For 6-year-old Dave Jr., a long line at Disneyland triggered a massive meltdown. His parents were concerned and a little embarrassed, but not surprised; Dave Jr. struggled to keep his emotions in check.

Hoping to help, Dave Jr.'s uncle, entrepreneur Craig Lund, joined forces with researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, along with a video game designer who had worked on Quick Hit and NBA 2K. Together, they set out to design something that could teach coping skills to kids like Dave Jr. who need to manage “big emotions,” as well as children suffering from anxiety, ADHD, and other behavior issues, which are on the rise.

Their collaboration resulted in a video game called Mightier and a startup called Neuromotion Labs—a 10-person team of psychologists, game designers, and engineers who embedded at IDEO Cambridge for a one-month sprint to improve the game and get ready for launch.

To play Neuromotion's game, kids are first taught simple, calming breathing exercises. During gameplay, kids wear heart-rate monitors on a wrist or arm that detect spikes caused by stress or anger; as their heart rates go up, the game's difficulty increases. Kids have opportunities to pause and try deep breathing to counter the ramped up challenge. As it turns out, "gamifying" restraint builds strong incentives for kids to take charge of their emotions—they have to if they want to win.

Already activated around boosting mental and emotional health, IDEO's design team worked side-by-side with Neuromotion to study how parents and children experience Mightier. From home visits to group interviews to a summer camp-style design session with kid players, live feedback fueled the next iteration of the gaming platform and better product-market fit.

IDEO helped Neuromotion hone the visual design and mechanics of Mightier and expand it's suite of games. The team observed that the Mightier program was more successful the more involved parents of players became, which revealed a need for additional resources for adults. So they created new supports, including a more detailed orientation and a personalized coaching service for parents staffed by trained therapists.

But can a video game actually help kids cope? Early peer-reviewed studies showed that playing Mightier reduced outbursts by 62 percent, oppositional behaviors by 40 percent, and parental stress by 19 percent. After 12 weeks of using Mightier, a survey of kids and parents showed that 96 percent of parents saw positive behavior changes in their children, while 92 percent of kids learned new coping skills.

Shortly after the design sprint, Neuromotion secured its next round of funding and officially launched Mightier’s array of “bioresponsive games.” The games have already been played more than a million times, and Neuromotion has measured more than a 100 million heartbeats. Mightier games are helping kids and families across the country.

What about Dave Jr.? Recently, his sister told Lund she "accidentally" bumped Dave Jr.’s bike off a pier and into the ocean. She was expecting an outburst of anger, but after eight months of playing Mightier, Dave Jr. stayed cool. His uncle couldn’t be prouder.

Many of us have let vegetables wither in the crisper drawer, or thrown out a child’s half-eaten restaurant meal, but the sheer scale of food waste around the globe is hard to grasp. According to the United Nations, about a third of the food the world produces every year—1.3 billion tons—is lost during production or tossed by consumers, with North Americans throwing out the most food per capita. The average American wastes enough food each month to feed another person for 19 days.

IDEO received a series of grants from The Rockefeller Foundation to find solutions, given the power of IDEO’s human-centered design approach to address systemic challenges. Through a number of projects with The Rockefeller Foundation and other organizations, IDEO designers from across the U.S. devised novel ways to tackle food waste.

For IDEO’s first initiative, designers tapped into the enthusiasm of the broader creative community, in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation, the City of San Francisco’s Department of Environment, the Closed Loop Foundation, ReFED, and other groups. In the summer of 2016, OpenIDEO—IDEO’s open innovation practice—launched the Food Waste Challenge, asking how people might curtail waste by rethinking our relationship with food. Between June and October, more than 20,000 people from 113 countries took part in the challenge, tracking their personal waste and brainstorming solutions.

Challenge participants submitted more than 450 ideas. A team of food industry experts helped select the 12 top proposals, which included software to help people buy food collectively from wholesalers and a service that delivers extra meals from corporate events to those in need. Ultimately, the Closed Loop Foundation chose to award Full Cycle Bioplastics a $50,000 grant to scale up its idea to convert inedible food and paper waste into a fully compostable alternative to oil-based plastic.

At the conclusion of the Food Waste Challenge, OpenIDEO launched the Food Waste Alliance, a platform for participants and experts to stay engaged with the most promising ideas and innovators. The alliance helped entrepreneurs share resources, prototype new concepts, secure funding, hire staff, and form partnerships. OpenIDEO invited hundreds to join the alliance, and 92 percent of members told IDEO they made progress in their work as a result. One member company, RISE, received funding from another participant who discovered RISE through the alliance. This investment let RISE prototype its concept for milling spent grain from beer brewing into flour for baked goods and ultimately join the prestigious Food-X accelerator.

The Rockefeller Foundation also supported IDEO’s work with City Harvest, a New York organization that collects 160,000 pounds of unused food each day and delivers it to soup kitchens and food pantries. City Harvest wanted to understand the habits of local families who visit food banks in an effort to ensure all the food the group distributes gets eaten. To get a peek into these families’ kitchens, in January 2017, IDEO researchers conducted observations and interviews across New York City’s five boroughs. Pantry customers cooked for the researchers, giving them an inside look at how the families engaged with the food they had available and what food meant to each of them: tradition, stability, even adventure. Based on insights from pantry visitors, IDEO made recommendations for City Harvest, including community-run cooking classes and a way for families to request specific foods or reserve pick-up times by text message. IDEO also created three video vignettes to help build even greater empathy between City Harvest and the people it serves.

In spring 2017, capping IDEO’s work with The Rockefeller Foundation, the organizations teamed up with World Wildlife Fund and Hyatt hotels in Florida, New York, and New Jersey to rethink all-you-can-eat buffets. IDEO studied diners and staff at Hyatt buffets and found that employees—from event planners to kitchen staff—each add a cushion of extra food to cover their bases, while guests overfill their plates to avoid missing out. In the end, diners eat just half the food organizers serve, while the rest goes to waste. This and other data-driven insights gleaned about diners’ habits led to subtle substitutions, including smaller plates of meats and cheeses that can be ordered from servers and individual pastries rather than whole cakes. These alternatives have not only built on Hyatt’s existing food waste management strategies, but have also helped reduce buffet costs at Hyatt Regency Orlando and continued to receive support from guests.

The problem of food waste is too enormous to ignore. Wasted food means squandered resources, lost money, and ultimately, hungry people—more than 15 million in the United States alone. Designers and innovators from coast to coast have helped find solutions to the crisis that fulfill a variety of needs, from preserving produce sent to food pantries to keeping plastic packaging out of the oceans. The Rockefeller Foundation and other IDEO partners are leveraging powerful design techniques to pave the way for a waste-free future.

In 2017, IDEO acquired longtime partner Datascope and integrated the company’s data scientists and engineers. Datascope team members aren’t just passionate data scientists; they’re human-centered designers who happen to work with data, as illustrated by successful collaborations like this one:

In today’s job market, there’s no such thing as being "done" with your education. This is particularly true in the fields of data science, machine learning, and AI, where significant advances are made on a monthly basis. To meet this need for more in-depth training, Metis—part of Kaplan—wanted to create a comprehensive data science program for students from all backgrounds. Metis asked Datascope to design the curriculum from scratch, drawing on the company’s deep expertise in the field.

Datascope spoke with practitioners across industries to identify the key skill sets that make them successful: a grasp of design; fluency with data management, coding, and algorithms; and effective communication with coworkers and the wider world. The team crafted a 12-week bootcamp that develops these specific abilities.

In order to prepare students for the work world, the bootcamp is structured less like a class and more like a company, where students are “hired” as data scientists—with projects to complete—starting on day one.

Students collaborate on group projects and presentations in a way that mirrors real workflows, and practice pair programming to learn from one another. Using techniques drawn from design, students are invited to refine their project briefs and continually reevaluate their approach.

Instead of a final exam, at the end of the course, students tackle five real-world, open-ended data science projects inspired by Datascope’s client work. One project involves using data from subway turnstiles to detect patterns in the volume of street traffic; another asks students to use data they scrape from the web to predict a movie’s box office profits using regression analysis.

After students complete the bootcamp, they receive an additional three months of career support, from mock interviews to site visits with potential employers. In addition to designing the curriculum, Datascope taught the first three student cohorts and helped Metis build its teaching team as it expanded the program from New York to San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle. Metis now offers online courses, evening classes, and corporate trainings in data science.

If you’re going to take a data science bootcamp, it’s best to take one designed by data scientists.

You’re whizzing along on your bike, en route to a new restaurant for a client meeting. You reach an unfamiliar intersection; which way to go now?

Instead of dismounting and digging for a phone, you brush your hand along your jacket sleeve for directions, then double-tap the denim to re-start your music. Without taking your eyes off the road, you’ve taken care of the problem.

This intuitive interface for connected apparel began with Levi's, makers of durable workwear for 140 years, and Google, creators of forward-looking technology, which joined forces to fashion the first item of clothing with touch-sensitive, copper-core threads woven directly into the fabric. Once it was established that the first connected garment from the partnership would be a jacket within Levi’s Commuter line, with interaction on the sleeve, Google worked with IDEO, leaders in designing for human needs, to develop the gesture language of the jacket and industrial design of the technology within.

This is the first connected garment that helps us break free from devices. It seamlessly incorporates Jacquard by Google technology to perform digital tasks, such as navigation, communication, and music playing with a few swipes or taps on the sleeve.

Jacquard by Google—a platform that makes it possible to integrate touch and gesture interactivity into fabrics using conductive yarn and standard, industrial looms—was inspired by a curious twist of history. The Jacquard loom, invented in France in 1804, used punch cards to automate the process of weaving complex patterns into fabric. In the 1940s and ’50s, engineers employed a similar punch-card technique to program the first computers.

IDEO spent time on the project early on, collaborating with Google engineers and Levi’s clothiers on the jacket’s development, helping craft an experience that would make the intelligent threads intuitive to wearers.

Working alongside Google and Levi’s, IDEO’s work included:

• The industrial design of the electronics integrated into the snap tag and connector (the tag snaps onto the jacket’s cuff and connects to your phone via Bluetooth)
• A vocabulary of gestures on the cuff of the jacket that lets you interact with the jacket’s technology
• Early exploration of the basic design philosophy and conceptual design for the interaction model of a corresponding smartphone app that ties it all together (works with both iOS and Android phones)

The IDEO team’s first task was to validate what commuters of all stripes wanted from the garment, in addition to the work Levi’s did in researching with its consumers. In interviews, group exercises, and wear tests with urban cyclists and other workers on the go, the team learned that cyclists needed a way to stay connected, while still living in the moment. That meant being able to answer calls, hear text messages, get the next direction, and control their music without using a screen.

Levi’s, Google, and IDEO developed a language of movement for Jacquard-enabled fabric that feels familiar and human and builds on the ways people would naturally interact with a garment (a whole-hand brush along the sleeve, as opposed to a one-finger tap on a touch screen, for instance).

Then came the design and engineering of the snap tag on the jacket’s cuff, which gently notifies you of calls, texts, and other jacket interactions with light and vibration feedback. The flexible, lightweight strap incorporates the look and feel of a Levi’s jean button, while housing advanced electronics that capture touch data. The tag is removable, charges via USB connection, and works in conjunction with a mobile app that lets you configure settings for the garment, set notifications, and customize gestures and interactions.

The Levi’s Commuter Jacket with Jacquard by Google changes the game because it’s simply that—a jacket—with technology that adds new utility and value, allowing us to wear our everyday interactions on our sleeves.

The Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket with Jacquard by Google hit stores in October 2017.

IDEO and Google have a long history of collaboration. Learn more about our work on Google Bloks here.

I must say: Designers have an advantage when it comes to communication. We have the benefit to use not only our words, but also visualizations, from sketches and 3DCAD to infographics and physical objects. Designers are capable of making words real, expressing an idea in form, color, material, and finish. We truly are tangible storytellers. But having the means to make ideas tangible doesn’t necessarily solve all communication issues—we all speak nuanced languages and carry biases toward the things we already love to hear, see, or experience.

You may have heard of the 5 Love Languages, a tool to help characterize the ways we give and receive love. What if a similar tool could be built for designers? What if, before sharing an idea, you could learn the “design love language” of your audience? You learn your romantic partner’s love language to better connect with them; you might learn your colleague’ design love language to better collaborate, or a client’s design love language so you can craft the perfect presentation.

Here are 4 “languages” to help you communicate the value of your design straight into the hearts of your audience:

1. Storyteller’s Circle

For many people, it’s the story behind your idea that will really make it sing. This goes far beyond how the idea solves a problem for people and the business; that should be a given. It’s about the thoughtful descriptions of how the idea came about, why it will make a positive impact in the world, how it was better than other ideas, and why you feel confident about that.

The team we worked with at PillPack did this masterfully. During the research phase of the process to redesign how patients engage with pharmacies, we heard personal, painful stories about dealing with the US healthcare system. Standing in long lines, keeping up with expiration dates, making sure you take this medicine with food and that one on an empty stomach—patients told us it's overwhelming. We could immediately tell there was a huge opportunity to design something to solve for these problems, and the stories we heard inspired the team to create a single vision, strategy, experience, and identity that consumers quickly understand.

To gauge whether your story will resonate, try rehearsing it as if you were speed dating. If people understand your concept in a single sentence or get excited in the first 30 seconds, you’re on to something.

2. Make it Zing

There are some ideas that make us express feelings that are beyond words—“oooohs” and “aaaahs.” For people who need that ah-ha moment to really make a new idea click, it’s your job to make them say, “Oh, wow.”

When sharing IDEO’s vision for the future of mobility, I’ve heard people remark, “So that’s what our city could look like.” The project explores the many ways that we imagine transportation—of people, places, ideas—evolving over the coming years. Though they’re purely conceptual, the ideas are brought to life through visual renderings and context clues that make them feel tangible—they transport the viewer to The Future. Try not to gasp when you realize that.

To get started, think about which of the senses you want to appeal to, then work to amplify them. Use visual cues or sound to your advantage—the “zing” happens when the idea flirts with us and tickles our senses, gut instinct, and imagination. Lean into the unpredictable, the whimsical. Make someone sigh or shout.

3. Straight to the Heart

What was the last performance you gave a standing ovation? When was the last time you cried at a movie? Which book moved you so much that you bought all your friends copies for the holidays?

This love language is about emotional resonance—tapping into the power of human emotion to impact your audience on a deep, personal level. I’ve found that it works particularly well for helping people build empathy for the human elements of large, complex systems and structures.

Our approach to telling the story of IDEO's work to design the voting system in Los Angeles County was to tug at the heartstrings, which helped make complicated and bureaucratic topic more accessible. The photos, videos, and audio stories were designed to highlight the humans who are casting ballots—the hardships, the triumphs, and everything in between.

Body language and word choice are key to nailing this one. Take cues from your audience—when you see someone lean in, nod, let themselves smile, you know you’ve landed on a moment that made things click. Practice your story with a friendly audience and observe those moments, then design your storytelling experience around them.

4. Lights, Camera, Action

For some, actions speak louder than words, and they can only fall in love with the idea after seeing or trying it. They want to use it over time, test it, live with it, break it, and have others do the same. For these people, ideas need to be on a movie set, including the actors, the scene, and the props.

For this audience, make sure to bring your idea to life as a prototype, and allow them to experience it out in the wild. That’s what we did when we helped Swarovski build a new chandelier. We didn’t just look at renderings—we built a whole living room in our office to test our prototype.

Prototypes don’t have to be perfect. In fact, they shouldn’t be. Showing up with a prototype made of cardboard and Legos is better than arriving empty handed. Do whatever you can to make your thing real and I guarantee you’ll see lightbulbs go off over people’s heads.

As designers, our job is to create things that improve people’s lives. To do so, designers must learn how to speak the languages of the various audiences we design for. It’s important for us all to recognize our own biases towards our favorite language, and have the empathy to listen and adapt to the other ones. Your design love language might be different from the person using your design.

Language matters. That’s an obvious statement for anyone working across cultures, and it especially holds true in design. As a designer, I’ve always used my skills to create tools that enable shared understanding. This mainly came about out of necessity: I was born and raised in the Netherlands, and I’ve also lived in Sweden, the UK, and for the past seven years, the US. In my 14-plus years as an industrial designer, I’ve collaborated with clients from almost every continent, from Saõ Paulo to Seoul. By working closely with people from different countries, I’ve learned first-hand how language connects us to our cultures and to one another.

Every other week, I host a creative playdate for our studio called MakeBelieveTime (MBT). We always come up with something different. Maybe we’ll combine magnets and mirrors to invent our own games. Maybe we’ll use a needle and thread to learn the basics of computer coding, or fold our hopes and fears into paper airplanes. MBT has become one of the tentpoles in our community’s calendar—a ritual that brings our bodies out of project spaces and our minds out of design mode. It’s playtime for adults.

The value of these exercises has become clear to us, but when visitors happen to be around for MBT, all the natural questions bubble up. Sounds fun, but you do this during work hours? (Yes.) Are these exercises used with clients later? (Sometimes, but not always.) How does this apply to paid project work? (It doesn’t.) So what’s the point?

That is the point. MakeBelieveTime is actually most valuable when it does not directly relate to project work in a typical, measurable way. It’s play for the sake of play, and that’s okay—in fact, it’s essential. Here’s why.

It’s about process, not product

I once had an art teacher who would sketch all over my work to show me different techniques. At first, I was frustrated because my brilliant piece was being scribbled on. But then I recognized his assumption—that an artist will do it again and again and again. That learning a new technique meant focusing on the hand, not the paper.

In our design work, we rely on our own experiences and intuition, so it’s essential that we become fluent in exploring our memories and feelings. MakeBelieveTime gives us a chance to practice that with new and unfamiliar tools. That’s why, whether it’s colored sand or temporary tattoos, the real materials of MakeBelieveTime are our personal joys, hopes, and fears.

It preps the mind for design

When I was a kid, my grandfather told me about Louis Pasteur’s belief that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Show up and do the work, Grampa explained, so that when the magic happens you’ll be sharp enough to recognize it. Making space for “sensorial, analog, hands-on radness”—that’s how one colleague described MakeBelieveTime—gives designers a much needed mental reset.

Plus, MBT actually has made an impact on client work. A handful of insights and concepts that originally came out of MakeBelieveTime actually made it into an experience we designed for a major NYC landmark.

But that’s not really the point. It’s about helping our designers spread their nets as wide as possible, and to lighten things up with a moment of pure, playful joy, so that when inspiration comes they’re ready to grab it.

It broadcasts both values and value

Most designers will sing the praises of play. It opens you up and makes you braver, more optimistic, and more creative. We pepper client meetings with pipe-cleaner sculptures or a little improv to get the blood and imagination flowing. We put a lot of thought and energy into those activities, thinking about our clients’ needs and the best way to get them comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Most designers will also admit that when deadlines loom, proposals beckon, or clients push back, play is not always top-of-mind. That’s a problem. An organization’s beliefs come through in their actions. To show that play is worth the time, you have to make time for it.

How to build your own MakeBelieveTime

We want MBT to be much more than a free-for-all with glue sticks and googly eyes, so we use three key design principles to guide the activities:

1. Make the familiar unfamiliar. To think about senses we take for granted, we infused finger paints with essential oils and asked everyone to visually illustrate the experience of smelling that scent.
2. Explore safe danger. Blind contour drawing is a great example. We all sit and draw the person across from us—without lifting the pen or looking down at the drawing. It’s always a mess, which guarantees a joyful, public fail, but also allows us to look deeply at each other and practice seeing and being seen.
3. Dig deep. We used Halloween as a prompt to create a mask that evokes a moment we were horrified by our own behavior. This allowed us to acknowledge the full spectrum of our feelings, exorcise that shadow, and leave it to the past.

The first, despairing thought that hit one of my colleagues when he first saw MBT in action was, “IDEO’s gone soft.” And, quite frankly, that's not an unfair concern when you see a room full of world-class designers finger painting.

But MBT serves as an opportunity to nourish a perspective rather than achieve an objective. It’s less about the scented fingerpaints, and more about exploring new ways of understanding and sharing an experience. It’s also about laughing together. It’s about exposing our soft side so that we can trust each other more when we take those lessons back to our project spaces and have a hunch about trying something untested but exciting.

That’s why we believe that designing a cocktail that tells the story of your first kiss doesn’t cost you your edge. It’s how you keep it.

Think back to your first kiss. Remember the place, the smells, the nerves, the lips. If you had to create a cocktail to tell the story of that experience, how would you do it? Would you make Jolly Rancher–infused vodka to conjure the candy-loving kid next door? Would a popcorn garnish nod to the movie you barely watched? Answering these questions is how the designers of IDEO New York spent a Valentine’s Day afternoon.

It’s time to challenge that notion. The ability to navigate ambiguity—and to guide people and organizations without knowing what’s ahead—will be one of the key leadership qualities of our time. Because, in today’s world, almost nothing is certain. Technological change is drastic and rapid; volatility grips politics, the economy, and the climate; the future of healthcare and education are in question. And much as it would be a relief to land on a quick fix for any number of these challenges, the reality is that solutions are a moving target, and no one leader possesses a silver bullet.

But creativity can help. According to the World Economic Forum, creativity is among the top three skills needed to thrive in 2020, along with other capabilities infused with the human touch: complex problem solving and critical thinking. In a world where thorny challenges have no magic solution, leaders must get comfortable with not having an answer—leaning into the unknown and establishing a leadership style that incorporates many perspectives, sustains optimism, and perseveres through ambiguity.

We call this approach creative leadership. The term has made the rounds in academic circles for decades, but in practice, it’s only now gaining recognition as an effective approach in today’s turbulent times. Creative leadership takes conditions that are anxiety-provoking for many, and turns them into opportunities. In certain industries, where frequent change is inherent, it’s not unusual to find leaders who fit the bill. But now we are seeing that creative leaders can spark change in any industry or on any team, from manufacturing to marketing to finance to food.

So what are those qualities that equip leaders to leverage ambiguity and drive progress? How do they show up in their day-to-day role and move their companies forward? There are three key tactics that creative leaders employ: building diverse, multidisciplinary teams to maximize perspectives; navigating ambiguity with bold ideas; and maintaining forward momentum by sharing optimism, empathy and inspiration.

1. Creative leaders convene diverse groups and rally them around tangible goals.

Among many industries facing uncertainty and change today, healthcare stands near the top. In 2015, Northern California-based Sutter Health hired its first Chief Innovation Officer to help guide its enterprise innovation strategy across their integrated healthcare system, which serves three million people in one of the most diverse regions in the country. Sutter tapped Chris Waugh, then the vice president of design at a young, innovative primary care provider called One Medical Group, to partner with them in transforming the healthcare experience to make it more simple, engaging and human.

As Sutter’s first chief innovation officer, Waugh admits he battled impostor syndrome. He’d worked in the health space for much of his career, but often on the design side (including a decade at IDEO), rather than embedded within a large healthcare organization. “Who was I to tell a surgeon what to do? These people do transplants and save lives. Why would they listen to me?”

His first step was to build a diverse, cross-functional team to pool knowledge and ideas. Every executive—from legal to human resources to operations to medicine—appointed an open-minded, collaborative senior staff member. Next, Waugh and his design and innovation team articulated an optimistic purpose: They would “touch one million lives by 2022,” providing better healthcare and services to patients and their families. Then with this lofty goal top of mind, Waugh identified the right places to start small and set constructive conditions under which they could start making a difference.

They began innovating in non-clinical areas, such as using car sharing services to help transport patients to appointments. The pilots aimed for achievable targets, impacting a small number of people in the first few months, setting the right conditions, then progressing to larger scale. “Starting small with constraints keeps you from thinking you have all of the answers at the beginning. You can be more experimental, test for consequences, increase creative confidence, and discover over time when you’re ready to go full scale.”

2. Creative leaders navigate ambiguity by leading with curiosity.

Through it all, Waugh navigated his way toward solutions even though he couldn’t know the answers at the outset. He assembled the right people to converge on decisions at critical moments. And he shared lessons and stories of progress as a way to continually motivate people across the system.

Waugh asked bold questions, such as how might we reimagine the end of life experience for ourselves and our loved ones? His teams created a simple toolkit for talking about death with loved ones, which led to dozens of events around the globe where people turned an often taboo subject into open conversations called #LetsTalkAboutDeath. They also devised a platform that connects people with physical limitations to people who can vicariously fulfill their wishes, then share those experiences with them virtually. Wins like these kept Waugh’s team inspired, increasing their creativity and confidence as they positively impacted people’s lives.

Over the years, Waugh and his design and innovation team have continued their work and expanded the range of challenges they’ve tackled, as well as the number of lives they’ve touched. Now they are moving toward more clinical experiences, such as leveraging telemedicine to support patients in rural areas. “From the beginning, we knew that medical experts needed more creative problem-solving to better serve patients and their families. Across Sutter Health, we have a culture of innovation and we try new ways of working and thinking. With each success, my confidence and the confidence of teams across Sutter grows.”

3. Creative leaders stay fiercely optimistic to maintain momentum.

In 2015, Valentina Freile, an experienced industrial designer, was hired to join an elite team of technical experts at an Ecuadorian software development company called Bayteq. Her first project focused on advancing mobile services for a large local bank. She was excited to develop digital tools to help Ecuador keep pace with global change.

But Freile’s enthusiasm quickly turned to concern when she saw the initial product concepts. The team was proud to have incorporated cutting-edge technology on par with other international banks, but they’d overlooked a major consideration: how that new tech would add value to real people—the bank’s customers. Freile felt like an outsider on the team. She was the only one ready to admit they didn’t know how to move forward. But she knew she had to intervene before they wasted precious resources.

Freile brought the team together, and didn’t shy away from asking tough questions about how the technology would support customer needs. “After many uncomfortable conversations, the team realized we had not considered our users and had overestimated the need for new technologies.” The features did not support the Ecuadorian customers’ unique needs and behaviors, and it became clear that cutting-edge technology wouldn’t bring value if it was not suited to the people it was meant to serve.

While the developers on Freile’s team realized they would have to rethink their usual approach, they were unsure how to proceed. Meanwhile, the pressure was on—senior stakeholders were asking for updates and sweating the competition.

Amidst this pressure, Freile optimistically motivated the team. She suggested they try a different route to understand local Ecuadorian banking customers. They observed customers—in bank branches, banking from home, and on the go. The team learned quickly about specific local behaviors. “Ecuadorian people move small amounts of money daily between accounts and need to make payments as easily as possible. The population prefers asking relatives for loans rather than resorting to the bank. In our Latin culture, family plays a huge role in how we handle money.” Banks were last resorts.

The team took these insights and hosted collaborative work sessions with all of the stakeholders. In the end, they did not include any technically advanced features—rather, they focused innovations on designing banking processes and behaviors that suited the people they’d serve. “We created an entirely new mobile experience, adjusted to Ecuadorian people’s needs and behaviors. We added the ability to save money among numerous family members and easier ways to transfer money to relatives.”

The results exceeded all expectations. This was a clear instance of creativity elevating the output of the company. On a team of technical experts, it was Freile whose creativity unlocked a new way forward.

A future-fit leader is a creative leader.

Creative leadership is not about avoiding change. It’s about turning vulnerability and complexity into assets, and even leveraging them as tools for speed. While it can be unsettling to dive headfirst into the unknown, modern leaders must build the creative confidence needed to navigate uncertainty with and for their teams. Their agility and positive outlook generates a feedback loop that keeps everyone moving forward with a sense of possibility about what’s to come and how they can shape it. With creative leaders, an ambiguous juncture becomes navigable, and what awaits on the other side could change the game, helping the organization take the lead.

Illustrations by Raymond Biesinger

If you ask executives today whether it’s their job to have the right answer, most would say yes. In fact, most would say that producing answers to critical challenges facing their organization is how they reached their high-level position. Who gets ahead by not knowing?

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.