Midea, one of China’s largest appliance manufacturers, wanted to identify growth opportunities in the domestic consumer market, while focusing on people’s cultural beliefs around health and well-being. During the course of the project, IDEO found that Midea could play a key role in building a healthier nation.

The team set out to design potential future products for Tong (“through, whole, and to understand”) that are built around the basic themes of eating, breathing, and being: an easy-to-use, hassle-free herbal tea dispenser, an air balancer that improves and balances the quality of air in the home, and a body-balancing mobile phone app that encourages users to rebalance their body condition where needed, through movements created with the Chinese philosophies of well-being in mind.

The Tong project was featured extensively in the press, and opened further conversations with Midea about creating new value and extending into new markets.

Put food on the table or keep the furnace running on a frigid day? It’s an unfortunate choice many low-income families in Flint, Michigan, face.

To help customers in Flint and other Michigan towns stay on top of their utility bills and better understand the relationship between their energy consumption and the resulting costs, Consumers Energy partnered with IDEO and utility assistance provider The Heat and Warmth Fund (THAW) to create an innovative pilot billing program called Clear Control in late 2013.

The pilot was designed with three major human-centered changes to the traditional utility experience:

• Instead of monthly bills, participants received two bills per month. Shorter billing periods allowed for smaller, more frequent payments, helping customers match available funds with their ability to pay.
• Daily text updates on energy usage and bill amounts kept consumption top of mind.
• Consumers Energy offered personalized, in-home audits to help customers make low-cost, high-impact changes to their energy bills.

A year later, the results of the pilot are energizing. Clear Control participants accumulated no new debt, while the control group owed $300; pilot customers used 20 percent less electricity, reducing their bills by $200 per year; and 95 percent of participants paid their bills in full and on time, compared with 35 percent in the control group. The utility company simultaneously benefited by avoiding arrearages, late-payment fees, and shutoffs. Consumers plans to incorporate Clear Control lessons into its overall energy assistance program design and development moving forward.

"It’s no longer ‘me’ against ‘them’—now it’s ‘us,’" said one Clear Control participant.

In 1980, Apple asked IDEO to develop a mouse for their radical new computer, the Lisa. Previous attempts at mouse design, by Douglas Englebart and Xerox PARC, yielded results that were too expensive and hard to make. The Apple mouse needed to be more reliable and less than 10 percent of the cost of the earlier versions.

To start, the design team created a cheaper, much-improved mechanism that would operate the mouse, and found that a complex, plastic "ribcage" would hold the pieces together. The team similarly tested and refined the mouse’s other key components, from the audible and tactile click of the button to the rubberized coating on the ball. A record turntable spun for days, logging “mouse miles” to check the reliability of the electromechanical assembly.

The resulting mouse proved mechanically and economically sound and was changed only slightly when adapted for use with the first Macintosh computer. The basic mechanism design is used in virtually all mechanical mouses produced to date.

Food is the heart of most cultures. In China, one of the oldest cultures in the world, food is central to family gatherings and celebrations. It’s what binds people, a tangible way of showing love and respect. But in recent years, the Chinese food industry has suffered from concerns around safety.

Two siblings, Harn and Anmao Sun, set out on an ambitious venture: to create a trusted source of food in China and, by setting an example, to instigate a movement around conscious farming practices. The American-born entrepreneurs launched Hunter Gatherer, a restaurant and retail food space built around a transparent supply chain, from farm to table to grocery shelves. The venture is based on growing and serving what they call real food: The ingredients are chemical-free and come from known and trusted sources—food they’d eat themselves. The purpose of the venture is simple: to serve people real food that is their right.

Having studied and worked in the US, Harn and Anmao grew accustomed to browsing farmers markets on Saturday mornings or picking up a burrito at Chipotle. But when they returned to China, they were unsure about the safety of the food they were eating.

“In China, you wouldn’t go to a food stand, because you’d be concerned about the ingredients,” Anmao said. “You can’t take the safety for granted.”

Hunter Gatherer’s very existence challenges bedrock assumptions about how food is produced in China. A long and depressing list of scandals—milk contaminated with melamine, pork produced from diseased pigs, used cooking oil repackaged and sold as new—has rocked the public trust.

“In China, agriculture is going through a huge change,” Anmao said. “In the US, agriculture operations are regulated. Farmers’ practices are regulated. If they use pesticides, there are limits because these farmers understand that once a certain threshold is hit, additional pesticides will not yield more crops. But in China, pesticide use came about 30 years after the US and Europe, and because of a lack of full understanding, farmers in China incorrectly operate under the assumption that more pesticides means more crop yields. Also, with over 250 million farmers in China, it becomes immensely difficult to properly regulate everyone.”

New Ventures

Harn and Anmao wanted to restore trust in the simple act of eating in China, and they came to IDEO to build a scalable business based on that vision. This was essentially a startup, a shared commitment between IDEO and Hunter Gatherer.

“I’ve lived in Shanghai for the past seven years, and as a relatively active and health-conscious person, I’ve had to invest quite a bit of time in finding food that I trust,” said Charles Hayes, managing director of IDEO Shanghai. “That investment has been both in the time it takes to research the sources of ingredients but also a literal investment in paying a high price for imported food just for that extra peace of mind.”

Anmao and Harn took up residence in the IDEO Shanghai offices to incubate their business. Together with IDEO designers, they tested packaging, cooked countless meals, and found ways to introduce unfamiliar ingredients to Chinese consumers. They discussed different concepts of lunch and dinner, and how notions of freshness in Chinese culture might affect cold-storage systems. In IDEO’s prototyping kitchen, the teams tested all manner of different foods, flavors, colors, mixes, and price points, and they brought consumers in to try them out. IDEO designers, along with the founding team, also worked on the brand and positioning of what would eventually become the Hunter Gatherer enterprise—its location, human resources, and marketing strategies.

As the restaurant concept came together, finding the right food sources had to be addressed. Traditional agriculture couldn’t be trusted; organic certifications were available on the black market, and safety protocols around chemical use were nonexistent. Anmao and Harn decided to invest in their own farms. They met with farmers, asked questions about their methods, and walked in the fields to see for themselves. Eventually they settled on two plots of land outside Shanghai and began developing more than 80 different crops to be used in the restaurant.

From Seed to Table

When it came time to find the right space for the first location, Anmao and Harn discovered an open, airy storefront on Anfu Road in Shanghai’s tree-lined former French Concession area. They designed and built a retail space and kitchen, and along with IDEO designers, they trained the staff and organized workflows. The staff set the tables with Mason jars filled with flowers, hung photographs of the farmers who grew the food, and put up a sign that showcases the percentage of vegetables coming directly from the Hunter Gatherer farms, already more than 70 percent in less than a year after opening.

Customers can shop for fresh vegetables, locally sourced and imported canned and jarred goods, bins of cereal, freshly made smoothies, artisan sauces, and exotic chocolates. Upstairs, they can feast on delicious dishes in the homey restaurant.

Reviews have been glowing. One customer raved about the machine that grinds fresh nuts. Another loved the open space, the “good vibes,” and the refreshing cucumber water. Young people go there on dates, and families return for the delicious menu variety.

The convivial space has blossomed into more than just a restaurant and grocery store. It’s become a gathering place of sorts, both for the community and for partners who share the same vision. Farmers and food purveyors are invited to showcase their products at seasonal events and to mingle with customers and share recipes and stories.

“Hunter Gatherer has come to symbolize a kind of lifestyle the Chinese people have been looking for,” said Eugene Lin, an IDEO business designer. “A place they can enjoy hanging out with friends, as well as a movement and mission they can stand behind.”

A Digital Future

This is just the beginning of the venture. The plan is to open 40 more locations throughout China. But the vision for Hunter Gatherer’s growth is bigger than brick-and-mortar restaurants—where the business will truly scale is in the digital space. Eventually, the plan is to launch a Hunter Gatherer online grocery store from which anyone can buy food grown from trusted sources.

“We have to create trust with the consumer. It’s the most difficult and most valuable thing to do in China, especially with food,” Anmao said. “Our brick-and-mortar locations will establish that increased trust. Then we can go online and grow the idea to the rest of the country.”

Will Hunter Gatherer have a hand in changing the way that the world’s most populous nation thinks about food? Its principles are already spreading, from neighboring farmers adopting more sustainable planting methods, to a growing market for products like wine.

But the true sign of success will be almost invisible—the moment when an increase in demand will result in safe food for everyone and when real food becomes commonplace.

In 2020, everything has been turned upside-down, and all budgets are starting from scratch. Planning for the coming year will be more ambiguous and uncertain than ever. It’s time to ditch the carry-over mindset, which can’t solve the complex and often competing challenges faced by business leaders today. What we need now is to broaden our perspectives and use imagination to project into the future.

Back in the spring, when it became clear that coronavirus would reshape the entire world in short order, we began tracking principles to help us focus on understanding context as it evolves, having a clear vision for successful recovery, rebuilding for resilience, and designing through collaboration.

As we spoke to clients and business leaders within and outside of IDEO, we saw the opportunity to develop a tool that would help leaders plan with imagination for the tumultuous road ahead. We were inspired by the Early Recovery principles used by the United Nations to respond to crises or natural disasters. Early Recovery helps people and societies "build resilience and establish a sustainable process of recovery from crisis."

We’ve adapted this concept into a framework for organizations to use in planning the coming 12 months. The Build Back Bolder canvas offers a simple template for reflection, and a series of short exercises designed to help set strategic priorities and initiatives, and to uncover opportunities for growth and impact in the midst of fluctuating conditions. Build Back Bolder is a straightforward, two-page tool that business leaders can run alongside their own planning processes. It can help leaders and teams make sense of the present, get out of analysis-paralysis, and move towards action. Simply put, the Build Back Bolder canvas helps you think, and that helps you plan.

Circumstances don’t get much more ambiguous and uncertain than the ones we’re living through now. In moments of crisis, when markets are redefined, imagination rarely leads the day. But this instability calls for a more varied and experimental suite of tools. Change is inevitable, but using imagination is not. By choosing an imaginative approach, we can plan for a more resilient, bold, and sustainable 2021.

Download the Building Back a Bolder 2021 tool here.

Illustration by Charlota Blunarova

In typical years, there’s a continuity to the annual planning process. Changes are incremental. Many budgets that were approved the previous year are simply carried over. Not so this year.

To fix big, systemic problems like inequality and climate change, many called for rethinking how companies generate value and who they generate it for—from shareholders, employees, and customers to partners and the planet itself. This wasn’t just a moral argument that business ought to “do the right thing.” The movement was anchored in an existential understanding that radical forces are changing not just the rules of the game for business, but the game itself.

The multilayered crises we face today offer a powerful moment of reckoning for purpose-led businesses and leaders: will we make good on this rallying cry for a reimagined capitalism or not? The pandemic put stakeholder capitalism to the test: a report funded by the Ford Foundation found that companies that had signed on to the “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” fared no better than other top companies in prioritizing worker rights. Though there is clearly the opportunity and will to rethink the purpose of business to address systemic problems, the way forward is often less apparent. Understanding where to begin can help us realize the more equitable promise of stakeholder capitalism.

I’ve long been curious about how forward-looking companies have jumped over this hurdle, so I’ve spent this year learning from dozens of movers and shakers already in the thick of tackling systemic changes, from professors and CEOs to founders and non-profit presidents working across sectors and industries. They’ve shared with me the first steps that helped them break the initial inertia of business-as-usual—and, importantly, the mindsets they’ve adopted to sustain new kinds of activity. I hope their wisdom will be as inspiring for you as it has been for me.

First steps

Set bold targets and innovate your way to reaching them
Even if they don’t know where to start, the changemakers I’ve talked with have put a stake in the ground and set bold targets. But they don’t rely on a big PR splash and then move on: alongside these bold goals is a commitment to a process of brave experimentation and innovation.

The Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, for example, has committed to becoming a fully circular company—one that is restorative and regenerative by design—by 2030. To make good on this future, they’ve invested in a range of experiments, prototyping smaller-format shops in city centers that rely on fewer resources, electric vehicles for home delivery, new products like home solar systems, and buyback and rental programs to reduce waste, among others. Taken together, these many activities are moving IKEA closer to their ambitious goal. But they’ve also enabled fast learning and iteration, so that when the company chooses to scale any of these solutions they have the greatest impact for their investment.

From this example and others, a common method is emerging for how companies can use their scale to unlock change at a systems level: commit boldly to an outcome, design a number of experiments, learn and iterate quickly, and scale what works. Spoiler alert: It’s not going to be one thing.

Create a coalition of partners around a tipping-point problem
From homelessness to climate injustice, our challenges demand unprecedented collaboration across sectors. The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide a powerful framework to rally around, but there are other emerging partnership models that leverage the capital investment, innovation muscle, and ability to scale that corporate partners often uniquely bring to the table.

Take the NextGen Consortium, for example. Managed by Closed Loop Partners and powered by OpenIDEO, some of the most powerful food and beverage companies (including Starbucks, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, the Coca-Cola Company, Yum! Brands, Nestlé, and WWF) are collaborating to create a new cup that will curb the 250 billion fiber cups piling up in landfills each year. The approach of this coalition has been to enable many breakthrough solutions, working directly with founders and stakeholders in the system, to take root in the market.

There are many other examples of convenings—whether official or unofficial—and the power of rallying partners around a shared challenge. Founded by Sam Polk, Everytable is on a mission to bring healthy, affordable food to communities that do not have readily available options. Polk grew Everytable to eight locations and delivered 160,000 meals just a few weeks after launching. Through a philanthropic initiative led by the California government, Everytable partnered with a hotel offering shelter and protection to the homeless during COVID to provide food, eventually facilitating additional partnerships with elder care homes. Everytable is now on track to deliver a million and a half meals, and they’ve added jobs along the way. As Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen, shared with me, this is an example of business, government, philanthropy, and individual volunteers, leaders, and donors uniting and busting siloes to address hunger.

Define key performance indicators (KPIs) for stakeholder groups
Despite its recent buzziness, the stakeholder perspective—a fundamental commitment to all stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders—is not a new idea. Many companies already consider multiple stakeholder interests in their decision-making. But the problem with stakeholder capitalism as it exists today is that it doesn’t offer a clear compass for how to make decisions in complex scenarios where win-win outcomes for all parties are rarely possible. This brings us to the elephant in the room: not all stakeholders are created equal. Leaders are often forced to pick favorites, and at the end of the day, we know who will always win.

To address this, companies like Airbnb are beginning to hold themselves accountable to new stakeholder-centric metrics. Airbnb sees their stakeholder community as made up of guests, hosts, communities, shareholders, and employees. Their design challenge—Rob Chestnut, Airbnb’s Chief Ethics Officer, told me—was to create a company that measures itself against the value it creates for each. Airbnb began by listening to these groups, establishing principles and metrics reflecting the needs of each. For example, they have committed to treating hosts like partners, and measure their delivery of this through survey data evaluating hosts’ satisfaction and earnings over time, among other things. Airbnb reports their progress and continues to update their corporate governance and compensation to reflect delivery against these KPIs.

This approach isn’t perfect. But doing the work of measuring the value you create with and for stakeholders and institutionalizing accountabilities for delivering that value is certainly a step in the right direction.

New mindsets

Allies over heroes
When it comes to business’ role in the big problems society faces, they are often cast as either heroes or villains. Some see capitalism as society’s savior, especially when governments have seemingly abdicated their responsibility to serve citizens’ best interests. Others see capitalism as society’s villain, the cause of many of its major problems like climate change and inequality.

The leaders I’ve interviewed reframe the discourse entirely. They know that systems change requires bringing together key actors—local communities, nonprofits, governments, businesses, donors, and others—to address unjust systems and solve social problems at scale. So, they see their organizations as meaningful allies in the work of change-making, adopting a partnership-as-leadership approach to their engagement in these issues.

“Greyston’s founder Bernie literally started pulling people off the streets to work for a small cake-baking business he had started to address the problems he saw in Southwest Yonkers...Just as the bakery started growing, [Greyston’s founder] Bernie met two guys named Ben and Jerry. Our relationship with Ben & Jerry’s started out as a serendipitous one, but it’s held steadfast as a strong partnership over the years and has enabled us to employ more folks who would normally be deemed excludable, non-employable.”
—Joseph Kenner, President and CEO, Greyston Bakery

“Cooperation among investors is a key to this progress. More than a third of the world’s invested capital—about $19 trillion—is controlled by the world’s hundred largest asset owners…In principle these investors have enormous power to move the entire economy in more sustainable directions. All they have to do is find a way to cooperate...The rumor is that they look at each other and say, “You go first.”
—Rebecca Henderson, Professor, Harvard Business School and author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

Gardeners over architects
As the pandemic unevenly distributes pain and suffering across our society, it’s ever more clear: true systemic change requires a shift in power. That means that a top-down approach to change just won’t work to produce the equitable outcomes we need. We need new voices with new ideas to reimagine our economic system. Personally, I’m inspired by the small business owners who have reimagined the role businesses might play in neighborhoods through creative pivoting—like restaurants now offering CSA boxes and large family meals while their dining rooms are closed. Or Black communities that were forced to develop regenerative economic strategies decades ago, long before these concepts penetrated white-dominated corporate worlds.

These are the imagineers of a more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable society for everyone, and the leaders I’ve learned from believe this, too. Their job, as they see it, is to find the seeds of ideas and nurture them. They play the role of gardener, but instead of a green thumb they have a green ear, tuned to listen and learn.

“We were open to new ideas from anywhere and created new mechanisms to source them. Part of our mantra was the conviction that all the good thinking doesn't come only from people sitting on Fifth Avenue in New York City. We ran competitions, we did global innovation challenges, and we learned a lot from what was going on on the ground.”
—Judith Rodin, Former President, The Rockefeller Foundation

“Purpose is obviously about how a company acts, but it’s also about how they listen.”
—Maryam Banikarim, Chief Marketing Officer, Nextdoor

“And so it's going to be up to the rest of us in the conversation to hold those people’s feet to the fire—to make sure that as we are reimagining capitalism we are reimagining it to actually work for all. And part of that is by creating systems that are actually inclusive and equitable and regenerative because only those things will dismantle a version of capitalism that is just for the elite.”
—Andrew Kassoy, Co-founder and Global CEO, B Lab

An audacious question over an assumption about the answer
Rather than start with an assumption about the right solution, these leaders begin with an audacious question. What, for example, would it look like to be a fully carbon neutral company by 2030, asks IKEA? Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures asks what would a future look like if women’s power and influence was equal to that of men?

By starting with a question instead of an answer, these individuals are searching for far more imaginative solutions. This is how radical breakthroughs happen.

“Business has a huge role to play in designing our future. They can do this by first, stepping back and asking, what are the problems that need to be solved? And how can we make that the purpose of our business? Start with that problem. Then, look at the different stakeholders you engage with and rethink how we might come together around that problem...This is moral imagination—the humility to see the world as it is and the audacity to imagine what it could be.”
—Jacqueline Novogratz, Acumen’s CEO

“For the big briefs we face, we need questions that open up new possibility. We don't need the obvious questions — we’ve got plenty of those. We need questions that reframe how we think about some of these systems, ones that change our perspective.”
—Tim Brown, Chair and former CEO, IDEO

The work of changing systems is hard. Taking any of these first steps might require you to flex new muscles, fit yourself into a mold that isn’t quite perfect, or develop new collaborations that might not go seamlessly. Likewise, adopting any of these mindsets might clash with your business-as-usual culture and process. It’s not for the faint of heart. And yet, we can’t move forward—on equity, on the environment, on social cohesion—unless we roll up our sleeves, start redesigning our organizations, and make room for the voices most affected by these systems. So let’s take some first steps, and prototype them together to help push this work forward.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the promise of a reimagined purpose for business—one that serves a diverse set of stakeholders and society more broadly—had bubbled into mainstream industry discourse. From boardrooms to business schools, a growing chorus argued that our economic system is not only unable to respond to the world’s most urgent challenges, but has excluded many people from the prosperity capitalism promises.

Well, not complete strangers. They had shared an unusual experience, designed by IDEO, over the previous five weeks: The Department of Super Secrets.

When COVID-19 shut down elementary school buildings, it shut down opportunities for young students to build soft skills like empathy. It also severed personal contact between seniors and other human beings, leaving many confined and lonely.

Alongside teachers and students at Mineola Union Free School District in Mineola, New York, IDEO took on a project to design a program that would help 4th graders build empathy by connecting idle students with isolated seniors. We thought it would be a simple, playful opportunity, but in the end, we found a powerful tool for connection that might be scaled to bridge any number of social divides.

What’s the key? Well, that’s a secret.

Connections grown in isolation

The IDEO team decided that instead of trying to compensate for the limitations of quarantine, we would embrace those constraints and make them the centerpiece of the experience.

People can’t meet face-to-face? Perfect. We’ll beat quarantine at its own game. Neither partner will know anything about the other. No names, no ages. They’d have no clue about the other’s most basic biographical information, like age, race, gender; instead, this would simply be two human beings building a connection by sharing stories of their hopes and fears. A relationship built on meaning rather than appearance.

Thus, the Department of Super Secrets was born—an IDEO twist on the pen-pal relationship. Our heroes picked secret super aliases and we paired them up: one student with one senior citizen. Over five weeks, the partners were prompted to share five specific secrets designed to be low stakes, but highly personal, carefully crafted to spotlight character, values, and feelings. This was a delicate tightrope walk, asking them to offer up something meaningful without being invasive or uncomfortable. We designed the prompts to build on each other, gently establishing a bond through vulnerability and reflection.

Every secret was shared in two ways, with words and images. We wanted the partners to spend energy reflecting on their own lives so they could benefit as much from the telling as the receiving.

You know what was so wonderful about it—I had been cheated all these years not remembering that image of my brother and I playing under the table. I wouldn’t have [remembered it] if we didn’t do this.

MARVELOUS MUSEUM MAVEN, SUPER SECRET SENIOR

The secrets were exchanged through actual mail, not email. This slower method gave the partners time to explore their memories, express themselves deliberately, and—in a situation where days begin to blend—gave them something to look forward to. The tactility of cards filled with handwritten words and pictures turned them into a gift; it made the receiver a caretaker, safeguarding moments of someone else’s life.

Friendship across distance and decades

We wanted our participants to build a connection, not just exchange information. This was not about grown-ups humoring kids, or kids humoring grown-ups—this was about two experiences at either end of a spectrum, sharing a window into their point of view.

As part of the final exchange, each partner used what they’d learned about the other to create and send a gift to their anonymous pal: a superhero mask based on the shared secrets. And then the Department of Super Secrets hosted a reveal party. Partners came together on a video call, each wearing their newly gifted masks. Although they had been exchanging stories for weeks, this was the first time they saw the face behind the feelings. This was the first time Super Potato met Fantastic Fixer, and it was lovely.

Visit the Department of Super Secrets to meet the 4th graders and senior citizens behind the masks

Before and after their experience, we asked the partners to answer a few questions meant to gauge their empathy. Turns out the numbers support the anecdotes: Their time with the Department of Super Secrets seems to have genuinely increased their empathy scores, especially their ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes.

So what went right? We built the Department of Super Secrets by combining three key elements:

1. Anonymity: character vs. characteristics

No one in the world is more perfect for you than the mysterious stranger sitting alone in the coffee shop. The less we know about someone, the easier it is to dress them up and see them exactly as we wish. That’s why we sidestepped the introductions, the descriptions of hair color, and the family history. We wanted each side to begin by speaking across the mysterious absence created by anonymity to someone they assumed was a kindred spirit, ready and excited to connect.

We’ve all seen enough awkward hugs and pinched cheeks between kids and elderly relatives to know these two groups don’t always dance to the same beat. If the relationship began with the mental shorthand of “old” and “young,” there would be silent assumptions on both sides. Confirmation bias would run wild.

We used the freedom of anonymity to create rapport so partners would speak their truth honestly without tailoring it to their audience.

2. Story: introductions from the inside out

My name Is Ben. I once had my heart broken.

Which of those two offerings is more likely to create a bond between us? Ironically, the things that shape us most distinctly—our stories—are also the things most of us have in common. At the very core, we all share the same stories, but told in our own unique ways. Your parents may not have named you Ben, but you probably know what it is to cry into your pillow.

We used story as a sneaky back door to help Super Secret partners appreciate each other's identities once we dropped the anonymity. By the reveal party, they had connected enough through the shared stories that when they discovered each other’s identity, it enriched their idea of who a young or old person could be.

3. Play: lighten the mood, deepen the conversation

As I’ve written elsewhere, play is powerful. It lowers the bar for self-judgment; it can function like oven mitts for handling sensitive subjects; it can encourage us to stretch our everyday thinking and see possibilities we might have otherwise missed. Fun is a fuel.

We could have said, Hey, this is a school project to build empathy. Bo-ring. Instead, we led with the language of secrets, superheroes, and surprise to elevate it to something memorable, meaningful, magical.

Play allowed the partners to share vulnerable stories in a safe way. One prompt—"Share the secret of your most embarrassing moment"—became a funny way of sharing values, fears, and anxieties. Because underneath the slipped bathing suits or milk-spewing nose is the nature of what you find embarrassing, and that tells a lot about a person. Is it failure? Public or individual? Loss of control? Misunderstanding? Fear itself?

Sharing a moment you wish had never happened is an act of trust and bravery. Receiving someone else’s story is a way to remember you are not alone in the world as a flawed human being.

Play allows you to do both with a smile.

The next adventure…?

While this began as a way to enrich the lives of kids and seniors, it turned out to be a powerful way of sneaking behind the unrecognized biases, the mental shortcuts that are the unacknowledged guardrails of our day-to-day thinking. What if we expanded the experience to bridge other divergent points of view related to politics, race, economics, gender, geography, or religion?

We’d love to find situations to use the Department of Super Secrets to help people hear each other in a new way. Our hope is that this combination of anonymity, story, and play can help any two strangers find common ground whether they be superdelegates or super potatoes.

*Names and details have been changed to protect secret identities

When Super Potato* met Fantastic Fixer* for the first time, she asked if Fantastic Fixer’s puppy was feeling better. Fantastic Fixer wanted to know about Super Potato’s recent birthday. There were no awkward silences, despite the fact that Super Potato was nine and Fantastic Fixer was closer to 79 and they were, until this very moment, strangers.

This year, in light of our collective Zoom fatigue, services have been shortened to just a few hours, which is already pushing the shredded edge of our online attention span. After seven months of pandemic, mass unemployment, racial justice reckonings, and school closures, it’s hard to abstain and reflect on your own transgressions when all you want is comfort food and a hug. Knowing that, the Union for Reform Judaism, leading the largest, most diverse Jewish movement with nearly 850 congregations across the U.S. and Canada, asked IDEO to help design a few offscreen moments as supplements to the synagogues' videotaped services.

To think beyond the Zoom and understand what people are craving this year, we joined Mobius for a workshop with community builders like the founder of The Dinner Party, interviewed rabbis who have responded to modern yens with yoga and dance parties, talked to a “ritualist” about how to design a memorial, and met with the creator of This Human Moment, an immersive online experience. Our collaborators at the URJ, Amy Asin, Rabbi Leora Kaye, and Rabbi Esther Lederman, along with staff from the Righteous Person’s Foundation, which provided funding for the project, helped us ground modern exercises in a 3,000 year-old tradition—pouring old wine into new bottles.

We learned that what people need right now is to feel supported and comforted by some semblance of normalcy—a holiday that feels more like getting into a warm bath (or a mikvah, where you immerse yourself in water, as we learned from the URJ’s Rabbi Leora Kaye) than like a wake-up call. We learned from speaking to congregants that they don’t just come to temple for services, but for the casual synagogue interactions. It's a chance to see Mr. and Mrs. Riley, that lovely old couple who are somehow still alive, or family friends you haven’t had the chance to call, or that old school crush who still causes your stomach to flutter once a year.

The ideas that emerged can be found at reflect.reformjudaism.org, and they don’t look much like your aunt Sheila’s seder table. They include ways to do a check-in on your spiritual health (as you might at an annual physical); ways to memorialize a person who died or an event the pandemic shut down or how to let go of a burdensome feeling; and a collage exercise that has you scrapbook the community you’re missing by congregating in digital space. And for those looking to know more about how the activities relate to Jewish wisdom and custom, the bottom of each page invites visitors to “Explore more and go deeper” with links to essays on ReformJudaism.org.

Each activity was designed to be radically inclusive—as welcoming to those who don’t know a single Hebrew word and don’t believe in God as it is to believers with scholarly knowledge. The experience is a la carte, customizable, and while housed on a screen, designed to be non-screen-based. As identity changes in America—where one-in-five Jews describe themselves as having no religion—it’s become increasingly important for Jewish organizations to offer those still seeking community and spiritual life a radically new way to engage. That’s what this is.

It’s been said that religion was the answer to a cry for help. Right now, everyone could use a little help. And awe. And beauty. And routine. Religious rituals were built to keep us in line, to keep us connected, and to keep time. Much of that has been broken by COVID. So the question for designers becomes, how might we, within the constraints of the day, mine a bit of gold that can fill in the cracks?

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Each fall, the Jewish High Holidays draw communities together for some of the year's most important rituals. Even Jews who don't attend their temple's regularly scheduled programming tend to make a point of spending a few days celebrating the new year and reflecting on the one that's passed. Now that we're socially distanced, how do we make sure the rituals are still observed? The experience of gathering and connecting still felt?

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.