Keeping diabetes in check isn’t easy. Between checking blood sugar multiple times a day, keeping a detailed activity record, and logging food intake, staying healthy can be daunting.

But a recent advance in smart diabetes management—Ascensia’s CONTOUR NEXT ONE blood glucose meter and the CONTOUR DIABETES app—can give patients more clarity and control.

The CONTOUR NEXT ONE is the latest product to spring from a multi-year collaboration between IDEO and Ascensia Diabetes Care (formerly Bayer Diabetes Care). In 2009, Ascensia and IDEO developed the award-winning CONTOUR USB blood glucose meter—the first meter to plug directly into a computer, providing patients and their doctors with instant access to blood sugar data and personal trend reports.

Buoyed by the success of the first collaboration, Ascensia asked IDEO to help design a next-generation diabetes management system (and the company’s first internet-connected device).

To help reduce the stigma of checking blood sugar in public, IDEO designed the CONTOUR NEXT ONE to look and behave like today’s modern tech devices. The highly simplified, seamless system allows patients to upload blood glucose readings automatically to the app, which helps guide informed, real-time decisions. The meter’s red, green, or yellow smartLIGHT feature gives instant feedback about whether blood sugar levels are below, within, or above the target range.

Seeing contextual data, which includes physical activity logs and photos of meals, paired with recent and historic blood sugar levels, nudges patients toward healthier lifestyle choices and better control of their condition.

For doctors, the accuracy and quantity of the data combined with the app’s easy-to-read pattern views invites more comprehensive, actionable conversations with patients.

The CONTOUR NEXT ONE hit shelves in Europe in 2016 and is now available in the U.S. Ascensia is poised to develop more products enabled by rich, personalized data to help people with diabetes live longer, healthier lives.

What if we could use the sky to provide alternative solutions to these problems, creating more space for living and transportation? What exciting future awaits us?

At JAXA’s Aeronautical Technology Directorate (ATD), researchers are conducting research and development on aviation science and technology for the future. They are working to affect positive impact through research like noise reduction of airframe and an integrated aircraft operation management system for disaster relief and crisis management.

Normally, JAXA begins their projects by examining the needs of the aircraft industry or comparing themselves against global technology standards. This approach often leads to ideas that are merely an extension of the current technology. JAXA needed a new approach in order to create radical ideas and real change.

The key question was: What solutions would emerge from prioritizing people’s needs over the most advanced technological possibility—taking a human-centered approach to tackling the most pressing societal challenges?

JAXA ATD voluntary partnered with IDEO to attempt to answer this question, identifying new research areas by envisioning people’s needs in the near future. Together, JAXA and IDEO developed four scenarios of future societies.

The scenarios do not necessarily focus on technologies. Rather, the focus is on telling stories that help readers put themselves in the shoes of the four personas. At the same time, the team worked with industrial designers to illustrate convincing demonstrations of the vehicles and machines of the future.

JAXA’s team embraces the belief that “technologies developed at JAXA should incorporate emotional aspects to blend seamlessly into people’s lives.” Driven by this philosophy, the visual design of the four scenarios used a friendly illustration style intended to be approachable and understandable for people of all ages.

In order to develop human-centered concepts from scratch, the IDEO and JAXA team first undertook research and inspiration-gathering. They skydived, observed cities from above, brainstormed with students from the department of architecture at Waseda University. They interviewed airline employees, a former Judo world champion, skyscraper lovers, a business producer who focuses on new working styles. Throughout the research phase, the team explored the possibilities of the sky as a “living space,” not just a place for transportation.

The team was surprised and excited when they learned from a former fighter pilot that old cockpit designs were inspired by the Japanese tea room, highlighting a historic precedent for taking inspiration from real life to inform new technology designs.

The team synthesized their research and developed several concepts, each informed by a different social issue or pressing concern. Each issue was brought to life through a fictional personal narrative.

How might we relieve city congestion and pollution using the sky, while still keeping it clean and blue? Floating public lights, a skyway that regulates air traffic, camouflaged planes that keep the sky blue—concepts introduced in this scenario were the closest to the technologies already being researched at JAXA ATD. They show us how the sky could become an infrastructure that supports our daily lives. Meet Ayame, a girl from Gunma prefecture, ready to begin her college life in Osaka.

How might we make travel feel easy for people of all ages, no matter how far they need to go? While the researchers at JAXA ATD are working to improve the mobility of aircraft, like reducing air friction or increasing the engine efficiency of aircraft, this scenario explored how people could travel door-to-door through the sky with or without aircraft. A day-in-the-life of Naoto, a 72-year-old man who commutes twice a month from Tottori to Tokyo for medical checkups.

How might we leverage the sky as a resource for reusable energy and economic growth? One of the criteria of JAXA’s R&D activities is to improve the environment. While JAXA has been focusing on “protecting” the environment, this scenario focused on “creating” new environments. A day-in-the-life of Toshi, who runs a “sky-to-table” farming business.

How might we help people live with peace of mind, even during a disaster? JAXA’s disaster relief technologies have been extremely valuable in countries like Japan, which frequently suffers from natural disasters. In this scenario, we approached the problem from victims’ point of view while exploiting the potential of a network of aircrafts and other flying objects. Here's the story of Yuri, a victim of an earthquake in Tokyo who reunites with her family after evacuating to the sky.

The purpose of the project website is not to present answers, but to introduce new directions towards an exciting future. By presenting JAXA ATD’s vision through these four scenarios, the team invited people from all industries and of all ages to participate in co-creating the future.

Just like movies, cartoons, and novels from childhood stimulate the imagination, this project aims to spark new conversation and vision for a radically different, positive future.

By illustrating and communicating a more human-centered future to a wider audience, Japan’s top aeronautical technology development agency may already be changing the future of the sky for the better.

The speed and scale of change in our world are unprecedented. As more people relocate to cities, our lives are impacted by urbanization problems such as pollution, congestion, depopulation of rural areas, resource, and energy deficiencies.

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For factory operators, a smart valve is a game-changer. It gathers data on how smoothly the system is running and feeds it to an app, making it easier to troubleshoot from anywhere. And when things get overheated, it can automatically shut down the machinery, avoiding a meltdown.

Georg Fischer (GF), the Swiss-based, B2B industrial manufacturer collaborated with IDEO to design that valve, along with a system that adds value for generations of engineers to come.

And there were some surprises along the way. When the team set out to interview customers, they learned a lot about their real needs. “We showed a customer a sacrificial concept of a smart valve and asked, what do you think about this?” says Laura Barrabia, GF’s Head of Corporate Design Thinking. “The customer answered, we don’t want your valve to be smart, we want to be smart. If GF is providing a smart valve, where is my value?”

For GF Piping Systems, these insights helped shape initial prototypes and guided the direction of the design to something that would tie parts together into smart systems and more efficient industrial facilities—a competitive advantage.

Yves Serra, GF’s CEO, recognized early on that his company needed to strengthen its customer-centricity and digital capacity, so he approached IDEO to begin shifting GF’s culture from engineering-led and procedural to customer-focused, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and flexible. That kicked off a decade-long relationship that would help GF take a design-based approach.

Learn what it means to move from being technology-driven to being truly customer-centric.

To help GF identify clients’ pain points and address them with new digital offers, IDEO proposed three “lighthouse” projects, one for each of GF’s divisions: Piping Systems, Casting Solutions, and Machining Solutions. Lighthouse projects (also called “Beacons”) are proofs of concept that light the way for an organization and help it shift its way of working.

For example, GF Machining Solutions built a prototype for an application that uses real-time data to help customers identify and fix problems in the machines, laying the foundation for truly predictive maintenance. Making data streams more transparent for customers also simplified life for the GF service engineers, who keep the machines running.

Learn how Georg Fischer is moving from hardware offerings to digital solutions.

For GF Piping Systems, the design team developed the GF Digital Line, a set of products, apps, dashboards, and other services that help customers plan, install, and maintain water and chemical piping systems. GF teams went back to customers to test several prototypes and gather feedback on the Digital Line and make sure it addressed current and future needs. They also built internal capabilities to support product development, laying the groundwork for future innovation.

Lastly, IDEO helped GF Casting Solutions escape the “commodity trap” of competing with foreign automotive suppliers. To better understand the pressures car manufacturers face, the design team explored the development cycles of two car manufacturers. They learned how challenging it is to implement solutions to reduce vehicle weight—essential for cutting fuel consumption. As an expert in aluminum die casting, GF was well positioned to help manufacturers meet that challenge, not just with quality parts, but also with digital engineering to deliver cutting-edge lightweight casting solutions, which are harder to replicate.

By the end of these lighthouse projects, GF had rolled out a global design thinking training program that had touched more than 1000 employees. After the training, employees throughout the organization adopted a new way of working and became passionate ambassadors. The enthusiasm spread from the R&D department to HR to finance and many other departments.

Today, GF has permanent design thinking and digital teams to continue this work. All three divisions aim to launch the first releases of their lighthouse projects by early 2019. And with every project, GF’s business—and solutions—get smarter about how to meet the needs of a fast changing world.

IHG’s ambition is to grow in service of its guests around the world. IHG’s Atlanta-based team had identified a major opportunity for hotels in the midscale space—a market segment known for its inconsistency.

Alongside colleagues at London-based forpeople, IDEO was invited to help IHG shepherd that business opportunity into a human one, by asking how IHG might reimagine the everyday travel experience for people relying on this category of hotel. What kind of offer might resonate equally with guests and with the owner/operators who’d need to buy into a new brand and bring it to life?

IDEO began by talking to travelers to better understand their lives, values, and needs—travelers who spend one or two nights on the road a few times every year; travelers who regularly take short trips to small cities or away from city centers; and travelers who live on the road, moving from hotel to hotel. These included court stenographers, medical technicians, consultants, conference-goers, and more.

Early research insights evolved into two distinct concepts for a new hotel brand, which were built out into two full-scale physical prototypes at IHG’s design center in Atlanta. Over three weeks, IDEO and its IHG partners led potential guests and hotel owners through each model, gathering their feedback on new formats for breakfast offerings, service details, booking experiences, and overall tone.

The investment in prototyping paid off with surprising and actionable insights. Despite wide variation in occupation and income, these guests are sophisticated and self-reliant; they know what’s out there, and they know what’s reasonable to expect. In fact, many describe a syndrome IDEO dubbed “anticipation anxiety:” the sense of dread that comes from not knowing whether a lower-priced hotel is going to be clean or safe, or provide a bed that enables restful sleep. Many have so little confidence in the cleanliness of hotels in this price range that they travel with their own packs of wet wipes.

IDEO, along with the IHG team, recognized these behaviors as an unanswered cry in the market. The purpose of the new brand crystallized around extinguishing that anxiety and rewarding guests with something much better. avid hotels exceeds its competition by doubling down on quality in just a few select areas: an extraordinary mattress; rigorously high standards of cleanliness; a focused, high-quality, grab-and-go breakfast and coffee experience; and an overall tone of warmth and straightforwardness.

These guests made clear that for trips like this, they aren’t interested in bells and whistles, or communication that isn’t frank or to the point. That led to an insight that upends an industry truism: for these guests—and there are many of them—choosing a hotel is rarely only about the price of the room. avid guests can often afford to stay in a more expensive place for a honeymoon or a vacation or a trip with friends; they’ll spend more when they need more. But for functional stays of one or two nights, it just feels wasteful. It goes against their values and their principles.

IHG and IDEO heard a clear call for a sense of focus and affordability—but never at the expense of quality. Guests should be able to access a simple booking process, rooms designed for sound sleep, and a quality breakfast, all at a fair price. And hotel owners ought to be able to deliver that experience with confidence and consistency, at costs that build a compelling case for their own business.

That’s what avid hotels is designed to deliver, every single time. Early traveler reviews have been exceedingly positive and have noted specifically the unique differentiating offers avid brings to the market.

Within a year of partnering with IDEO, IHG had issued 150 avid hotels licenses to franchisees in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and announced a development deal for 15 avid hotel locations in Germany over the next five years—a scale of success that came at unprecedented speed for the industry. The collaborative, inclusive design process is now serving as a model for how to develop robust, guest-centered hospitality brands that deliver where it matters for people.

Between the allure of the WFH lifestyle, more flexible working hours, and be-your-own-boss independence, it’s no wonder more people are staying home. But the other side of that coin is that everyone and their mother is freelancing, so it's harder than ever to stand out. We asked our freelance IDEOers and those who hire them to tell us the best ways to make it work.

Here are the top three ways to rethink and refuel your freelancing:

1. Turn ‘networking’ into ‘helpworking.’

Before you audibly groan at the word “networking,” hear us out. Let’s try an exercise: Write down a favor you might ask of someone in your field. Pause. How do you feel? A little anxious? Maybe kinda bummed?

Now, imagine how you might offer to help one of your clients. Jot down three provocative ideas you have for them. Pause. How do you feel? Energized?

We thought so. And that’s the thing. It turns out that while asking for help is hard and can make us feel bad, giving help is actually invigorating and makes us happy. Huh.

So what does this mean for your freelancing? It means looking for opportunities to come together with other collaborators or companies in a way that generates good vibes all around. You can make this happen by bringing together other freelancers for your own hackathon-style event. (Maybe even get a company to sponsor it in exchange for your combined thinking). Or you can join a community-based network. There are tons of places to find like-minded creative people, like co-working spaces or meet-ups.

Whether one-on-one or one-on-many, flip networking from the downer of asking for help, to the booster of giving help—and upgrade the kinds of projects and people you work with as a result.

2. Show all your angles. #nofilter

Help companies hire you by showing them all the kinds of work that you do. Are you a medical illustrator with expertise drawing physiological diagrams? That's exactly what we need for one of our health-related projects. When you say “interaction designer,” explain the very specific range of interactions you design. And if you worked on a group project, add a sentence to call out the parts of the project you did.

There’s a fear that by being very specific in what you do and don’t do, you’ll pigeonhole yourself. But the truth is that when a company needs to hire a freelancer, it’s almost certainly because of a very specific task that requires a skill or resource that the company doesn’t already have. If you happen to do that very niche craft… you’re hired!

So don’t leave the range or specificity of what you can do to the imaginations of your prospective clients. Lay it all out (preferably on your website, in emails, on LinkedIn—the Skills section is great for this), and you’ll be increasing the likelihood of a “swipe right” when it comes to new collaborations and projects.

3. Repetition does not spoil the prayer.

So you met a prospective client or collaborator at an event (perhaps the recent Break the News brainstorm we hosted in our Cambridge office), you clicked, you exchanged information, and then… crickets.

It’s tempting to think that the prospective partner will keep you top-of-mind for future projects. The reality is that, while they probably felt the spark too, life happens. And in the chaos they might not remember important details—like how to contact you! So make it easy for them by reminding them regularly of your work, what you’re up to, when you’re available, and how to get in touch.

There’s a reason advertisers commonly reference the number seven as the sweet-spot in terms of “effective frequency”—the number of times a customer needs to see an ad’s message before they buy. Think creatively about how you stay in touch and top-of-mind for potential partners. Send them a monthly email showcasing your latest work. Mail them a beautiful poster you made. Send a note praising their most recent project. Continue to show up to more events. Aim for more. To you, it might seem repetitive, but to a prospective client, it’s a reminder that you’re there, ready to co-create.

In the end, more is more. That’s the key to navigating today’s ambiguous (and exciting) un-9-to-5.

With the rise of the gig economy, the workplace has changed dramatically—and for the better, we think. The definition of a “long and successful career” has been flipped on its head. (Hint: It’s no longer about walking into the same office building for 30 years). And who’s leading the charge? Freelancers.

I took this picture last summer while I was back home in Istanbul. Istanbul is a city that people mold to fit their needs. Market owners, residents, even kids always find ways to reimagine the streets. Sometimes it’s a group of kids turning a cul-de-sac into a football field. Sometimes it’s the residents of the neighborhood having tea on the stairs of a building, treating the street as a café.

Growing up in there made me look at sidewalks in a completely different way. Last summer, while I was wandering around my neighborhood, I noticed this amazing piece of furniture that our neighborhood market owner made. He put a pillow on top of the water containers and turned them into a bench. It’s a perfect temporary seating arrangement.

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.

But that’s the thing. Finding readers who have the time to slog through an unpublished manuscript is hard. Like, really hard. Many people said they would read it, but never got further than the first few chapters. Was it because they hated the book? Or just because they got busy watching season four of Orange is the New Black? And the wonderful friends who did read it—were they actually honest with me? Or pulling punches because, who wants to make a friend cry?

That’s when a friend who actually finished my book had an idea: What if we could take some of the best aspects of the design thinking process (such as collaboration, multidisciplinary perspectives, prototyping) and adapt them for the writing and publishing space by connecting authors with a diverse pool of readers who could provide thoughtful, honest feedback? Meet The Spun Yarn.

We hypothesized that there was a whole universe of potential readers out there—moms and dads and students and grandparents who might be interested in earning a bit of extra cash by providing thoughtful feedback on an unpublished novel. So we placed a Craigslist ad in four cities to see what would happen. Within 24 hours, we had to pull the posting because we were flooded with wonderful applicants. A traveling musician from Wisconsin. A cookbook author from Georgia. A retiree and jewelry maker from San Jose. We hired these folks and others and created the framework and the process to provide honest and actionable feedback on people’s novels—including mine.

Here's how it works:

Every novel that we receive is matched with three readers, each of whom reads the entire book and provides feedback using the same evaluation matrix (a mix of qualitative and quantitative input).

Once this stage is complete, our Spun Yarn team crunches the reader input and identifies the themes and patterns that have emerged about the manuscript. We deliver this synthesized feedback report to the writer. In a sense, what we’re doing is helping writers understand that a draft of their book is just like a design prototype. Most of the time, what we’re finding is pretty straightforward stuff. A main character needs to be fleshed out. An author’s ending ties things up way too neatly. Readers absolutely loved the glimpse into the world of surgery that a certain novel provides. Double down on that in a future prototype (I mean, draft) of the novel.

There’s a saying attributed to IDEO founder David Kelley that there’s no such thing as one magic idea. What I’ve learned from the Spun Yarn is that the same goes for novel writing. It turns out (based upon input from three very thoughtful and very honest Spun Yarn readers), that I haven’t written a masterpiece. There is a ton of work that still needs to be done. But thanks to help from my own multi-disciplinary design team (based in Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Berkeley, respectively), the next draft of my novel will be just a little bit closer.

Have you written a novel? Want some honest feedback? Visit thespunyarn.com.

About a year ago, I finished a novel. After much editing in the early morning hours, I arrived at that place where I could no longer see any flaws in the book. What I needed next was feedback (on what I hoped was a masterpiece, but couldn’t be quite sure).

From a business perspective, I can appreciate why this demographic is appealing. It makes economic sense to consider a customer segment primed to understand the company's proposed product or service.

But limiting research to the East and West Coasts is exclusionary, and can even be discriminatory. Following recent events in our national story, there’s been a lot of chatter about ignorance—about a hidden America. And this isn’t just our problem: Events like Brexit, the Catalonian referendum, and the rise of populism at large all point to the need to address different perspectives. The context has shifted, and it’s our responsibility to respond.

So, a Cambridge-based team of designers decided to do something about it. We know that addressing geographic bias begins by identifying your blind spots, so to kick things off, my colleague Graham Gardner helped us prototype a simple yet elegant solution: a data-rich Google Map.

For every engagement, we document where the team conducts research and upload this information to the map. It’s the first step in visualizing hotspots, as well as potential design research deserts. Just seeing the spread of icons across the country helps teams realize if their sample population is skewed or appropriately representative.

Mapping is a simple hack that keeps teams accountable, and it’s easy to do yourself. Here's how:

1. While signed into your Google account, open the “My Maps” page on Google Maps.
2. Click on Create a new map in the upper-left corner.
3. Click on Untitled map and give your new map a name, for example, “Design Research Phase 1".
4. Search for the addresses of locations you’ve selected for your research.
5. Click + Add to map to create a marker at that location.
6. Zoom out to see a birds-eye view of your research plan.

It’s that easy. And it’s incredibly effective.

Maps motivate action. This isn’t a revolutionary perspective. Organizations across the globe use maps to identify blind spots in their work. Consider the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas (designed to prompt policymakers to close the gap to healthy foods) or the New York Times’ powerful piece on "Mapping Segregation," which was intended to spark dialogue about systemic segregation.

Now, we're designing ways to burst our own design research bubble, and I’ve already begun to notice some changes. On a recent client engagement, we revised our plan and suggested a few days of research in Kansas and Missouri, instead of just Boston.

To our delight, the client loved the idea. Two weeks later, we were on a flight to Kansas City. While there, we noticed the importance of community relationships in a much stronger way than we did at home base. This pushed us to reconsider how we incorporated community advice into our final product design.

Inclusive, forward-thinking design doesn’t mean replicating what works well or feels right in our backyard. It means getting out there, dialing up your inner listener, and sitting down with someone completely unlike you. Your perspective will never be the same.

At IDEO, we take listening pretty seriously. That means talking to people who are outside of our comfort zone. That said, in my years conducting design research interviews, I’ve found that our targets fit a certain profile: Coastal. Millennial. Liberal. Globally-minded.

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.