end users, even people moving around behind the scenes, and figure out how they should show up in your prototypes. Do you need a real nurse chatting with a real patient? An actual bellman who can try out a new check in process with a million-miler business traveler? What about the executive who is ultimately in charge of the project?

In a project with Lufthansa, we were looking to redesign business class to keep up with modern travelers. Once we homed in on the experience we wanted to create, we built a 1:1 scale mockup of a plane with some foam core and business class seats, then invited real travelers and crew to test it out. Not only could they report on the experience from both sides, execs could check out the experience, too, and sign off on our new ideas.

The best advice for service design prototyping, though, is the same as any other kind of design work: Do it early, do it often, and keep iterating toward the right solution.

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Prototyping is an integral part of design, but when it comes to experiences and human interaction, it can be hard to figure out exactly how to do it.

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.