More than 7 million people each year came to the Boston.gov site to tap into all sorts of city services: reporting a pothole, learning the assessed value of their property, paying a parking ticket, checking recycling schedules.

Boston wanted to create a beautiful platform that would make the process of finding and navigating information easy and intuitive, one that prioritized the needs of its people.

The Boston.gov site had outgrown its existing structure and needed an overhaul. The user experience was mired by the fact that Boston City Hall has nearly 50 different departments, each with its own microsite, navigation and content standards that feed into a centralized site.

So the City of Boston hired IDEO to design its new digital home, Boston.gov. IDEO designers worked with the major stakeholders—department heads, employees, and Boston residents, with a focus on those in underserved communities and those with varying levels of technical proficiency—to gather insights into what users needed.

The objective was to design something that would simplify how people navigate the site, to make it easier for residents to find answers to common questions, and, in the process, serve as a community facilitator—an up-to-date, reliable resource that makes life in the city more manageable.

Rather than organize the site by the city’s departments, the design solution was rooted in illuminating relevant content by topics—people’s life moments—many of which overlapped through different branches of government. Owning a car in the city, for example, is closely related to preparing for winter, so bridging those common threads allowed for a more intuitive organizing principle.

In the process of the site redesign, IDEO also helped to create a visual identity system that underscores Boston’s strengths: the city’s confidence, humility, personality, and optimism.

In addition to the web architecture and redesign, IDEO also produced a comprehensive style guide to help maintain design consistency, so departments can add content without compromising the overall integrity of the site, as well as a brand look that the city has decided to adopt across nearly all of its consumer-facing media. Now you’ll see the famous underlined B on T-shirts, banners, and even snow shovels.

Holding true to its mission to include Boston residents and all site users in its design process, the new Boston.gov site was piloted for six months, and the process document on the city’s blog (including the IDEO designed brand guide), before a full launch was rolled out in July 2016.

“The website should act like a helpful human. This is one of the big differences between the old site and the new site,” said Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the city’s chief of information technology in a Boston Globe article. “Oftentimes, when you looked at something on the old site, it would feel like you were interacting with some sort of lawyer-robot that was speaking to you in government-speak, using very formal language. We are trying to move away from that so your experience is akin to a person.”

The City of Boston was in need of a new digital home—one that emphasized a shift to a more welcoming tone and commitment to its citizens.

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In the Western Hemisphere, The North Face brand has long represented an active, sporty lifestyle that’s filled with challenges and adventures. But appreciating “the great outdoors” in China is less about extreme sports and more about connecting with nature in a communal, spiritual way. This research-based insight led the team to identify new opportunities for The North Face to better target its messaging.

Designers found a key opportunity: Encourage Chinese consumers to escape the pressures of hectic city life by enjoying the freedom and renewal that comes with spending time outdoors.

Today, as people find less time to enjoy the benefits that lie just beyond China’s large cities, there’s a tangible desire to return to the outdoors to refresh, reassess, and renew oneself. The North Face aims to help consumers do exactly that.

To create a compelling new brand vision for The North Face in China, the team’s design research tapped into Chinese ways of spending time outdoors. IDEO’s insights and creative brief provided the essential brand story for The North Face in China and informed the tagline of the company’s current marketing campaign, “Go Wild” (去野). The North Face brand’s new messaging links “old nature” and “new outdoors” through a combination of digital, retail, and interactive community channels.

IDEO also collaborated with the company on designs and prototypes for a new digital platform and an updated store-within-a-store merchandising display. The digital community aims to attract newcomers and connect them with more experienced outdoors enthusiasts and clubs. As the platform evolves, it will help aspiring adventurers plan trips, learn skills, and share their experiences through photos.

The retail community space aims to integrate this digital community with in-store shoppers and an effort to turn the “buy-a-product moment” into a “join-the-outdoors moment.” Both will be integrated to provide a holistic brand experience in China centered on nature and community.

In the West, The North Face, with its decades-long history, has long symbolized an adventurous, active lifestyle. In China, however, the outdoor market only began accelerating in the early 21st century.

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Success in this growing market depends on building strong and deep connections with Chinese consumers.

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20% sales growth in China

from 2012 to 2013—the year the project was completed—propelling the brand from sixth place to a market-leading position

Over the last 36 years, IDEO and Lilly, along with the pharmaceutical giant’s other design, development, and manufacturing partners, have collaborated on more than 250 projects. During this time, Lilly has not only honed its engineering-focused internal device-development team but also transformed into a human-centered organization with extensive, robust in-house innovation capabilities.

Early in the relationship, a team of IDEO designers and Eli Lilly leaders traveled the world to understand how people with diabetes live with the disease. Their findings led to the design of a series of award-winning insulin injection pens like SAVVIO. Portable, aesthetically pleasing, and discreet, the pens are suitable for use in both medical and personal settings. Combined with Lilly’s technical design prowess, this human-centered focus allows the devices to seamlessly integrate into patients’ lives and routines, making a challenging disease like diabetes feel more manageable.

Fast forward to today, Lilly’s innovative, easy-to-use auto-injectors are not only continuing to provide life-saving treatments to people with diabetes but also enabling the adoption of the popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, which together accounted for the majority of the company’s annual revenue in 2025. Perhaps most importantly, patients consistently rate the experience of using Lilly’s auto-injectors as relatively pain-free, easy to use, and preferable to competitors’ brands, improving adherence, satisfaction, and health outcomes.

This unwavering focus on driving innovation through a patient-first mindset is evident in some of the most impactful projects Lilly and IDEO collaborated on over the years:

GLP Auto-injectors
Convenient and cutting-edge, the first Trulicity injection device was originally designed to deliver the GLP-1 drug to treat type 2 diabetes. Today, it has been adapted for use with other GLP-1s, Mounjaro and Zepbound, which are increasingly popular weight-loss drugs and are also administered once weekly via fixed-dose injections. A wide base enables the pen to be held securely against the injection site, and the device automatically regulates the dose and needle depth.

Taltz Injectors
For most patients, living with severe plaque psoriasis means being your own medical technician—metering your drug dosage each time, and attaching and removing needles by hand. Taltz provides patients with clear visual and auditory feedback throughout the injection process through simple icons, bright colors, a translucent material, and clicking sounds. The devices are available in both autoinjector and prefilled-syringe formats and are adapted for Emgality, a preventive monthly migraine treatment, and Ebglyss, which helps treat eczema or atopic dermatitis.

HumaPen SAVVIO Injection Pen
Key insights informed the design of SAVVIO, including patients’ preference for insulin pens that look less like medical devices and more like everyday objects you’d find in a backpack or purse. The sleek, colorful device was created to help patients feel comfortable and confident about fitting mealtime injections into their everyday lives.

Refillable Human Growth Hormone (HGH) Injector and Reconstitution Device
Designed to be kid-friendly, the Refillable HGH Injector leverages insights into pediatric treatment adherence to create a more integrated, systematic approach to treatment, while the Reconstitution Device makes mixing Lilly’s powder-and-liquid drug easier and less intimidating for parents and healthcare professionals alike.

KwikPen Insulin Pen
KwikPen is a next-generation, prefilled insulin injection pen that builds on the success of two previous designs, reducing its size to 5.7 inches and enhancing ease of use for patients.

HumaPen(R) Luxura™ Insulin Pen
HumaPen Luxura combines several innovations into a robust yet elegant pen that can be carried and used anywhere—an insulin pen solution that improves dosing accuracy, dose setting, and injection force.

In addition to designing products to meet the needs of people with diabetes, IDEO and Lilly have developed innovations in areas of oncology, autoimmunity, and men’s health. The results of this collaboration and expansion have won numerous design awards and produced one of the longest and most fruitful innovation relationships in IDEO’s history.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Eli Lilly had a number of new, life-changing medications and two big challenges: Most of its drugs were self-injectables, not pills, so patients were hesitant to take them. And its drug-delivery device platform lagged behind its drug pipeline.

99%

of Trulicity users reported the auto-injector was “easy” to “very easy” to use in a JDST study

$36.5B

of Lilly’s $65.2B 2025 revenue came from sales of its auto-injectable GLP-1s, Mounjaro and Zepbound, a 45% increase from 2024

‍“…the Advisory Council will recommend transformational programmatic, cultural, and physical change to San Quentin that can serve as a practical model that can be replicated and scaled to other institutions.”

Source: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom: Governor Newsom Names Leading Criminal Justice and Public Safety Experts to San Quentin Transformation Advisory Council, May 05, 2023  https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/05/05/san-quentin-transformation-advisory-council/

The Advisory Council included the expertise of established criminal justice, public safety, healthcare, academic, reentry, and rehabilitation professionals, along with system-impacted/formerly incarcerated community leaders, and representatives of crime victims/survivors. The premise of IDEO’s involvement is to augment the Advisory Council Co-Chairs’ and members’ expertise in evidence-based best practices and lived experience living and working in prisons, with expertise in collaborative design, synthesis, visualization, storytelling and bringing visions to life.

Specifically, IDEO was brought in to facilitate input-gathering, and assist with incorporating the many viewpoints into a single, cohesive report of recommendations to the Governor. This included meeting the challenge of bringing together the viewpoints of 21 people on the Council (17 members, three Co-Chairs and an advisor to the Governor); incorporating the views of people who are most impacted (those incarcerated at San Quentin, San Quentin staff, community-based organizations, victim/survivor groups, among others); and formatting and designing the final report.

IDEO’s facilitation included workshops with the full Advisory Council, individual interviews and check-ins with Council members to gather their input to inform the recommendations. Each Advisory Council member was asked to speak with, and record feedback from, no fewer than five people at San Quentin or in affected communities and to share this feedback with IDEO. IDEO integrated this information and feedback into this report.

Research activities included visits to San Quentin to speak with and facilitate conversations with:

• San Quentin residents (100+) including the Citizens/Inmate Advisory Council, focus groups with Spanish-speaking residents, former gang members, ACT (LGBTQIA+), Voices Heal, People in Blue, San Quentin Citizens Advisory Council.
• San Quentin staff (100+) including interviews with numerous officers.
• San Quentin staff and residents together.
• Current participants and staff at Amistad (MCRP) and Beacon (former lifer) campuses (many who were previously incarcerated at San Quentin).
  
  

IDEO also organized listening, information sharing and feedback sessions, both at San Quentin and in the community, between Co-Chair representatives and various stakeholder groups, including victim/survivor groups, labor unions, and advocacy organizations. These perspectives were also brought into the report.  

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Two years, two photography classes, and a few countries later, I did a deep clean of my hard drive. Between filing away evidence of big parties in tiny apartments and hundreds of nearly identical photos of elephants, I realized that I had taken a lot of pictures of couples. Not five or 10, but closer to 100. And not of people that I knew, but of complete strangers.

On their own, these photos could have been easily overlooked amidst thousands of snapshots of friends and family, but seeing them all together gave me a rush of giddiness and warmth. So, I set out to gather more and began posting the shots on Instagram.

As soon as I launched the account, publicly declaring my habit, I found more and more moments of tenderness in everyday life. I shot from a distance to maintain a layer of anonymity and focus on the transfer of emotion rather than the individuals themselves. My intent wasn’t to get the story behind the shot, but simply to collect these unprovoked and unpolished moments. And as I collected, my definition of public displays of affection expanded to include heads on shoulders, joint selfies, synchronous footsteps—even the imagined closeness of two people standing in proximity to one another. I've found love on street corners, in subway cars, and at national monuments. Instead of walking around with my head down, I was discovering tiny moments of joy in the world.

And the more I found, the more I felt like at any given moment, anywhere in the world, hundreds of people are holding hands, or touching arms, or leaning in to each other. The act of looking for love led to finding it, which led to actually feeling it.

Head to @lookingforloveblog for your fix.

A few years ago, I spotted a tear-off paper flyer stapled to a telephone pole that read LOOKING FOR LOVE. Every tab had been pulled.

However, more data means more time spent managing data. So about four months ago, I pulled together this little helper, an automated assistant that I coded to save our design team a little time. We even gave it a little personality to make living with it more fun.

The bots

The inspiration for this bot came from our Chicago team, which was working to develop a health monitoring app for smartphones and watches, and wanted to include a prototype messaging system. Rather than spending time coding a system that would automate responses, they hooked up the Slack interface to a service that would send and receive text messages. The result was a system that allowed a non-technical design researcher to send targeted messages directly from Slack, freeing up the developers to work on the next challenge.

Meanwhile, in London, we were tracking the daily travel of more than 40 people. During the course of the project, we recorded more than 160,000km of driving, so we built a bot to help us keep tabs on our fleet. Each time a journey was complete, the bot would post a note into a special channel, allowing the whole team to see the activity without having to log in to a separate system. The bot also helpfully included a direct link to a separate dashboard, in case anyone wanted to dig deeper into the data.

The tech stacks

Chicago's bot was part of a loop that connected each of the participants’ smartwatches directly to a design researcher:

Each day, participants would log their activities using Siri’s voice-to-text feature. Siri then transcribed the voice message, and the text was sent to the database, where it was time stamped and stored. From there, a copy was sent to Slack, where each participant showed up as a team member in the chat interface.Then the whole stack reversed, allowing any member of the team to send a message to the participant. Each day, the design researcher simply had to send a normal Slack message and it appeared on the participant’s smartwatch.

We found their workaround really inspiring, so when we started our travel behavior project, we looked for similar ways to save time.

To start, we opted to store each trip in Parse. Once a drive was complete and recorded, we used Parse's Cloud Code functionality to send a message to Slack using the Incoming Webhook integration. The result was a message from the slackbot each time a drive finished. Cloud Code allowed us to format the message with a link back to the data, so it was easy for researchers to click to learn more about each trip. We could format the message however we wanted, so we gave the bot a small bank of phrases to use to add a little personality. We also gave it a few emoji so that it would fit in with the Slack communication style.

These messages popped up in a specific channel. Our team could choose to listen in, or mute it. Over the course of the project, it became a useful reminder that there were real people behind these driving patterns.

What we learned

The Chicago bot showed us that we don’t always need a technical person to manipulate complex systems. Not only did our bot save us time, we were also able to add a little magic to the prototype, which gave our participants a better experience. It also gave all parties—the design team, the client, and a technology partner—a better sense of what was going on, and a quicker way to jump into the data. We’re constantly working to find better ways to collaborate with our clients, and small touches like these make it easier to act on our research. Perhaps the most revealing thing about our adoption of these tools was how quickly we assimilated them into our teams. The new tool went from novel to normal surprisingly quickly.

The future

While adding intelligence to the bots seems like an obvious next step, it could be a dangerous move to outsource too much of our process. After all, we’re here to learn. I'd rather have a legion of simple "toolbots" shaving time off repetitive tasks than software that makes decisions for us, which could cause us to miss valuable insights. Our goal is to empower our teams, not to replace them.

See the London Bot on GitHub here.

Special thanks to Ben Syverson for his help on this post.

We’re always looking for smart ways to learn more in less time. This mentality has led our researchers to push the boundaries of the data we can record in our research process. Alongside the qualitative data we gather from interviews, we also pull together behavioral data collected over longer time periods. We might record someone’s steps per day, or the route they take to work, in order to find insights into the patterns of everyday.

A self-proclaimed “sports guy,” Marc first tried archery at 12. By 18, he was a competitive archer, training 4-6 hours a day and traveling across Spain to shoot arrows alongside the country's best bowmen and women, including members of the current Olympic archery team in Rio, Miguel Alvariño, J. I. Rodriguez, and Antonio Fernandez. (Although the modest interaction designer is quick to shun any comparisons.)

Marc left his custom-made, Olympic-grade bow at home when he relocated to IDEO Chicago for a 7-month internship, but he cheers on his country’s team remotely every night, binge-watching Spanish videos of the day’s competitions on his home laptop thanks to some clever, scrappy, and—ahem—ingenious online “workarounds.”

While firing arrows at a bullseye 70M away might be a thing of the past, archery taught Marc many lessons he pulls out of his quiver as a designer today: honing your technique, being honest about your strengths and weaknesses, staying open to new ideas and strategies, and improvising in the moment. Lessons that also apply to successfully launching a Finger Blaster to nab a coveted banana 10 yards away.

WATCH: The ever-hungry intern takes aim at a midday snack. Video by Sophie Feng.

But, then again, if this design thing doesn't work out, there's always Tokyo 2020!

Marc Exposito was born for the Olympics. Literally. The Barcelona native arrived into the world during the heyday of the city’s 1992 Summer Olympic Games.

Zimbabwe-born Natsai studied architecture at Edinburgh University, then at Central St. Martin’s Material Futures course. There she learned about synthetic biology, and met Dr. John Ward, a professor from UCL’s microbial molecular biology lab. He became a supporter of her scarf project, called Fold.

Natsai is at the forefront of an emerging field, biodesign, that aims to tackle the climate change problems caused by textiles and farming. Fueled by advances like the gene editing technique CRISPR, which is making designing with DNA simpler and cheaper, scientists and designers are looking to harnessing nature itself to ‘biofacture’ everything from leather, to meat, to medicine.

Companies like Bolt Threads are spinning synthetic spider silk, while Modern Meadow is growing meat in labs. Meanwhile Autodesk is creating design tools for the field—think AutoCAD for DNA.

Natsai joined IDEO’s London studio as part of our two week-long Fortnight residency, collaborated with the community here, and shared the resulting scarves. As part of her final presentation, she brought to life the potential of biodesign with a series of five tweets. Here, she explains the speculative future they’re framed in. It is a future in which synthetic biology is shaping brands, products, businesses, and people’s behavior.

Future Craft

“Hyper-specialized hybrid technologies signal the rise of the niche maker. #DIYbio #biomakerspace”

Natsai: I’m really interested in the dialogue between craft and technology. This tweet depicts my own reality: my craft is so specialized that I have to design the tools to create it, and I also have had to learn how to maintain the life that co-creates it, without any precedents to learn from. Imagine a world where our materials are alive or derived from living systems. Every maker will intimately know the biochemistry of their chosen species, and will find new ways of transforming those organisms’ behaviors into truly unique products and processes. We’ll be using other living systems and even amalgamating layers of digital technology to biofabricate.

Service Design

“Who owns your wardrobe? #panasonic4nike”

Natsai: I had a conversation with a colleague about how one might go about democratizing the production of ‘bio-factured’ products. At the time I was thinking about how to streamline the process for scaling up this technology, but he challenged me to think about new models of distribution that tap into DIY culture. Ultimately, his question was: if you can grow your own textiles, then who owns your wardrobe? The hashtag #Panasonic4Nike points towards a future that sees unlikely stakeholders coming together to offer true innovations in designing the products we use, as well as the services and hardware that enable us to do this in a personalized way.

Convergence

“Digitized biology has democratized the creation of complex biological consumer products. #autodesk #synbio #AI #IOT”

Natsai: I understand that not only do I work with a pigment-producing bacteria, but that medium is also a biological sensor. Producing pigment signals a crucial stage in the bacteria’s life cycle. This made me ask: how could we harness living sensors and build them into our everyday environments? The notion of technology convergence is definitely something I see happening further into the future. Wearable technology, household electronics and the Internet of Things, in my view, will expand and come together to create mutually-beneficial ecosystems of bacteria and digital technology.

Metabolic Materiality

“Biofacturing process & biological characteristics of an organism now define a brand’s identity and its business model. #bottomupprimacy #IP”

Working in a fashion context, I am hyper aware of how a brand’s identity communicates. The product itself needs to hold true to the values of the brand. This is the part that gets tricky working with a living technology: at some point I relinquish control to my bacterial colonies to finish the garments—conceptually speaking, I provide the structural parameters. The lack of control is a challenge and an opportunity to design interventions that end up in line with the brand identity. Creativity therefore becomes crucial, to push the aesthetics and craft processes in the development of each garment. Although it’s true of any industry, fashion is a particularly interesting space to consider a business model based on that uniqueness. Even before we think about synthetic biology as a way of manufacturing, designers can and should push innovation beyond a simple “genetically-modified organism 1 fixes problem A.”

Beyond Monoculture

“Happy Kombucha shares rally as merger with Kvadrat announced. #symbioticventures #closedloopsystem”

This really looks at future business models and ecosystems of information and skill exchange. Happy Kombucha actually exists and it’s my go-to for food and beverage bacterial cultures in the UK. They mainly sell starters and toolkits for brewing your own kombucha, kefir water and kefir milk. This tweet is a little tongue-in-cheek: it imagines that their business strategy has evolved to sell the SCOBYs (the symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast that ferments tea, to make kombucha) as fabrics, leading to a merger with major textile manufacturing brand Kvadrat. It also speaks of the current and future reality of the trade of living organisms.

IDEO Fortnight with Natsai Audrey Chieza from Alexandra Whiting on Vimeo.

Vivid pinks, blues, greens and yellows form beautiful, organic abstract shapes on Natsai Audrey’s delicate silk scarves. But they’re not drawn by her, or silkscreened in a print studio. Instead, the shapes are the life and death of streptomyces bacteria writ colorful on silk, folded into a petri dish, in a lab.

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.