New Yorkers experience policing differently depending on who they are and where they live. Some communities are patrolled; others are profiled. When your neighbors’ experiences are starkly different from your own, it can be almost impossible to understand their perspective.

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), a state branch of the ACLU, hoped to spark a dialogue around race and police tactics in over-policed communities, and to engage voters on this divisive issue before New York City’s mayoral election. But the NYCLU also understood that traditional slogans and billboards weren’t enough to foster deep personal conversations and effective political action—the city needed real talk.

The organization engaged IDEO to help create a city-wide, nontraditional campaign. In talking with New Yorkers, the NYCLU advocates and IDEO designers honed in on two simple truths: Transformative conversations happen only when people feel safe enough to listen—and to speak. And people become more compassionate listeners once they themselves feel heard. In a time of entrenched interests and growing social conflict, listening can be a radical act.

Together, IDEO and the NYCLU designed Listening NYC, a grassroots campaign to promote interpersonal listening, meaningful discussion, and collective action around policing.

To get New Yorkers—famously brash and always bustling—to stop and listen to their neighbors, they created a pop-up installation called the Listening Room that travels through the city to catalyze one-on-one conversations. It’s a portable safe space, with tables, chairs, two walls that provide a degree of intimacy, and two sides left open for a feeling of psychological safety.

At the center of the experience is a deck of Conversation Cards that encourage New Yorkers to share their stories and hear those of others. Simple prompts like “I believe the role of police is to _____,” and questions like “A cop stops you in your neighborhood. What do you do?” empower people to find common ground. Through straightforward but structured activities like these, many New Yorkers who enter the Listening Room expecting to disagree instead find themselves sharing stories and opinions in ways they never imagined.

Beyond face-to-face dialogue, the Listening Room also features a radio loaded with stories from different neighborhoods across the city’s five boroughs. By turning the dial, visitors can learn about encounters with policing culture from fellow New Yorkers, including two NYPD officers.

To turn talk into action, visitors are invited to send a postcard to the mayor. People choose the policy proposals most important to them—from, “Police shouldn’t be disciplining kids in school” to, “If police want to read our emails, they should have to get a warrant”—and add them to a pre-stamped postcard dropped into a special “ballot box.” The NYCLU delivered more than 2,000 of these cards to Mayor Bill de Blasio upon his reelection in late 2017.

IDEO and the NYCLU also led an interactive campaign event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Residents, students, philanthropists, and police were led through an exercise called Creative Tensions, positioning themselves around the room according to their views on everything from surveillance technology to school safety. Experts helped guide the conversation including Sheriff Jerry Clayton, director Liesl Tommy, and NYCLU organizer Brandon Holmes. The process allowed participants to see how fluid people’s positions can be.

Listening NYC has now reached thousands of New Yorkers at more than 35 locations. Schools, from a public middle school to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, have requested visits from the Listening Room, and the installation’s modular design has inspired new incarnations on topics including student safety and discipline.

The NYCLU has sent Conversation Cards to celebrities, influencers, and every member of the New York City Council. Sending postcards to Mayor de Blasio and Conversation Cards to the city council led directly to passage of the Right to Know Act—legislation that incorporates some of the NYCLU’s proposals for police reform.

Today, the impact of Listening NYC has moved beyond city limits. The NYCLU’s Syracuse chapter is introducing the pop-up installation there, while in Boston, mayoral candidate Tito Jackson even promised a visit from the Listening Room if elected. To keep dialogue flowing, the ACLU plans to distribute Conversation Cards nationwide.

Fashion thrives on reinvention. Now, digital platforms and tools are reinventing fashion. E-commerce has reshaped the shopping experience and social media has democratized the once-exclusive industry.

Amidst this furious whirl of change, the fashion platform Zalando, founded in 2008, has become one of Europe’s fastest-growing tech companies. Headcount has ballooned to 15,000 and revenues grew 23 percent year over year. More than €1 out of every €100 spent on clothing in Europe is spent at Zalando.

In 2014, Zalando’s co-founder and CEO Robert Gentz approached IDEO to help think about the organization’s future in the face of increasing competition. Gentz realized that building design thinking capabilities across the company would allow Zalando to make systemic business shifts, like building better experiences for customers, and balancing operational excellence and execution with innovation.

So, he invited a team of IDEO designers and Zalando employees to create an innovation lab in its Berlin headquarters. They called it The Studio, and in the three years since its launch, it has helped the company build new products, experiences, and modes of working that are powering a digital transformation across Zalando and in the broader fashion world.

Finding purpose

Gentz came to IDEO with a simple request: “I want my daughter to be proud of the company I created.” With that directive, the first order of business was to home in on the organization’s new strategy—to shift from an e-tailer to a full-blown fashion platform—and resurface purpose. After a series of interviews and workshops across the company, a unifying intent emerged:

Zalando exists to reimagine fashion, for the good of all.

To share that message, the team designed a five-day Festival of Purpose at the company’s Berlin headquarters and satellite locations, coupled with a long-term plan to help leaders and their teams weave that sense of purpose into everything they do.

WATCH: Learn how Zalando used purpose to mobilize its community

Building Innovation Capacity

With a shared purpose to rally around, Zalando started to design and build at a clip. The Studio experimented and prototyped, launching products like Seen At, a mobile app that allows members to upload street style photos, and a digital tool called Collabary that connects online fashion influencers with brands. Projects are enabling cross-disciplinary teams to get into the practice of aligning around joint goals, making fast decisions, and building with agility.

But just as important as identifying growth opportunities for the company has been The Studio’s role as a hub. Zalando employees from across business units cycled into the Studio, teaching IDEOers about their business and the company’s culture, while IDEOers helped them master the design thinking process so they could lead future projects.

Studio graduates ensure that anything prototyped there is implemented, and integrate what they’ve learned into their day jobs. Their experience makes them design ambassadors who spread the practice of experimentation, prototyping, and storytelling across the organization.

WATCH: Learn how Zalando pioneered a new innovation studio

Teaching Leaders How to Scale Change

It’s one thing to start working differently in a small innovation lab, but how do you scale change across an organization and determine how it will affect each major business unit—product, technology, commercial, and logistics? IDEO interviewed Zalando employees to better understand how to embed what we called new Ways of Working (WoW), a method that combines design thinking with lean and agile approaches. WoW was then deployed by a centralized team that ran workshops and coaching sessions to help leaders adopt it, measure its impact through OKRs, KPIs, and NPSs, and help their teams understand the new processes.

Today, the Ways of Working method is being rolled out across the entire organization, reaching all 15,000 employees.

Together, the relationship between IDEO and Zalando and their multi-year project of change is spurring double-digit growth, and making good on the company’s vision of reimagining fashion, for the good of all.

WATCH: Learn how Zalando scaled new ways of working across their organization

IDEO helped position Shinho’s ingrained respect for food, family, and good health as a guiding principle for how the organization interacts with its employees and the wider world. The IDEO team integrated a new motto—“treat the world as family”—into every part of Shinho’s work, from sourcing and hiring to new ventures to the care employees take in handling each bottle of sauce destined for someone’s table.

To help transform Shinho’s internal culture, the IDEO team also crafted a narrative to communicate the company’s beliefs to new staff and outside partners. The team expressed Shinho’s foundational story through a published brand book and film, reimagined logo, and codified employee values.

“My proudest moment was when we brought the brand identity IDEO developed to life, and interpreted Shinho’s mission and vision through that lens in front of 2,000 employees at our annual meeting,” said Hanzhong Dong, Shinho's Head of Product, “It made me feel that even though we’re a group of ordinary people, we’re working on a great and meaningful thing."

Shinho’s heightened confidence and focus on supporting families has empowered the company to expand beyond soy sauce and snacks and explore new offers, from culinary training to sustainable farming to food experiences.

In July 2017, Shinho stepped onto the international stage as a tastemaker by participating in an event called Food Forward, hosted by the Michelin Guide and IDEO. Michelin-starred restaurants are synonymous with superb ingredients and service. Shinho crafts safe, organic, high-quality products that are staples for Chinese chefs, and the company shares the Michelin Guide’s aim to celebrate and expand the role of fine dining in China. IDEO brought all parties together with the shared goals of elevating China's culinary craft and culture, inspiring people around the future of food in China, and encouraging fruitful connections and partnerships.

IDEO and the Michelin Guide organized the day-long event, which included guest speakers, panel discussions, and tastings with four international, Michelin-starred restaurant chefs. Speakers and panelists discussed culinary education, inclusion, and the interplay between tradition and innovation in food. More than 200 people attended from across the food ecosystem: chefs, restaurateurs, journalists, investors, and educators. The event’s livestream garnered 30 million global views and 800,000 engagements.

Shinho’s products now reach 30 million families in 232 cities around the globe, driven by a cohesive mission and brand message. This kind of values-driven growth and hunger for new partnerships is setting the course for the future of food in China and throughout the region.

Despite the rapid growth of China's economy and increased access to a wider variety of food since the opening up, the market is saturated with unhealthy, processed snack foods. Consumers are increasingly seeking better-quality options, highlighting a significant gap in the food system.

30M families

purchase Shinho’s products

60 countries

around the globe offer Shinho products

Narvar, a software-as-a-service startup that provides a post-purchase engagement platform for retail clients, was scaling fast. The company had grown from 20 to 90 employees, and was well on its way to reaching 300 over the next two years. As the company grew, its leaders wanted to make sure it could sustain its vibrant, innovative culture. Narvar came to IDEO for help identifying and defining its values in a way that would would scale with the organization.

For the IDEO team, that meant articulating a system of values that supported existing behavior, reflected the company’s aspirations, and aided in evaluating new talent and development. The team started by interviewing key “culture carriers,” from the CEO to new hires, to learn what makes Narvar special. Based on this research, the team crafted a working set of values, then invited the entire company to share their feedback. In doing this work, IDEO was also able to surface organizational issues and tensions within the company for Narvar leaders to address.

Now, Narvar lives its values every day. Team members use them during candidate interviews, employees see them daily on company walls, and managers reinforce them during performance reviews. Every quarter, leadership gives out a Narvar values award to reinforce their importance. Through this project, Narvar was able to not only capture its core values, but also use them as an active ingredient in the company’s growth.

“We engaged IDEO to really understand the challenges we faced as an organization, and IDEO helped us define and articulate our culture and values. I can honestly say that all the growth and success we’ve achieved in the past two years—we couldn’t have done that without the foundation from IDEO,” said Narvar CEO and founder Amit Sharma.

“What's going on there?” asked my colleague Ed, in his usual bouncing demeanor, pointing at my phone propped in its handy, commonly-found, IKEA glassware receptacle.

I was in the last weeks of a project, building out a mobile-first website to showcase our final deliverables. I was going about my usual process, with a minimal set up: designing the UI in Sketch, mirroring the artboards on my phone.

“What? This?” I replied, adjusting the angle of my glass full of iPhone.

“Yeah. I've never seen anyone do that before,” he chimed back.

It dawned on me that this behavior in my design quiver—something I'd been doing since my very first mobile design moment—may not be that common.

Instead of having to stop and pick up my phone every time I need to check my work, I just plop it in a glass, adjust the angle, and check my design’s mobile readiness with a glance.

The adjustability and the “there's probably one lying around” factor of a drinking glass elevates it to a handy design tool that I’ve used throughout my career.

And once you’ve shipped the design, it also makes for a great vessel for a celebratory swally.

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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.

Creativity Challenge #3: Jumpstart an ideation session

Here’s one quick, simple exercise to get creative muscles warmed up. We learned it from David’s mentor, Bob McKim, back when David was a product design student. It’s called Thirty Circles, and you can do it on your own or in a group. The goal is to push people to test their creativity by turning circles into recognizable objects in a very short period of time.

Tool: Thirty Circles Exercise
Participants: Solo or groups of any size
Time: 3 minutes, plus discussion
Supplies: Pen and a piece of paper (per person) with 30 blank circles on it of approximately the same size. (We recommend printing it on an oversized sheet of paper. You can also just ask everyone to draw their own 30 circles on a blank piece of paper.)

Instructions

Step 1: Give each participant one 30 Circles sheet of paper and something to draw with.

Step 2: Turn as many of the blank circles as possible into recognizable objects in three minutes (think clock faces, billiard balls, etc.)

Step 3: Compare results. Look for the quantity or fluency of ideas. How many people filled in ten, fifteen, twenty or more circles? (Typically most people don’t finish.) Next, look for diversity or flexibility in ideas. See if the ideas are derivative (a basketball, a baseball, a volleyball) or distinct (a planet, a cookie, a happy face). Did anyone “break the rules” and combine circles (a snowman or a traffic light)? Were the rules explicit, or just assumed?

Tips from the field

Besides being a great warm-up exercise, Thirty Circles offers a quick lesson about ideation. When you generate ideas, you are balancing two goals: fluency (the speed and quantity of ideas) and flexibility (ideas that are truly different and distinct). We know from experience that it’s easier to have a great idea if you have many to choose from. But if you have a lot of ideas that are just variations on a theme, you might really only have one idea with twenty-nine other versions. When you combine fluency and flexibility, you can generate a rich array of concepts to choose from.

This post was taken from Chapter 7 of Creative Confidence. Purchase the book for more on how to use creativity to solve problems.

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.

How could Fintona make their newbies feel comfortable saying, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out?” They began by experimenting on themselves. Their first idea was a goofy one: arm each newbie with a Bat Signal—a flashing red police light that newbies could trigger any time they were stumped to summon help from across the call center.

The first day of the experiment, it was clear that the lights weren't working. Newbies who were already uncomfortable saying, “I don't know,” were even more uncomfortable turning on a flashing emergency light that screamed to the whole floor, “I DON’T KNOW!” When other service agents saw the signal, they just assumed that someone else would jump in and help. The experiment failed.

The team needed to iterate. They thought that maybe each Bat Signal needed a Batmanager—a dedicated leader who could watch the lights and swoop in to save the day. So, the team moved the lights to the managers' offices and asked them to be on the lookout.

That didn't work either. Newbies still felt singled out, and the Batmanagers weren’t at their desks often enough to act as a reliable safety net. Realizing the team needed a private way to call for help, they created a private chat channel—the Bat Chat—where newbies could connect directly with experts from Fintona’s specialized departments.

But the experts didn’t answer any questions. In fact, the only answers that newbies got on the Bat Chat were from other newbies. That gave the team an idea: They would launch the Bat Chat across the entire call center. They figured that veteran agents must know the answer to 80 percent of newbies’ questions, and they might be a safer resource than some stranger in another department.

Finally, success. The Bat Chat took off like crazy. Surprisingly, it wasn’t newbies who first started using the chat, but veteran service agents asking each other questions. As more veteran voices spoke up (or typed up), the newbies started asking their own questions and getting immediate answers.

The Bat Chat was the perfect solution for this team. But, there was no special analysis that they could have done beforehand to figure that out. No market research or benchmarking data would have suggested it. They had to build, fail, iterate, and repeat to find the answer. And once they found it, it didn’t need careful change management to extend it to the rest of Customer Support. It spread by word of mouth, and became a source of pride because the team found their own solution.

Fintona learned some remarkably similar lessons to what Harvard professor Teresa Amabile found in her two-year study of the culture of helping at IDEO: Newbies don’t need to be singled out. They need to see that everyone—even their most successful colleagues—need help sometimes.

This post is an excerpt of a longer article I wrote for Harvard Business Review. Read the full story here.

This article is excerpted from a longer story in Harvard Business Review.

Fintona Financial (not the company’s real name) was growing fast—so fast that their Customer Support call center had tripled in size. They couldn’t recruit fast enough. Many new service agents were pulled out of their two-month training program in as little as two weeks. Eager to look good in front of their bosses, these newbies struggled to answer tricky questions—all too often, they would give a right-sounding answer instead of saying, “I don’t know,” and asking someone for help. This not only triggered inceased call volumes but also began to erode Fintona’s customer satisfaction scores.

I first began creating cartoons as a way of communicating with Marta, my wife, when we started dating. I hate texts, so instead, I would draw a cartoon, take a picture, and send it to her. We are both New Yorker readers, and at some point she said that mine were better than most of the the magazine’s. She is not biased. Neither is my mom, also a fan of mine, so I thought it was worth the shot.

I submitted for the first time in the summer of 2016. A former coworker is married to David Sipress, a classic New Yorker cartoonist, and one of my favorites. David kindly offered to take a look at my cartoons. He said that they were totally publishable, and encouraged me to submit to the magazine. He also shared a few pro tips, like that The New Yorker very rarely publishes puns, and when it does, it’s almost always ironically (almost a quarter of the cartoons I sent him were puns).

Almost every week, the New Yorker cartoon editor meets with artists and reviews their work. This meeting is open to anybody. You just show up, sign up, and present your cartoons. So, one hot day in June, I printed my cartoons and showed up at the offices at One World Trade Center, ready to make an impression (good or bad).

The great thing about the cartoon meeting is that you sit with the editor and he gives you feedback, right there. Back then, Bob Mankoff was still the cartoon editor. The opportunity to have a private critique session with somebody like Bob was fantastic. On our first meeting he said that he liked my cartoons, that the drawings were very good, and the jokes were “not bad,” which is quite a compliment coming from him. He picked four of my cartoons and I was thrilled. I thought that I had it made and I was going to start selling cartoons right away.

Not quite. It turns out, the meeting is just the first filter. The editor has a subsequent meeting with David Remnick, The New Yorker’s editor, where he shows him his selection of cartoons for the week. David decides which to keep, but before the magazine buys anything, they will peruse their archives—and cartoons from other major publications—and check that they have not published anything similar first. It’s quite the process. They didn’t buy a cartoon that time. Nor the following week. Nor the next one.

In my meetings with Bob, he was quite blunt, but always funny, and he often built on my cartoons, coming up with new iterations or different ideas for the same joke. The main criticism I received was that my captions were not sharp or punchy enough. That makes sense because English is my second language. In Spanish, I am hilarious.

After many rejections, you might think I’d have gotten discouraged and stopped trying, but I have fun making cartoons. Rejection is just a part of the process that every cartoonist has to endure. It took David Sipress 25 years of submissions until The New Yorker published his work. Bob Mankoff himself sent more than 2,000 cartoons before he sold his first one. However, there are geniuses like Ed Steed who sell after their first submission. He is my favorite. I hate him with every fiber of my soul.

I’m also a bit of a masochist, perhaps as a side effect from attending a Catholic school for 13 years. I am an atheist now, but I still think that the only way to reach salvation is through suffering. I come up with projects that require a high level of commitment, take a painstaking amount of work, and provide low returns. I am very smart.

You can say that there is some sense of pride in a perfect record of 100% cartoon failure—otherwise I wouldn’t put them up with a big red REJECTED stamp on them. But the thing that I am most proud of is that Bob Mankoff said of one of my cartoons that it was the worst he had seen in his entire life. Hell, that’s something to brag about. I said, “Don’t worry, I can do worse,” and he burst out laughing.

However, I am not going to lie. Sometimes it hurts, especially after a few rounds of rejections. But that’s just my ego itching. Who wants to be published in The New Yorker after all? What a bunch of snobs.

That being said, I plan to go back to The New Yorker very soon to meet the new cartoon editor. I might get luckier with her. Getting into the rhythm of drawing ten cartoons every couple of weeks helped me hone my drawing skills, and I’ve missed it since I stopped. The style of the drawings I make for our projects, which often end up in front of clients, is the direct result of those dozens of hours of making cartoons. It’s like illustration gym.

And it’s interesting, the more cartoons you create, the more ideas you generate. At first I was afraid of running dry, but I was surprised when the opposite happened. I have a little red book where I write down ideas for cartoons, and the list keeps growing.

But, most importantly, I just enjoy making cartoons. Sometimes you can see me sitting by myself in a cafe, laughing out loud at my own drawings, which is quite a pitiful scene if you think about it. We are all going to end up as human compost, so we might as well laugh a little on the way to our graves.

Thanks to Lawrence Abrahamson, Michael Hendrix, and Lindsey Rodabaugh for encouragement and help with the exhibit.

IDEO communication designer Juan Astasio knows a thing or two about rejection. His great ambition is to publish a cartoon in The New Yorker. In the last three years, he’s submitted more than 100 cartoons and met with an editor to discuss his work ten times. Still, nada. But instead of being discouraged, Juan has embraced his failure, sharing his jokes with the New York studio on the walls of one of its phone booths. Here’s what he’s picked up in the process, why it’s worth it for him to keep going, and what, exactly, he’s learned from failure.

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.