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 was fortunate enough to work closely with Liu on an art installation about food's carbon footprint when she was a Researcher in Residence at IDEO's Design for Food Studio. The piece was exhibited at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in collaboration with the Perennial, a sustainability-focused restaurant. Thanks to that project, I became an expert in engineering ways to pop balloons, and also a major Liu fan. I caught up with her to hear more about what inspires her work.

In one sentence, who are you?

I am an artist, long-distance runner, sci-fi dreamer, and corgi-lover.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I am incredibly lucky to have my dream job: thinking deeply about technology, and making the art to express it. I followed a meandering path. First, I learned how to express ideas visually and spatially by studying architecture at Harvard, and from there, I became a VR geek. Eventually, I ended up at MIT Media Lab, where I started making bioart.

The female body has long been a source of contention, where opposing ideologies in religion, politics, and cultural differences often play out. In this video, Ani explores what would happen if women could control something inherently male: Spermatozoa.

3 favorite possessions?

1. My best friend's wisdom tooth
2. My mother's family album
3. A collection of smells I've bottled from those I love

What does a typical work session look like?

The beginning of my projects involve a lot of research. The process often starts with a large cup of coffee, a stack of papers, and my sketchbook in hand. In the next phase, I am often found visiting other scientists' labs to ask questions. I've sought advice on everything from how to use an EEG headset to read brainwaves properly to trying to score the right plant hormones to make flowers blossom on command.

The next phase is an enormous amount of exploring, prototyping, and failing. In the last phase, I hunker down and crank towards an impending deadline. It is often the most stressful part, but it's full of adrenaline, and my favorite.

How do you get over creative block?

I have the benefit of working across many disciplines, and I find that my love of one thing often inspires the next. If I am stuck debugging code, I'll draw, and the meditative act often untangles a logic block. When I am stuck on expressing an idea visually, I like to read physics textbooks (I know, this is unbearably geeky) to find inspiration in the way physicists express radically abstract concepts.

I also love looking for synaesthetic inspirations. I have a large collection of perfumes and scents, and sometimes breathing one in will trigger an unexpected thought or emotion, and my mind will spiral into new territories.

What was the last item on your to do list?

To plate and incubate fresh bacteria for a new art piece. I have been invited to participate in a group show on self portraits, and I am prototyping a living work of art based on my microbial signature.

How do you see the world in 2078?

I can't claim to predict the future, but I hope the approaching inevitability of continued automation and augmented intelligence will cause us to deeply question what it means to be human, and what is worth pursuing in our lifetimes.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

To finally share my life with a corgi! The top contending names are Stardust and MOSFET. I would also love to write a science fiction novel in my lifetime.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

Tania Bruguera is an amazing Cuban artist and political artist whose strength and solid dedication to expressing the truth and the narrative of marginalized populations inspires me every day. In every studio I stay in, I pin up a small image of her work because the images hit me at my emotional core, but also remind me that art and design can have a profound impact on the world.

"Art is how you can see and feel the future," says Ani Liu in her TED Talk, "Smelfies" (if you haven't seen it, go watch that now). Drawing on synthetic biology, AI, and the microbiome, Liu crafts multi-sensory art and experiences that are at once beautiful, poetic, and a total mind-bender.

After outing myself as the lone office introvert, I expected a look of horror to pass over my coworker’s face. Instead she gave a knowing nod and smile, and said she’s heard this sentiment so often here that she calls IDEO an “extroverted office full of introverts.”

I was stunned. The majority of my colleagues are introverts too? How did they manage our everyday activities, like brainstorms? The goal of a brainstorm is to uncover new opportunities by bringing in fresh perspectives, but as a group activity it can make introverts clam up.

Inspired by Susan Cain’s research on the power of introverts and how solitude, like collaboration, is a crucial ingredient to creativity, I asked my fellow designers what strategies they use to incorporate solitude into the most extroverted of activities.

Here are five ways they've adapted the brainstorm for introverts:

1. The Silent Circuit

Ask each person to write a “how might we” question on a sticky note (IDEO’s standard brainstorm kickoff question) and post it around the room. For about 15 minutes, everyone walks around, silently adding as many ideas as they can to each prompt. When time’s up, everyone returns to their question and discovers a bounty of new ideas that their colleagues have given them. This approach works well for keeping large groups engaged, while providing quiet, focused time to those who want it.

2. Musical Chairs

Breaking up a big group helps encourage quieter voices. To limit the number of people in a brainstorm, split into groups of three or four and play musical chairs. Post a handful of "how might we" questions around the room, assign a group to each one, and start the music. When it stops, rotate to the next station with your team. That way, there are never too many voices to contend with, but a lot of ideas are shared. Leave time at the end for people to wander around the room and add any remaining ideas.

3. Get to the Bottom of the Stack

This is the most exhaustive brainstorming activity on this list—it can take up to two hours—but can also generate the most ideas. The goal: Each person fills an entire stack of Post-its with new ideas. (A “stack” can be a full Post-it stack divided into halves or thirds, depending on how much time you have.)

After the questions are introduced, everyone goes heads-down and captures ideas. It's a lot of silence, but it allows those who prefer to think and brainstorm silently the time and space to do it. When everyone has reached the bottom of their stack, one person volunteers to share first. As she presents, others add similar ideas or build on top of them to draw out themes.

The exercise can be a great empathy builder. For a project about helping high school students build purpose in their life, a team used the prompt, “What are your most awkward memories from high school?”

4. Office Hours

This one came from Fast Company: Instead of asking people to commit to a crowded, hour-long session, reserve a space and ask folks to stop by for 5-10 minutes to contribute ideas—in between meetings, on the way to lunch, etc. This gives people permission to come and go as they please, and limits the number of voices in the room at one time. To make participation even easier, introduce the questions a day in advance—over email or in a calendar invite—to give people time to think.

5. The Slow Build

Post a question in a shared space in the office—the kitchen, in the bathroom, by the bike rack—and allow people to add ideas over several days. At our San Francisco studio, we post monthly questions and prompts in one of the private, unisex bathrooms in our office. The questions often ask people to reflect: “I feel loved when…” and “I show my love by…” Or, “What’s something new you want to try this year?” As an introvert, it’s my porcelain palace.

How do you create the conditions that can help everyone feel welcome and heard at work? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Thanks to Charla Bear, Minnie Bredouw, Deirdre Cerminaro, Eileen Farrell, Peter Macdonald, and Heather Ross for their contributions and inspiration.

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One day, I confided in a coworker: “I feel like an impostor in such an extroverted office.” The culture here is built on constant interaction—every question is an opportunity for collaboration, we work exclusively in teams, and our brainstorms encourage everyone to think out loud. It exhausts me.

What could be more satisfying than a blueberry in every waffle hole? My son Tom took his time to arrange everything just perfectly before gobbling it down. Even if you are not meticulous enough to do it yourself, I'd be surprised if the same idea didn't cross your mind. It makes me think about all of the times that I've thoughtlessly (or thoughtfully) constructed my own bites—optimizing for flavor, making sure that there are goodies in every bite, until my plate is clean.

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.

As a result, I spent most of my time finding problems, real or imagined, and adding them to a growing list of things I would solve to make my mark. My notebooks from those days suggest that I believed I would be a hero one day, but for now, was resigned to suffer through unrewarding and lonely work. I was an asshole. And you get what you give.

I had started a project with Quiksilver, and with that came a new relationship with a very successful creative director, Erik (now a good friend). Erik invested in inspiration for himself and everyone on his team. He made sure he was creatively nourished—maybe even selfishly so, if that can be said in a positive way—and emulating the kind of creative culture he wanted to instill. It was mutual and reciprocal among his team.

He inspired me, too. I wrote a simple note on a Post-It and stuck it to my computer:

“Be the leader you wish you had.”

I know. It’s all Gandhi and shit (apologies, Gandhi, for any disservice in my comparison). But it shifted my thinking radically. I made a commitment to own my happiness and creative experience.

That week, over regular tears-and-beers drinks with a colleague, we were laughing over an article in Vice called “Wear Dare” in which a couple of friends dressed one another for a day and described their embarrassing moments. We wondered what that would be like at work…

“Let’s do it,” I said. Following my new directive.

We goaded each other through nervous fear, laughter, and finally action… what if this goes wrong? Or worse, what if it goes right?

We invited everyone to put his or her name in a hat and drew at random…

Here’s what happened:

It was the
best
day
ever.

It was joyous and unserious. It wasn’t about fixing; it was about sparking something and letting go.

Only four people didn’t participate out of a studio of nearly 60. I am sure they regretted it! And looking back, I believe that day was a key moment in a process of transformation for myself, using my position for fun instead of misery. It was that raw creative act that broke the dam for me.

Around that time, the project leader for the Quiksilver work came to me with the idea of traveling the California coast in an RV—you know, “as research.” I knew he expected me to say no. And it would certainly lose us a bit of money, but I suppressed the leaderly should and followed my new directive and said yes.

My landlubber colleagues got to be surfers for a few weeks. I joined the team on the road and reconnected with my surf-teen years in San Diego. More importantly, surfing every day, sketching in the sunset over beer and pizza in roadside campgrounds with a bunch of other (mostly) dudes, trading ideas until we fell asleep in the RV, and fomenting the growing optimism and joy of building play into our workday led to the design of great concepts for the client—some of which went to market.

Other changes followed.

We hired some amazing people, who we never would have hired prior, as interviews shifted from picking people apart to finding and supporting possibility.

For a colleague’s wedding we dressed up in Tyvek suits and marched, single file, to the courthouse through Cambridge, MA. (That's what you see in the image up top).

We did design fiction exercises over lunch. The culture began to be one that craved creative pokes to encourage the flow of great ideas.

The studio evolved from being a quiet participant in the business to a creatively rowdy collection of designers from Boston producing content that the rest of IDEO references.

How we were began to shape what we did.

So much had changed with that simple note to myself.

I’m not suggesting that dressing your colleagues in thrift store pantsuits will fix everything. Nor that you need to hit your nadir and be ready to quit before you can find the inspiration to lead from your creative self.

In fact, this is not really about you or me at all.

This is about what I learned the hard way: That great creative leadership is about letting go of that nagging mental image you have of what you are supposed to do. It’s about believing in others, and focusing on fanning the flames of creative, weird, exothermic people, rather than on fixing problems.

How you approach your day is how you will live your life.

If you see your role as a list of broken things that need to be fixed, life will deliver you nothing but. But if you actively seek creativity and fun, and enjoy a little embarrassing dress up now and again, you might just find yourself successfully in the middle of the vibrant culture you’d once wished for.

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When I was a fresh, newly appointed lead in our Boston studio, I struggled to have much fun. I believed I was a fixer of broken things, thinking, and people. The story I told myself was that I was a martyr for the fun others were having while I dealt with the important leaderly stuff.

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.