When it comes to food, we often have to choose between health, convenience, and taste. Parents struggle to get their kids to eat veggies. The same daily salad can become boring or bland over time. Produce often withers in the crisper drawer.

Betterer Foods set out to make one of the world's favorite foods healthier. Rice is a beloved food across many cultures, but many people now avoid simple carbohydrates due to diet restrictions or health concerns. Innovations and alternative options have mostly been limited to products in the freezer section, like riced cauliflower.

Betterer Foods created RightRice: a dry, shelf-stable grain made from rice and vegetables, including lentils, chickpeas, and green peas. RightRice has more than double the protein, five times the fiber, and 40 percent fewer net carbs than traditional rice. But the product still tastes and looks like rice, and is faster and easier to cook.

RightRice founder Keith Belling, the founder and former CEO of popchips, asked IDEO to design a brand that would communicate the product’s benefits. The start-up needed everything from a defined target consumer and brand story to a stand-out package design, website, and go-to-market materials.

The team listened to people's challenges with rice and eating healthfully: home cooks find it difficult to store fresh foods without them going bad, busy professionals are strapped for time when preparing balanced meals, and parents sneak vegetables into dishes like casseroles or mac and cheese. Some consumers say they avoid rice because it’s a carbohydrate, which is forbidden in so many of today’s diets. People describe themselves as “carb phobic” or say they consider rice a “guilty pleasure.” Others don’t eat rice because it makes them feel sluggish or bloated, or is too difficult or time-consuming to prepare. Overall, people wished rice could be healthier, simpler to cook, and still taste delicious.

IDEO translated these insights into a brand foundation that helped RightRice come to life on shelves, online, and in the world. The package messaging emphasizes the vegetable ingredients, and the cut-out window lets consumers see that the product looks like rice. The shape of the window simultaneously forms a bowl of rice and a smile.

Rice is a household staple around the world. The RightRice brand makes it easier for consumers to have health, convenience, and good taste in one accessible product. RightRice launched nationwide in Whole Foods and Amazon in February 2019.

Since this launch, the company has expanded both its reach and product line. RightRice is now available in nearly 5,000 retailers nationwide in addition to Whole Foods and Amazon, including Sprouts, Wegmans, and approximately 1,800 Kroger stores. Over one million bags have been sold.

The company has received numerous awards and acclaim, including being named “Best Plant-Based” by People’s 2019 Food Awards. Building on the success of RightRice, Belling and his team launched RightRice Medley, a blend of RightRice, ancient grains, and vegetables, in 2020. This new product, which features the same branding the company created with IDEO, has doubled the company’s shelf presence at Whole Foods.

After 40 years of rapid development, China's economic growth has reached a critical turning point.

However, looking at the world, today is also the most complex and uncertain era in human history. The traditional engine of economic development is slowing down, while innovation and other emerging ideas are helping the economy burst into dynamism. To ride this trend, China has already put in place comprehensive policies to ensure that the country can achieve this magnificent transformation—not only to maintain economic growth, but also to achieve high-quality development. To this end, what China needs most is a group of new business leaders with a sense of cooperation and innovation to lead and realize this change as a pioneering force.

People of insight can often see the situation clearly with a forward-looking eye. China's society and economy are undergoing transformation and upgrading, and market demands are constantly changing driven by technology. While seeking business development, many mature entrepreneurs with successful experience have realized that they need to explore some of the most essential issues inwardly, including: The original intention and mission of the enterprise and the role that enterprise leaders should play. However, without a systematic approach, transformation and upgrading, strategic decision-making, management mode and cultural construction cannot truly serve the enterprise

As a top institution of higher learning in China, Tsinghua University has always placed an important strategic position on cultivating innovative talents for China. IDEO is the world's leading design and innovation consulting firm. As a pioneer of design thinking, IDEO has always been committed to applying design and innovation capabilities to solve the world's most complex problems. After discovering the need for China's economic and social transformation and the need for innovative leadership by Chinese entrepreneurs, Tsinghua University and IDEO jointly launched the "Leading China" program in 2018. This program is aimed at senior management of Chinese enterprises, and aims to train entrepreneur trainees to use new perspectives and ideas through a one-year innovative leadership course to seek solutions for the systemic changes that need to be achieved in the process of social transformation in China.

The students of the first "Leading China" program came from more than 30 entrepreneurs from 20 different industries. The teachers who participated in the lecture included 73 Chinese and foreign experts including Shan Jixiang, the former dean of the Forbidden City, Masahiro Kuroyama, the father of Japanese industrial design, and Jake Knapp, the inventor of "Design Sprint". As China's first innovative leadership course with design thinking as the core, the project is equipped with "design to open enterprise creativity", "reshape enterprise competitive advantage", "forge innovative business system", "innovate with the help of finance", "embracing Industrial Revolution 4.0" and "Win-win China Created 2030" six modules. The trainees traveled to nine cities in one year, and completed the courses in the interactive teaching of inspiration and the exchange and sharing of practical experience. Many students said that the course not only helped them find the direction and path of enterprise reform, but also improved their way of thinking, strategic planning and leadership models.

Liu Feng, the founder of Top Intelligence, gave an example of the inspiration brought by the six pillars of "vision-led" enterprise reform. Through "vision leadership", he not only sorted out the original intention and values ​​of the company, but also launched a series of measures based on this starting point, which improved the company's various aspects from the telephone customer service process to the organization of the annual meeting, and mobilized the enthusiasm of employees. This greatly improves the company's efficiency and flexibility. Ting Zhihong, chairman of Hongtu Logistics Co., for example, said that the biggest change brought by the course is her awareness of the importance of empowering the team. The company has now built many platforms to give employees more room to play, to create markets, to put decision-making on the front line, and to let employees play the role of company operators. Her company doubled its profits in 2018. Hu Chao, founder and CEO of Leyou Pregnancy and Baby, introduced that what most executive courses learn is knowledge, and what this course learns is people-oriented values ​​and ways of thinking.

The students of the first class of "Leading China" graduated in December 2018. Regarding the course of this year, Wang Jingwei, former assistant dean of the PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University, commented: "Since the project was launched, we have not only witnessed the true value of design in a business context, but also experienced first-hand the use of people-oriented The difference between the designed executive courses is that the entrepreneurs who participated in the courses quickly entered a state of immersive learning, and many students quickly began to practice the methods they learned in the enterprise.”

On April 8, 2019, the list of winners of the 3rd "Changing the World Innovation Award" was announced, and the "Leading China" project was shortlisted for case nomination, becoming the only Chinese innovation case in the education category. The "Change the World Innovation Award" was announced by Fast Company, one of the world's three major financial and business media organizations.

As one of the world’s leading smartphone manufacturers, the Chinese brand vivo is widely known for its exceptional technological innovation and top-of-the-line photography and gaming hardware. But in an increasingly saturated phone market, vivo understood that it wasn’t enough to lead the pack based solely on technological excellence. To win the hearts of young Chinese consumers, they needed to become a beloved brand.

China consumes roughly 30 percent of the world’s smartphones, presenting a tremendous market opportunity to brands who wish to capture young consumers’ loyalty. In order to achieve that, vivo wanted to design a complete brand experience beyond the devices themselves—one that would express the joyful vivo brand spirit through services and retail experiences. One of their first key initiatives was to build its first concept store in an iconic building in Shenzhen, China.

Before building the concept store, vivo approached IDEO to explore what kind of in-store experience would resonate with young Chinese people. The concept store needed to convey joy in a meaningful, tangible way, while also setting the stage for vivo’s future brand systems. With this in mind, IDEO set out to explore how vivo’s young consumers experience fun.

After conducting research in four different cities, IDEO shared the stories of young Chinese consumers back with the vivo team. Their interviews revealed that young people value experiences that enrich their lives and create a feeling of positive personal transformation. They seek opportunities to expose themselves to new experiences, express themselves in different ways, expand and deepen their social connections, and build knowledge and skills.

Through this understanding of how young Chinese define “enjoyment,” IDEO helped vivo identify the value proposition of the concept store as expressing oneself in new and different ways. The store would allow every visitor to see something unique and find a fresh perspective. The vivo team took that value proposition into a design brief and later built out the space and interactive experiences.

The concept store launched at Shenzhen on March 22, 2019, featuring an upper level dedicated entirely to interactive experiences with photo booths, sound recording, and lighting technology. The engaging, lively and positive atmosphere of the store represents a major milestone in vivo’s transformation from a smartphone maker to a consumer brand.

WATCH: Official launch video provided by vivo.

As China's agriculture moves towards scale and sustainability, helping farmers grow healthier food with resilience is a matter of national economic security and individual livelihoods.

Bayer Crop Science—with its mission to accelerate China's agricultural modernization and benefit Chinese farmers and consumers—has provided high-quality products for millions of growers in China over 18 years. Yet its service relies heavily on multi-layered distributors and retailers across the country. The last mile of Bayer’s product delivery spreads across tens of thousands of highly fragmented retail stores, making the quality of service difficult to monitor and control.

Together with IDEO, Bayer Crop Science aimed to uncover new ways to engage with local farmers and retailers, and develop design concepts for its diverse set of retailers—establishing local relevance as well as the potential to scale nationwide.

With this ambition in mind, a team formed by Bayer Crop Science and IDEO launched into a design sprint in the rice fields of China’s Anhui province. Field research uncovered multiple challenges facing Bayer Crop Science’s retailers. First, each store needed to serve more than one hundred farmers, many of whom rely solely on the store owner to understand how to use the products. Retailers struggled to meet a high daily demand for direct support in a way that provided a positive customer experience.

In turn, farmers felt they had insufficient access to expert advice. While many farmers shared similar needs, there was no system for aggregating requests or arranging group instruction. Given that many rice farmers are illiterate, pre-printed educational pamphlets had limited impact, and retailers lacked tools for providing targeted support. And because the retail stores were also used for storage, little space remained for educational or community programming.

With these constraints in mind, the team needed to come up with ideas and design concepts that could be easily integrated into the daily lives of the retail store owners. The team brainstormed hundreds of concepts and quickly prototyped a select few. One retail store in Dangtu was transformed entirely into a live prototype set. Over three days, more than 50 farmers and retailers came through and provided feedback. From there, the team was able to make daily iterations of the concept, evolving the experience in real-time.

The Bayer team was energized by the potential of these prototypes to enable more customer-centered retail experiences. An exhibition of the concepts was set up during the National Annual Sales Conference of Bayer Crop Science in China, during which a much wider audience from Bayer experienced not only the concepts, but also the immediate feedback from farmers.

One year after the project’s completion, more than half of the design concepts have been included in Bayer's support kit for dealers. In 2019, these concepts will be rolled out in more than 1,000 flagship stores across China.

The work has also accelerated Bayer Crop Science’s efforts to build an ongoing engagement mechanism with its retailers and growers. Its online platform, Bayer Joy Grower, now has more than 10,000 retailers and will be expanded to growers soon.

I wanted to correct this discrepancy—to honor my friendships with the same sense of ceremony as a graduation. So, a few weeks before the big robes-and-tassels day, I created handmade portraits for each of them using my favorite art form: collage. Collage is more visceral than other traditional forms of art-making. Rather than relying on a pencil or paintbrush as an intermediary between hand and paper, it is 100 percent hands on.

Each collage I made was roughly 4x4 inches and took about 45 minutes.

My collage portrait process:

1. Gather materials. Pull old magazines from the recycling bin. Grab any scraps of paper you've collected. (A friend who also loves collaging brought a vintage Playboy for me to use. As she said, “It’s great for finding skin tones, obviously.”)
2. Comb through all the materials and rip out pieces until you have a few piles of various skin and hair tones and interesting textures.
3. Use a photo of your subject as a reference, draw a light sketch of their basic features onto paper.
4. Trim your pieces to size, use your favorite glue, and assemble the collage on top of your sketch.

In one instance, the portrait-making session blossomed into a full music-and-snacks event, where friends and I gathered to make collages of each other and exchange them. The party itself brought an unexpected moment of closure to our time in design school—to see everyone’s visual style, matured over four years together, coalesce in a scrappy portrait.

Giving—and receiving!—these portraits filled in a missing piece of what a graduation is supposed to feel like. And now, with college fresh behind me, I wondered how I could build the practice into a habit: How might I continue to use my favorite art form to show thanks to people who have been pivotal in my life?

After graduation, I moved from North Carolina to California to return to work at IDEO, where I'd been an intern the year before. And, in celebration of mentors and friends at IDEO whose support helped make all of this possible, I collaged a few portraits of coworkers:

I continue to search for more people and moments to memorialize in collage. It might be my new strategy for repurposing ticket stubs and brochures from travel adventures. Or a new, budget-friendly holiday gift tradition. Or a way for me to simply mark another year lived, making a self-portrait with materials collected over the past year. Collage has a poetic, “circle of life” quality to it, transforming human-made ephemera into a recycled treasure worthy of display.

As my college graduation approached this past May, I realized something about the commencement ceremony. While it celebrates all things you—your hard-won GPA, your winding list of extracurriculars, that new foil-stamped degree—what gets lost is a celebration of the relationships that helped get you there. Where was the homage to friends and mentors who, honestly, probably shaped my success more than any test score or honor club?

The work was done in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Jeff Norris, one of the NASA crew, described how people react when they experience OnSight:

"When they first encounter this project," Norris says, people "have a feeling of, 'Wow, I've lived to see this.'"

That's precisely how I felt. Mic. Dropped. It left me wanting to know a lot more about Riccardo and his work. I'll let him take it from here:

In one sentence, who are you?

An Italian, beardy guy who likes to travel and observe people, learn about the world, and wonder how to make it a better place. (It turns out you can get paid to do that.)

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I’m leading the NEXT’s (New Experiences and Technologies) incubation team at Microsoft. We work on a number of new secret devices and experiences that have not been announced yet. Most recently, the Microsoft Hololens and Windows Mixed Reality. I learn by doing. In fact, I’m still learning how to do my job, and I expect to never stop.

I grew up in a small town in Italy, which was a great place to live, but there were not many opportunities. So I moved to London and started working as a developer there at Unit9 before moving back to design. I have a mixed background that reflects my many passions: I studied electronics and design and learned how to program on the side.

Since then, I have lived in Stockholm, New York, and now Seattle, always looking for new opportunities to learn and grow.

Chrome WebLab by Google

What are your three favorite possessions?

1. Old family photo albums.
2. All my books, now spread across two continents, which I dream of reuniting as one big library.
3. And of course BMO [a stuffed, plush video game console from Adventure Time] because it makes my niece laugh out loud when we play together.

What does a typical work session look like for you?

You could argue that what I really do daily is to press a lot of buttons, scribble on a whiteboard, and discuss with people. Sometimes I travel.

As a creative leader, I strive to build inclusive environments that foster creativity and enable every individual to learn, grow, and express their full potential. Every day is different. We research, brainstorm, sketch, build, discuss, and learn as much as we can to iterate and constantly improve.

What I personally do daily evolves pretty much every year, and I believe the role of designers and creative leaders will keep evolving with the rise of artificial intelligence. I would be surprised if my current job still exists in ten years.

How do you get over creative block?

Sometimes all it takes me is a shower, a nap, a walk, or a good dinner with friends. It helps me to read a lot of books, travel, meet new people, and be immersed in new realities that are far from my daily bubble. And it’s good to have a creative process, both as a reference to give you confidence when you feel lost, and as a framework to break away from when you are inspired.

Introducing Microsoft HoloLens: Transform your world with holograms

How do you see the world in 2078?

Um...let’s see. In 2078 I’ll be 94, maybe somewhere in the countryside in Tuscany surrounded by my grand kids, and hopefully I'll still be curious to travel, learn, and give back to the next generation. It might be a good idea to plan to be somewhere in the hills, just in case global warming makes my hometown a beach town.

It’s hard to make predictions, and too easy to fall into the trap of describing a dystopian future.

As designers, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to influence what future we want to live in. It doesn’t matter how small our contribution will be, it’s worth trying to push for a desirable future scenario.

My desirable future scenario looks like this:

• New generations will learn to live together, respecting our differences, understanding each other, fighting inequalities, and respecting nature and our planet in a deeper way.
• We will fulfill the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• Education will be highly respected as one of the most important values.
• Religion as we know it will transform or disappear in favor of a shared philosophy and values.
• Democracy will change, evolving to a better system (probably with a different name), immune to populism and propaganda.
• There will be no more borders that divide us, centralized governments will disappear, and so will human-vs-human military conflicts.
• Communities will be as small as a town, but globally represented and connected beyond their geographical position.
• Money as we know it will disappear, replaced by other ways to measure our impact and value to society.
• We will work much less (thank you, technology), spending most of our time studying, exploring, and enjoying life. We will look back at our generation wondering why we spent our lives working eight hours a day, five days a week. We will use that time to re-discover the pleasures of the simple things that nature gives us every day.
• Autonomous robots will take care of most activities (and jobs), freeing humankind from committing their lives to repetitive tasks.

We might have learned how to control our planet's energy, gravity, climate, and resources. Some of us will live (probably with machines) on other planets, in the ocean, or the thermosphere, working hard to give us all an alternative to extinction and overpopulation. We will find new ways to help animals stay alive. We will learn how to balance ecosystems, maybe even to re-introduce extinct species, or introduce new human-made species that will help us fight illnesses and colonize new planets, making them habitable.

The meaning of being human might change in our lifetime. We might be super humans by then, and we will have to be very careful, as there is a huge risk of creating new inequalities based on who can afford what extension. There might be incredible innovations in brain-computer interactions, connecting us to technology and each other via a collective mind.

There might also be supermachines, hopefully like R2-D2 and C-3PO, to assist us and help us be better humans.

Who are you crushing on lately?

I really like Bret Victor’s way of thinking.

Ivan Poupyrev's work is excellent and always surprising. Ishac Bertran and Claudio Guglieri are good friends, great designers, and some of my favorite people.

I feel very lucky to work with some incredibly interesting people from all over the world to help imagine the future. We are always facing new challenges—sometime solving problems for the very first time and defining experiences that have never existed before.

A lifelong space nerd, I was blown away when I heard about OnSight, a Microsoft HoloLens experience that allows NASA scientists to navigate the surface of Mars using imagery captured from the Curiosity Rover. I met a creative leader of HoloLens, Riccardo Giraldi, at a conference in Milan, and was so impressed by the work he and his team at Microsoft presented.

We decided to transform our drab and sterile office kitchenette (not the main one where the rest of the office eats) into a space that could be both a chef’s and a designer’s paradise—a space that actually asks you to play with your food.

The food industry is evolving like never before, and even at-home chefs are becoming more experimental. So, if you work in food or are outgrowing your home kitchen, here are a few ideas you might want to take to-go.

Our Top 4 Kitchen Design Rules:

1. Keep it versatile

A kitchen should be beautiful, but it should also feel like a blank canvas upon which wild ideas can be cooked up.

Our first priority was to create a clean, open space where different project teams could come in and set up how they see fit.

Since we only had a small space to work with, keeping the floor plan bright, open, and versatile was crucial to avoid feeling like we're cooking in a dark closet.

The main wall above the sink is made from plywood panels cut with a CNC machine to look more like pegboard. The design, which uses movable dowels, makes it easy to add or adjust shelves to meet the needs of the cooks.

2. Design for conversation and collaboration

Making the IDEO community feel connected to what we’re doing is just as important as being able to showcase our work.

While much of what we do is prototyping food on a near-scientific scale, we wanted our space to feel less like a lab and more like a home, with a warm, inviting color palette and wooden stools at the counter to sit and have a chat.

Even though it’s not technically a kitchen island, that counter was added with the same intent: to create smaller, more intimate spaces for the chef, but also allow them to face out to the space and chat with people sitting on stools on the other side. This always seems to be the gathering place in everyone’s kitchen.

3. Don’t try to do it all

The problem with redesigning a kitchen is that you never know how you’re going to use the space until you start using it.

We could have spent months iterating and reiterating on the floor plan, making sure every last knob was perfectly placed. Instead, we kept it simple, moved fast, and left room for modifications that we’ll inevitably need as the food industry continues to evolve.

This helped us save on upfront costs, and allowed us to finish the renovation much sooner.

4. Let the food speak for itself

Above all, we wanted the space to reflect how we feel about food, rather than distract from it. Sleek, minimalist design and large, neutral counter tops allow the inherent beauty of food to shine through.

I intentionally kept as many of the built elements—like the bookshelves—as low as possible. This makes the space feel more open and larger than it is. This is key when dealing with small spaces. Your eye goes to the long horizontal surfaces, elongating the space, as opposed to being confronted with tall cabinets or shelves that break your line of sight.

Everything we do revolves around food, so why not build a kitchen that allows food to be the star of the show?

Next time you remodel, keep these ideas in mind and apply some design thinking to your dinner.

Build to think. That mantra is imprinted on our brains from the moment we walk through the doors at IDEO. In our Design for Food Studio, we build by cooking. And just as our shop guys need to be able to make noise and be surrounded by their tools, we need a kitchen that inspires us creatively, adapts to our needs, and demonstrates to clients how we prototype in a tangible way.

I took this picture in the neighborhood where I grew up in Istanbul. The streets of Istanbul are very dynamic places, full of commerce, conversations, fights, love, drama. But they’re not always designed to facilitate all the different activities that take place there. So people regularly find ways to design the interventions they need.

In this picture you can see a table built around a tree to create more space for people to hang outside. An awesome way of working around nature and creating space for social encounters—tactical urbanism perhaps?

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

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.