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.

Creativity Challenge #9: Define a problem to work on.

Innovators often face the task of which challenge to focus on, or how to frame a challenge they are given. At IDEO, we use the term “Phase 0” to describe all the activities that take place before the problem is fully defined.

Talking about problems doesn’t necessarily inspire ideas, or energize you to act on them. Nor does wishful thinking. The Dream/Gripe Session helps you translate those discussions into creative thinking challenges you can start to tackle. This tool was adapted from an exercise in the Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit, developed by IDEO in partnership with Riverdale Country School.

Tool: The Dream/Gripe Session
Participants: Pairs in groups of any size
Time: 15-30 minutes
Supplies: Pen and paper

Instructions

Step 1: Decide on a topic for discussion. The dreams and gripes may relate to internal matters like the culture of the organization or external ones like interactions with customers.

Step 2: Pair up with another person and select one person to go first (Partner 1).

Step 3: Partner 1 airs their dreams and gripes for five to seven minutes, while Partner 2 listens and takes notes.

For example:

DREAM: “I wish we could get our customers to read the instructions.”
GRIPE: “It’s so noisy around here that I have trouble concentrating.”

Step 4: Partner 2 reframes the dreams and gripes into open-ended questions that make for good innovation challenges. We usually start with the phrase “How might we...?” A good “How Might We” question should not be so narrow that it suggests a solution (even if it’s a good idea). Initially, you're just trying to capture the problem, not jump to possible solutions. It should also not be so broad that it stymies the flow of ideas (rather than generates them). A good “How Might We” question should allow someone to easily come up with 10 different ideas.

Partner 2 should aim for three to five well-framed innovation challenges and share them with Partner 1.

For example:

GRIPE: It’s so noisy around here I have trouble concentrating.
Challenge that’s too similar: How might we reduce noise so you don’t have trouble focusing?
Challenge that’s too narrow: How might we create more private offices so employees can concentrate better?
Challenge that’s too broad: How might we help people focus?
Challenge that’s just right: How might we design the space to accommodate a range of working styles?

DREAM: I wish our staff got their expense reports in on time.
Challenge that’s too similar: How might we get people to be more timely with their expense reporting?
Challenge that’s too narrow: How might we use a smartphone app to speed expense reporting?
Challenge that’s too broad: How might we get people to have more respect for deadlines?
Challenge that's just right (with empathy for the employee): How might we simplify the expense reporting process so that people can complete it more quickly?

Step 5: Switch roles and have Partner 2 air dreams and gripes while Partner 1 listens and then offers “How Might We” innovation challenges.

Step 6 (optional): If you are doing this in a group setting, compare lists of all of the innovation challenges across the pairs. Look for patterns, themes, and common issues. This should help focus the discussion and suggest an opportunity for what innovation challenge to take on next.

This post was taken from Chapter 7 of Creative Confidence. Purchase the book for more on how to use creativity to solve problems, or read more from this series of creative exercises on the IDEO blog.

Everyone is creative. This belief runs through everything we do at IDEO, and in 2013, it led my brother David and me to write a book that would help others—even those who don’t think of themselves as “creative types”—to unleash their creative potential. Creative Confidence has inspired thousands of people to adopt a creative mindset and apply it to the diverse real-world challenges they face. In this series, we’ll share some exercises from the book that can help you approach your challenges from a new perspective.

It would be decades before design would become widely understood as a practice beyond decorative arts. In fact, the interviewer asked, “How would you define yourself with respect to a decorator?” And Eames replied succinctly: “I wouldn’t.”

It’s rare to find such a concise encapsulation of design’s power and potential, but Eames summed it up with admirable simplicity. There are no boundaries to the problems we face, of course; but there’s also no end to the ingenuity we can bring to bear in our pursuit of solutions.

Framed this way, it’s easy to see why design—as a creative approach to solving problems—is such an effective tool for business. In a highly interconnected world transforming at unparalleled speed, business leaders must attend to an ever widening set of concerns. Threats and opportunities come from unexpected places, and it can be hard to see through the fog. Design helps us navigate that ambiguity. It provides a framework for making decisions, identifying needs, devising solutions, and articulating values.

At IDEO, we know the magic that can result from combining design thinking, business acumen, and the possibilities of new technologies. We see it every day with our clients and teams, and we hear stories from our network of partners and collaborators.

Now, we have a place to share those stories: The IDEO Journal, a new digital publication featuring insights, inspiration, provocations, and lessons from the world of design-led business.

Today we are thrilled to launch this publication on IDEO.com and through a biweekly email newsletter. We begin with four perspectives: Lawrence Abrahamson, Senior Design Director at IDEO New York, shares an insight he had while chatting with a facilities manager for a large real estate corporation—recognizing new ways to unlock value in the work space of the future. Deborah de Vries, Senior Portfolio Director at IDEO San Francisco, shares the four key pillars to building an innovation lab that successfully shepherds its parent organization into the next era of its business. Senior Portfolio Director Hailey Brewer presents a thought exercise on the language we use when we talk about business—and how changing our words might change our outcomes. And Owen Sanderson, a business designer, alongside Maura Cass, a design research lead in our Cambridge studio, share an example of how looking outside your own industry can be the best way to inspire change within it.

Forthcoming stories will include a case for embracing friction when starting a new corporate venture; and an interview with Dawn Laguens, the former Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood who now sits with us as expert-in-residence at IDEO. We’ll have explorations of creative leadership, digital transformation, entrepreneurship, and much more.

The convergence of design and business has followed a long trajectory from the early business consulting work of Charles and Ray Eames. It would have been hard to imagine in 1969 just how widely design could be applied. Even IDEO co-founder David Kelley, looking back on our firm’s 40 years, remarked: “And to think, when we started I thought we were going to forever be designing plastic parts for Silicon Valley computers and that would be enough to be fulfilled.”

Computers themselves once seemed like one of the most complex and interesting problems design could tackle. Now, of course, the physical components are just an interface for whole realms of experience nobody foresaw. While we can never predict the future, we can equip ourselves to respond to it with creativity and intelligence. By applying design and business—together—to the problems of our time, we expand the boundaries of possible solutions.

In a 1969 interview, the legendary designer Charles Eames was asked, “What are the boundaries of design?” Without skipping a beat, he turned the question around and asked, “What are the boundaries of problems?”

They were right, of course. At IDEO, we’ve seen time and again how environments design can create a more appealing, nimble, and resilient workplace. But we’ve also learned that a more profound change—and higher returns—can come when we look beyond the “hardware” of floor plans and furniture to the “software” of human relationships, activities, and work habits.

We began a series of site visits, meeting with people across different roles and observing how they used their workspaces, from executive offices to call centers. At one location our guide was a “floor manager,” as they called him. Technically, he was responsible for the upkeep of the physical environment, but he quickly revealed himself to be far more than that. He remembered birthdays and anniversaries. He knew when teams had completed a big project and how best to celebrate it. He was also an astute observer of the quirks of human behavior in space, like the routes people paced when they needed privacy on a personal call. He was invaluable for our learning process, and we realized he was invaluable for the bank too. He bridged some of the work of a receptionist, human resources specialist, custodian, and audiovisual tech. Above all, he helped people connect personally to their environment, and in doing so he made it better and their work easier to do.

But, as in so many organizations, his job was in jeopardy. Rather than see the value of his dedicated attention and accumulated cultural knowledge, the bank had decided that it no longer needed a manager for each floor. His role was seen as expendable, and his presence a cost burden. His “hard” tasks could still get done in a more administrative capacity, but the “softer” work would disappear.

This was a moment of insight for us. Amid the inconsistency of changing workplace conditions and mobile employees, this floor manager was a constant for the community. Far from being an unnecessary expense in a lean workplace, he was what allowed a lean workplace to thrive. He embodied its culture and created returns that couldn’t be easily captured on spreadsheets. We started to think of him like the starter in a sourdough recipe—the little bit that carries the unique flavor and texture of the organization forward.

The case of the big bank floor manager is indicative of larger trends that I have seen evolve over the last decade. For many years, facilities professionals, just by doing their jobs, enabled huge returns for their companies. They brought value by modernizing space, boosting technological efficiency, and cutting square footage. But when there is little left to cut, returns must be generated in other ways. In order to unlock new value, the realm of facilities must expand to encompass not only visible details of design and culture, but also less visible organizational factors like strategy, structure, process, incentives, and talent. In turn, the role of the facilities manager evolves from someone who optimizes for today, to someone who helps cultivate tomorrow.

In searching for more ROI, some organizations are choosing to locate their teams in white-label workspaces that offer glossy services and amenities, while alleviating some of the ambiguity inherent in preparing for the future. However, these places can be more like interchangeable hotel rooms than permanent homes. The occupants are connected by proximity, but not by a shared purpose.

At IDEO, we consider that sense of common purpose to be an essential part of the software that makes the workplace—and the organization—thrive. Our challenge is to better program that software—to think not only in one-off designs, but about the broader life and behaviors in an environment. In a project for Planned Parenthood, for example, we suggested shifting the role of receptionist from a stationary processing officer to a responsive guide—someone who could assess patients’ particular needs and help them navigate the space accordingly. The furniture and floor plan changed, too, to improve the patient experience; but it was in the use of human services that the overall design was activated. The people inside would play just as important a role as the walls and furniture. The outcome was both a strengthening of internal culture and relationships, and a more favorable outside perception of the brand as one that foregrounds human relationships. It showed what can happen when we consider people and interactions as part of the design.

In a very different type of project—the redesign of a hedge fund’s trading floor—we similarly looked at the interaction between human activity and physical environment. The client’s hunch was that more portfolio managers talking with each other and exchanging their expertise and research would produce different, better scenarios to trade on. Their teams had been siloed and hierarchical, with minimal interaction between fiefdoms. We quickly realized that while the brief asked for “the trading floor of the future,” we were undertaking a cultural change project. You can’t get people to exchange ideas if they don’t even address each other in passing.

We designed a space that had teams sharing amenities like conference rooms, call booths, and support service stations, and we also left room for spontaneous interactions and conversations away from the desk. The physical environment was enriched by the design of programmatic experiences like learning and development opportunities that brought diverse employee groups together; as well as intentional consideration of teams’ internal language and communication. At first, those at the top of the hierarchy resisted organic interaction with those lower down the ranks. But in the end, the value of cultural cohesion was clear. And data supports the experiential finding: Teams and organizations that collaborate across different functions on a daily basis are 38% more successful than organizations that do not. The best workspaces function like a sliding puzzle: there has to be a little extra to move into, otherwise everyone gets stuck in place. They consider the container as well as the contained.

The two projects were certainly different, but both were emblematic of doing more with less, by focusing on the people in the space. We helped both organizations and their real estate teams steward a shift from merely managing their workspaces to cultivating the activity that goes on inside them. We studied unique human behaviors and then, through testing and prototyping, moved forward with elements tailored to each organization’s culture and its individuals. That process differs from what environments design typically entails. But we know that the software of a workspace still has a lot to give us all, in a way that’s complementary to the pressures many organizations are feeling.

I recently got back in touch with my client at that international bank. She told me they’re now adding floor managers—renamed “experience managers”—to their sites across the globe. That’s a small thing, but it underscored a more profound change in her role developing the bank’s myriad facilities. If before she was a value saver, now she sees the possibilities in being a value creator. Rather than working behind the scenes, she is an active player in her organization’s success. “It’s not just furniture,” she said. “It’s about how employees feel about the way they are spending time. Are they in an environment that supports their flow, their work style, and their work type? What can we do to make their work easier? How can I make them more successful?”

Those are profound questions for any organization, let alone for the professional field of real estate that is shifting from simply building the walls to enabling the activities that happen inside of them. When I think about the future of facilities, I think about all the potential we can unlock by holding the cultural and emotional components of work alongside legacy approaches to productivity and architecture. Our challenge—and our interest—is weaving those parts into a greater whole.

Unless otherwise specified, all statistics came from Creative Difference, a digital tool to assess, guide, and track the development of creative and innovative teams.

Visuals by Marina Muun.

A few years ago, a major international bank approached IDEO and asked our team to rethink their workspaces. They had a new CEO, a new mission statement, and a hunch that the physical design of their facilities could foster behavior changes in the organization.

Analogous research is a form of exploration that takes a team outside of its industry to find inspiration in the ways others have tackled similar challenges. These immersive experiences allow us to move beyond our expertise to see challenges with fresh eyes. In these moments, we build new levels of understanding and empathy that help us unlock aha! moments and generate ideas that we can ultimately bring to our own design challenges.

A few weeks into a project focused on redesigning the patient surgical experience with Newton-Wellesley Hospital (NWH), we saw an opportunity for analogous inspiration. Our client aimed to disrupt its industry by creating a service that focused not just on clinical outcomes but on the entire patient experience–from check-in to check-out. We assembled a team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and hospital executives to help us design a better experience for patients. About halfway through the project, it became clear that they needed inspiration from outside the healthcare industry.

So we headed to the airport. Why? Because, like performing surgery, taking to the skies isn’t a simple process. It involves lots of regulation, moving parts, and coordination. While an airline’s mission is to deliver a passenger from A to B, its purpose is to deliver a seamless, customer-centric travel experience. Airlines have invested in products and services to create that kind of experience, but many surgical departments haven’t considered the entire patient journey–beyond what happens clinically under the bright lights of the OR.

We brought the hospital staff to Boston Logan Airport for a morning with JetBlue—an airline known for great customer service. When the docs on our team first caught wind of the trip, they were a bit skeptical. It’s not easy to convince a bunch of highly-trained surgeons to scrub out of the OR and go on a field trip. But they piled into cars and headed to Logan.

We started at check-in. The hospital team was issued mock boarding passes and asked to check-in for their upcoming flights. They had the option of using a kiosk, their phone, or speaking to a real, live person.

Almost immediately the team began to discover parallels between the patient experience and the traveler experience. The surgeons on the team quickly noted how many different pathways there were for customers—options for families, those with disabilities, and frequent fliers. “We only have one option for our patients, but patients aren’t all the same,” one surgeon said.

The lessons continued as we cleared security. The group stopped by the Just Ask counter, JetBlue’s customer service desk. Staffed with friendly crew members, Just Ask is exactly that—a place where customers can ask JetBlue anything. That includes getting directions to the bathroom, finding out the score of the Red Sox game, or asking to rebook a flight. JetBlue crew members are empowered to help passengers—even beyond their standard job descriptions. A pre-op nurse on our team suggested having something similar in the hospital–a place where patients and their loved ones could get the support they need. “I bet it’d be easy to prototype this type of service, and it would help us learn what patients really want,” she said.

The group ended its day at JetBlue’s operations center and crew lounge. Here, the two teams met to discuss the day’s takeaways. “It starts by building a united team,” said the manager of onboard service and hospitality standards at JetBlue. “Sure, we can launch programs like the Blue Cafe to provide complimentary snacks to delayed customers or hand out pilot wings to young travelers. Of course, we do these little things–but what really matters is working together to create a consistent experience across a customer’s travel journey.”

When the NWH team circled up later that week, it was clear something had changed. The team was buzzing. Catalyzed by the analogous field trip, the doctors and nurses were ready to get to work. They mapped out a handful of prototypes to test at the hospital, including a redesigned lobby experience, and a way to engage with patients with different levels of confidence and familiarity with the hospital system.

At IDEO, we treasure these moments of cross-industry learning. Sometimes all it takes is for leaders and frontline workers to get out from beyond their desks and see things from a new perspective.

So, next time you’re feeling stuck, seek inspiration outside of your comfort zone. Consider how others have solved unique but similar problems. It might just be the change in perspective your team needs to recharge and think differently.

At first glance, surgery and airline travel don’t appear to be very similar. But if you dig deeper, you’ll find overlapping themes in the work experiences of surgeons and airline employees—stress, a high-pressure environment, a lot of team coordination. Actually, these industries have a lot to learn from each other. We at IDEO call this analogous research.

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.