The IDEO team quickly discovered that the challenge of designing a Digital@FEMSA super app for tens of millions of customers was matched only by the operational complexity of bringing together different teams that had already created various apps with separate value propositions. Not to mention the 22,000 stores specifically tailored to local communities.

To kick off the project, the IDEO team built on FEMSA’s already deep understanding of its customers by meeting them in their homes and communities. The team discovered that users didn't care about long-term rewards; instead, they wanted everyday help to thrive long-term. Connecting omnichannel rewards to regular spending would allow them to save time and money—something they said was particularly important. Along with market research, insights like these directly informed the app's design, ensuring that it was compatible with users' everyday habits and preferences.

Meanwhile, the project team also worked to ensure the app fit the priorities of the various teams inside Digital@FEMSA, designing a comprehensive process for testing joint value propositions. Together, the team created a new design system, iconography, and set of unifying principles. IDEO also worked closely with the Digital@FEMSA teams to ensure that the app's design was in line with their strategic goals and technical capabilities, and built the app's initial information architecture. They incorporated secure transactions, effortless coupon redemption, personalized offers, and a cohesive loyalty program.

From there, the IDEO and Digital@FEMSA teams quickly transitioned into the design and development phase, producing prototypes of the new app, dubbed Spin Premia. With the help of user testing, they were able to continuously iterate to improve the app's features and functionalities, creating a user experience that was both seamless and intuitive. In just 10 months, they went from a small digital team with an ambitious idea, to a 150+ people product organization and an MVP launched in one region. And thanks to a tight partnership, the teams were able to seamlessly integrate Spin Premia into Digital@FEMSA's existing systems, resulting in a scalable implementation nationwide just a few months later.

The introduction of Spin Premia was a milestone in FEMSA's digital transformation path. Following a true ship and iterate model, just a few months into the project, the company released a smaller, focused version of the app in just one city in Mexico to quickly learn from customer experience before expanding to new regions. Since then, the Spin Premia app has quickly gained popularity, offering a safe and user-friendly platform that millions of Mexican consumers have embraced. It has also allowed FEMSA to broaden its digital portfolio and extend its customer base throughout Mexico, elevating customer satisfaction and fueling business expansion.

13 million Mexicans visit FEMSA’s OXXO convenience stores every day. But the company had ambitions to leverage digital experiences to increase customer engagement.

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To get there, Digital@FEMSA needed to deliver exceptional digital products with the agility to serve an entire population.

4.7 stars

Spin Premia’s app store rating

22.8 million

active Spin Premia program users

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Midscale hotel brands are the fastest-growing hotel segment in the US, attractive to both travelers and hotel owners. But often, their messaging feels repetitive, and travelers have a tough time differentiating between them. With a warm, thoughtfully designed midscale brand, IHG had an enormous opportunity to distinguish itself in a crowded market. 

IHG’s goal was to deliver a guest experience that felt genuinely unique and resonant—and quickly. With costs on the rise, many owners were motivated to turn toward conversion brands, which allow them to refurbish hotels under a new brand rather than invest in construction, a way to grow their portfolio in a tight financing market. Meanwhile, IHG’s competitors were set to introduce new conversion brands of their own. The company was looking for a partner that could work swiftly and iteratively to deliver a distinct brand.

For the IDEO team, the answer lay in communicating the brand’s value, starting with a custom logo rendered by hand. Inspired by vintage sign painting and modernist typography, the team sketched different versions of the letterforms, reviewing them with IHG until they had a set that brought to life the generosity and sense of invitation associated with the hotel’s spaces. They also worked to ensure the wordmark was visually balanced and would translate well across a variety range of scales. From there, they built an expansive brand world, including bespoke navigation icons, a full interior and exterior signage system, and a video to support the Garner launch.

The result is a hotel brand that stands apart in its category for both travelers and owners: thoughtful and well-designed yet affordable. As competition in the midscale segment continues to increase, Garner has been central to IHG’s growth strategy. Launched in the fall of 2023, Garner opened 100 hotels worldwide in just 16 months, making it the fastest-ever IHG brand to scale globally. The brand’s increasing popularity among owners and developers is driven by the growing demand for conversion properties, which accounted for 52% of IHG’s room openings in 2025. Garner plans to continue its rapid expansion with nearly 80 additional hotels in 12 key markets, including the US, Mexico, Italy, and Japan.

Conversions account for 12% of the global hotel pipeline, enabling hotels to switch brands and refurbish, boosting revenue without expensive construction.
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The US midscale hotel segment, valued at $14B, is expected to reach $18B by 2030.

100 new Garner Hotels

in less than 3 years—the fastest-scaling brand in IHG's history

500 Garner Hotels

planned in the next 10 years; 1,000 over the next 20

Alzheimer’s and dementia are notoriously difficult to treat—and scientists estimate that some 50 percent of people who have dementia are undiagnosed. Recognition of symptoms and early intervention are key. Together and IDEO set out to conduct user research to inspire new products that would help patients with cognitive decline take charge of their brain health.

The first priority was to expand the reach of the Moving Together program, which combines group movement exercises with mindfulness techniques, led by a trained group instructor. The IDEO team conducted remote and in-person interviews in Florida, where one in five residents is age 65 and older, and rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia are among the highest in the country. One of the key insights the team discovered was that many older adults didn’t understand how behaviors like smoking, exercise, and diet can be risk factors for cognitive decline. Their input inspired a new design principle for the program: “No naked feedback.” Any time participants received health coaching advice about modifying their lifestyle, they would also be given resources on why and how to do it, so they would have a pathway to boosting their brain health. 

The IDEO team folded insights like this one into the design for four new product offerings, including personalized brain health education, new online community engagement tools, partnership programs, and health coaching services, as well as a new user interface to illustrate them. Along with Together they also developed an implementation roadmap of next steps to bring the new digital product offerings to market, such as hiring a brain health coach and creating a new course curriculum. Now, Together has enrolled 165 people in the Boost Your Brain Health Clinical Trial, which is looking at outcomes such as reduced risk of Alzheimer's and maintenance of cognitive function for the Brain Health Together program. With trial completion in Q3 2024 and product launch in early 2025, growing numbers of people with MCI will have access to this exciting program. Together incorporated almost all of the elements from the IDEO roadmap into the final curriculum, and the team often refers back to insights the team gathered as guiding design principles.

Fighting barriers to diagnosis

With its online program growing, Together wanted to take on an even bigger problem: dementia underdiagnosis. Co-founder Dr. Deborah Barnes had recently developed an algorithm that uses patients’ health records to calculate their risk of undiagnosed dementia, called the electronic health record Risk of Alzheimer's and Dementia Assessment Rule (eRADAR). Together was looking to find creative ways to equip and empower providers to use risk scores like eRADAR in primary care settings.

One piece of the puzzle? Many primary care doctors are unaware that better management of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia can have a positive impact on other chronic health issues—like diabetes, hypertension, and depression. So by encouraging providers to prioritize dementia care, they can help support the overall health of older adults with cognitive decline. The IDEO team recommended a curriculum for continuing education courses for doctors that make that link clear—another step toward increasing dementia diagnosis and improving overall health.

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Better help, sooner

To understand the patient experience, Together and IDEO decided to work directly with patients and caregivers to uncover what was stopping them from asking for dementia screening. The IDEO team quickly learned many patients were afraid of facing a diagnosis that signified a loss of agency and control, especially when they didn’t believe there were good treatment options. Often, they were unaware that there were things they could do to improve their brain health. They needed to know what steps to take after a diagnosis, and who could provide actionable advice. In response, the IDEO team designed a digital activity toolkit and physical booklet to guide patient families through the early stages of a dementia diagnosis, including recognizing the signs and symptoms, having better conversations with their doctor, and getting connected to support groups and programs like Moving Together.

Solving the problem of dementia underdiagnosis involves complex systems-level thinking and designing for the entire health ecosystem of patients, providers, and insurance payers, and solutions for Alzheimer’s and dementia care are still in their infancy. But already, this work is empowering patients and doctors to prioritize brain health and get screened sooner, and Together, which has since been acquired by Linus Health, is still working to move dementia care forward.

Approximately 12-18% of people aged 60 or older live with mild cognitive impairment, while memory loss, Alzheimer's and dementia affect more than 50 million people around the world.

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An estimated 50% of people living with dementia are undiagnosed.

165 enrolled

in the Boost Your Brain Health Clinical Trial

Many companies view culture-building initiatives as nice-to-haves. At Moderna, Mindsets are a business imperative, crucial to its plans to develop breakthrough products quickly.

For companies working on solutions as vital as a COVID-19 vaccine, delays and mistakes don’t just mean missing a product launch date—they’re life-or-death, and on a large scale. Moderna had to ensure that its employees knew how to make the right decisions, evaluate risk, and move quickly—even if they came from organizations with more bureaucracy and less risk tolerance. In 2021, IDEO sat down with longtime Moderna veterans to hear stories about moments that exemplify the company's culture, like the day a critical piece of equipment arrived but was too big to fit through the door. Taking it apart would have added days to their timeline. So employees took sledgehammers to a wall instead. Stories like this one fed into the crafting of the list of Mindsets, such as “Act with urgency: Action today compounds the lives saved tomorrow” and “We behave like owners: The solutions we’re building go beyond any job description.”

To gather feedback, the team shared the draft Mindsets with a diverse set of employees—new hires, veterans, folks already closely aligned with the culture, folks for whom it wasn’t the most natural fit, and a plethora of employee resource groups. CEO Stéphane Bancel and the leadership team took crafting and iterating on the Mindsets very seriously, wordsmithing and tweaking them with the team until they were ready to share them officially. Now, new hires learn about the company’s Mindsets in Moderna ONE, an onboarding process that IDEO helped revamp, while existing employees attend a workshop to ensure everyone at the company knows not only what to do but also how to do it effectively. In a matter of weeks, IDEO helped Moderna codify its culture for employees and set the company up for continued success. Moderna continues to embed these Mindsets across the entire employee lifecycle to systematically scale its culture.

For employees new and old, the clarity of the Mindsets has made it easier to understand expectations and to understand the company itself. Long-term veterans responded with comments like, "These really help explain why we're working this way,” while one newbie said, "It feels like a homecoming to hear the culture that we’re trying to bring through.” But more than just solving a cultural issue, the new Mindsets have fulfilled a business imperative: Holding on to the secret sauce that made Moderna successful to begin with, setting the stage for its next five years of breakthroughs.

When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 health crisis a pandemic in March of 2020, Moderna had fewer than 1,000 employees. Four years later, it’s more than five times the size.

Ranked #1

BioSpace Best Place to Work, large company in 2024

Ranked #6

Boston Consulting Group’s 50 Most Innovative Report in 2023

Ranked #4

Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 List in 2023

Like a gawky teen who acts like a kid but resembles an adult, many Internet-born organizations find, a few years in, that their mode of operation no longer matches their growing size. The acceptable norms of a small startup—like decision-making around a shared kitchen table—actually prevent these companies from continuing to innovate once they’ve scaled. As a result, they begin to plateau and become susceptible to disruption and competition.

Often, companies in this teen stage seek guidance in areas they've neglected during their initial growth spurt. As one CEO recently shared, she needed help “jumping the S-curve.” The following three principles can enable digitally-native companies to keep thriving and achieve sustainability—in other words, help the skinny kid fill out and establish the traits needed to become a grown-up.

Rethink team structures and incentives

When startups consist of just a few people in a room, there’s no separation between disciplines: An engineer sits next to the head of sales, who sits across from a project manager and shares a file cabinet with a designer. But as the company scales, teams often become siloed into discrete functions. When disparate groups are responsible for specific parts of the customer experience, it becomes fragmented.

In a project IDEO led with an online retail startup that had fallen into this trap, we noticed that the front-end engineers and UX designers—who were responsible for the website search interface—rarely communicated with the back-end engineers and data analysts. Because of this, the front-end team designed user search experiences that weren’t even feasible from a back-end point of view. In addition to this being a massive waste of time and effort, it represented a misalignment between teams working at the same company, on the same product, and serving the same customer. If internal teams are disconnected, the customer experience will inevitably be disconnected as well.

For organizations struggling with this, there’s an opportunity to reorganize teams around moments along the customer journey (account creation, browse or search, checkout, and so on), rather than function. Eventually, that misaligned company created an interdisciplinary search team that included designers, data analysts, account managers, customer success associates, and others. This resulted in a more consistent and functional search experience for users, which in turn led to more people finding, and ultimately buying, products on their site.

The customer experience needs to guide not only team organization, but also incentives. In early start-ups, individuals and teams are rewarded for speed and execution: The quicker features are released, the better. But this mindset only reinforces the tendency for teams to evolve into myopic silos, unable to grasp the holistic experience beyond their discrete function.

When reorganizing their teams around the customer journey, that online retail startup established new incentives and shared success metrics that encouraged the newly-formed groups to work together and focus on the customer experience, rather than speed and quantity. The new interdisciplinary search team’s incentives were tied to a customers’ success in finding the item they were looking for on the website or app.

Dig deeper into data

Internet-born startups tend to have an abundance of engineers who are experts at collecting and leveraging data. They relentlessly A/B test the product and often immediately take action based on the results: If button A is generating more clicks than button B, it’s best to go with the former.

This is where teenage companies take a wrong turn. Engineering teams rely on their same tried-and-true data and analysis methods used when they were chasing the next round of funding. But now that the company has matured and needs to become profitable, it must change its habits to match this new stage of growth. Continuing to blindly A/B test without considering the implications leads to over-optimizing their current product features. This results in feature bloat and prevents innovation beyond a hallmark product or technology.

Instead of reinforcing old habits, it’s useful for startups to ask why something is occuring—why is this button outperforming the other? Many teams skip this question. As a comparison, during qualitative research, we ask target customers open-ended questions to learn why they think, feel, or behave in a certain way. For example, a shopper may share that they prefer organic produce. But learning why—perhaps due to climate concern or wanting the best for their kids—unlocks the potential to understand how an online grocery delivery startup could innovate.

Rather than merely pushing organic strawberries on the homepage or building an “organic” product filter, the company can use this valuable knowledge to grow beyond their primary offering. They can consider questions like: Do environmental activists or health-conscious parents represent new or existing customer segments? How might we meaningfully shift our product or create a new one to serve them? The key is to follow data collection and A/B testing with qualitative research aimed at understanding why. Engineers will need to push beyond their comfort zone to ask these questions. Companies may also consider bringing qualitative research specialists onto engineering teams to help build this capacity.

For Internet-born startups, data can’t be only an optimization tool. It’s also a catalyst for deeper qualitative understanding and continuous innovation.

Embrace a new mode of leadership

When founders are used to working alongside engineers and designers, they often hesitate or struggle to step into the level of leadership required to run a company with hundreds of employees. The skills that enable someone to build a company are not always the same as those required to lead a mature and rapidly growing organization.

During a meeting with a digitally-native healthcare startup, the founder asked for a pause so he could weigh in on new illustration icons. By this point, the company had 200 employees and the founder had hired over a dozen senior leaders with deep experience managing teams and scaling mid-sized startups. But because of this CEO’s tendency to do the work (which he embraced when the startup was 10 people) rather than delegate the work, he wasn’t empowering this new talent do their jobs. Letting go, trusting others, and delegating can be particularly difficult and humbling for founders of companies in this adolescent period. But it’s essential to make these shifts for the startup to flourish.

This same founder also shared that communicating the company’s vision and big decisions to employees felt like more of a challenge than it used to. When an organization can fit inside a conference room, leaders have a simpler time with this: Small startup teams are often made up of generalists with an “all hands on deck” mindset. But with hundreds of specialists on board, CEOs must translate their strategy to multiple teams with differing expertise.

Each quarter, the founder began holding meetings with each team in addition to town halls with the entire company. Rethinking one’s communication strategy at this adolescent stage can create more of an opportunity for understanding, connection, and inspiration. This transition also reflects a new level of maturity for a leader.

Digitally-native startups initially grow and succeed due to a certain set of conditions: They’re technologically innovative, data-driven, and have leaders who can inspire early hires and investors and build from the ground up. But when these startups scale, those core conditions no longer do the trick. Evolving from a rambunctious, scrappy teen to a promising adult requires a new willingness to centralize around the customer experience, think before acting, and reach a higher level of leadership.

Special thanks to Mike Stringer, Jill Levinsohn, and Deb de Vries for their contribution to this article.

Visuals by Kate Bingaman-Burt

Startups enjoy a reputation as the bright young things of the business world. They’re digitally fluent, small enough to be nimble, and new enough to be free of legacy baggage. Yet many successful startups face a rude awakening if they make it past infancy and scale to hundreds of employees. While success is exciting, puberty is awkward. These principles can help.

Now, almost seven years and two babies later, all four of us are still in the same space. I accidentally gave birth to our second child on the apartment floor—a life-changing moment that only took up about twelve square feet. Eric calmly delivered her, while speaking to the paramedics, and our two-year-old stood in the corner.

So, our apartment has served many different purposes. With each additional human, black shirt, pair of boots, friendship, painting, plant, and piece of furniture we have had to really evaluate what stays in the apartment and what must go.

I’ve devoured all the decluttering blogs, books, documentaries, and conversations. I’ve tried a lot of the methodologies, and written “get rid of everything” on my weekend to-do list for more than seven years—and failed. But over the years, I’ve built a framework for making decisions about what to bring into my life—and our space—based on what matters most to me and to us.

I’m not sure that this is the final version of my criteria for what stays and goes, but I’m trying it out—a true IDEO prototype. I would like to think that these five principles could apply to whatever life you have—whether you have a huge space with three closets, a tiny room with no closet, or you actually live in a closet, like my daughters do.

1. Relationships

Relationships are what matter most to me. I value people. I love having them over to celebrate, I love feeding them, letting them stay overnight, hearing their stories, letting them shower, and taking meals to them. We built a Murphy bed for my husband and me to give us more space, but, mostly, so that we can have people over to talk and eat together, and develop those relationships that mean so much to us. We also built bunk bed cribs in the closet (bedroom) so that the girls would learn to share. Instead of being a constraint, I think of our tiny space as a way to share happiness, motivate us to resolve conflict more quickly, and cry and be sad—together.

2. Cleanliness

Cleanliness isn’t just about Pine-Sol and bleach—it’s also about reducing visual clutter. White walls, curated with colorful artwork and flooded with natural light, feel clean and visually calm. With a human baby for a Swiffer, I am also particularly aware of accumulating dust. And although it would be more convenient, I find it difficult to give up my duties to a cleaning person because of my high standards and weird obsession with fresh grout and shiny floors. And so, cleaning and reducing visual clutter are a family affair filled with songs, dance breaks, snacks, and high fives.

3. Long-term vs. short-term

For me, investing in things that will be with me for the long term is a balance between using my money better and producing less waste. In the short term, I will reuse something that I already have, like a hand me down click-on kid booster seat, even though I don’t like the way it looks or the exact function of it. (My kids will eventually be able to sit in a regular chair unassisted, right?) To help manage the amount of waste we produce, we also have the super luxury of curbside compost, recycling, and garbage and we have communities that will happily use things that we no longer can.

4. Aesthetics

When one thing is out of place in a small space, everything looks like chaos. To create order and balance, you need a bit of white space to breathe, and nice things to look at. To give us more storage we installed cabinets high up on the wall, out of our line of sight. We hang our laundry bags on a dowel in our front closet, hiding dirty laundry and freeing up the floor space that a laundry hamper would take up. We often rotate the refrigerator artwork to keep things interesting and curated. We make our home a place filled with things that we’re proud to talk about, look at, and live with.

5. Health and wellness

We all need space to be together and to be apart, space to retreat to and be quiet, space to move around and dance, or space to exercise or meditate. The place where you live can’t always serve all of those purposes. Creating cozy, soft places to read, moving furniture to the perimeter to make room to dance and run in circles, and hanging out in the shower just one minute longer to clear your thoughts have all helped us be a healthier family. And when it feels like everything is breaking down, we buckle the girls in the stroller and go outside. The outdoors have become our extended living room, allowing us to spread out our arms a little wider and play.

We won’t be in our tiny home forever; two growing children mean that one day our apartment will actually be too small. But we—and you—can take this methodology we’ve created wherever we go.

When you think about your own space, remember to consider the things that matter most to you, and the things that work for you. Take pride in your home and make it your own sanctuary. Learn to see the possibility in your space and in your life.

In the meantime, we’ll be thriving in our 400 square feet. If you’d like to drop by, we’d love to feed you.

It all started in 2011, with eight weeks of apartment searching, a lot of flirting with landlords, a couple of rejections (because “couples always break up in studio spaces”), and an eventual win—four hundred square feet for my husband Eric and me.

As more of our interactions with healthcare become mediated by screens, the need to design human-centric systems only increases. Digital interfaces can empower people to take control of their own health, but these systems can also amplify the sterile interactions for which the industry is all too well known.

In order for “making healthcare more human” to be more than a marketing slogan, it’s important for designers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders to keep in mind the humans they serve—especially when designing digital products. Below are five principles we use at IDEO to keep human needs at the center of everything we do.

1. Meet users where they are

Human-centered design means designing for a user’s whole life context: income, employment, food preferences, and emotions. We must also consider the expectations, learned behaviors, and technological capabilities each user brings to the table when thinking about his or her health.

At IDEO, we always try to map out the full user journey. And because that user is human, they might not always be consistent in the way they interact with the digital product or tool. For example, in the course of designing a connected blood glucose meter, we observed that many people with diabetes don’t test their glucose levels on a regimented schedule. Why? Life gets in the way.

But because certified diabetes educators (CDEs) need as accurate information as possible, they ask patients to test as regularly as possible for the two weeks leading up to an appointment. This is where designers can play a role: Because digital tools live in people’s pockets and homes, we can tailor solutions to the individual to a greater degree than is possible in the in-person clinical care environment. By observing how patients use workarounds to integrate products into their routines, we can design solutions that work within the context of their lives. It’s only by meeting users where they are that we can inspire meaningful behavior change over time.

2. Create “give-get” loops

Imagine you’re introduced to a digital product or service by a healthcare provider during a routine clinical visit. You may choose to search for the accompanying app and download it from the App Store. You’d then go through an onboarding process, create a username and password, and decide whether to accept push notifications. You may also be asked to share sensitive health information or consent for the application to access it.

All of these steps have happened before you gained any tangible value from the product or service. In the absence of clear benefit to users, it’s not uncommon to lose many at this early stage.

One way we address early user drop-off is with a “give-get” loop. This could be as simple as asking a user to enter their dietary restrictions in exchange for tailored suggestions about nutrition, or asking for an address to provide hyper-local recommendations. Ultimately, good user experience design incorporates that data to complete a cycle of action that benefits the user. When we’re able to create conditions for purposeful data gathering, we can then recognize patterns and help users discover insights that they could act upon by introducing and initiating new behaviors.

At the same time, we need to be mindful of the role we might be creating for ourselves as recipients and holders of sensitive information. That’s why we’re careful to only collect the “minimally viable data” required to create the intended user experience.

3. Design for relationships

User experience design for managing chronic disease needs to rely on more than software and technology. The relationship between the primary user and their network of care providers and community members has significant bearing on the success of the product. The user experience is part of a larger service ecosystem and must consider how the nodes in that system interact.

Today, pharmaceutical companies often use digital tools to drive adherence—to make sure that patients take their medication at the right times and in the right ways. But digital solutions can go beyond adherence: they can—and should—support holistic care beyond acute or immediate medical needs.

When digital experiences and interactions can help patients live healthier lives, they become tools for delivering better health outcomes overall, beyond any specific condition. Further, the burgeoning field of digital therapeutics is turning out digital health products that themselves stand as effective, proven interventions to treat physical, mental, and behavioral conditions.

4. Don’t be limited by the boundaries of “the device”

When IDEO began working with Bayer Diabetes (now Ascensia Diabetes Care) in 2006, people with diabetes were able to access their own blood glucose data either by logging it themselves or by showing the meter to their doctor. The Contour USB opened up new opportunities for design, enabling people to plug the meter into a personal computer and transfer all readings to a single document. Once the Contour USB launched, the next design challenge was to make it simpler and less expensive. We honed in on a feature: the color screen.

While a color screen might seem like a great new opportunity to present rich information, it was only used for displaying simple data, like meal markers, dates, and times. From a human-centered design perspective, it made more sense to eliminate the color screen and use users’ smartphones or computers instead. The meter’s color screen was adding unnecessary cost without contributing enough benefit in return.

By focusing on the outcome rather than the solution, we were able to spot our own blindspot. Just because an intervention can be solved with technology doesn’t mean it always has to be.

5. Inspire the organization to evolve

As a rule, creating digital products and services will create the need for new capabilities and processes inside the organizations that deliver them. Digital user experiences are living systems, and they require organizational investment and structures ready to support near-constant change. As soon as we’re “done” designing a digital experience, a software operating system might change, a new data privacy law might pass, or a content partner could change their rules of engagement, any of which would require additional refinement.

Today, many companies that deliver global offerings at scale work in silos that are each oriented around different targets and metrics. There are several examples where organizations are directly addressing this challenge through new experimental ways of working. Whether through a corporate innovation lab, internal incubator, or entirely separate venture, carving out a portion of the business enables efficient experimentation without detracting from core business objectives. Then, once proof-of-concepts have been successful, learnings can be incorporated into the rest of the organization.

Even within the most nimble and flexible organizations, any digital product or service will need to continue to evolve and improve from day one. It’s like that old adage about buying a car: once you drive it off the lot, it immediately goes down in value. Once a digital solution is launched, it’s essential to start planning immediately for its next update. By listening to the needs of end users, it should be clear where to begin.

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From stepping into a doctor’s office to taking a daily vitamin, each interaction with the healthcare system was designed for and by a human—and yet the industry can often feel soulless.

CEOs like Tim Cook of Apple, Julie Sweet of Accenture North America, and Larry Fink of BlackRock joined together to declare that businesses must also focus on the ethical treatment of their employees, suppliers, and the environment. In other words, organizations must rethink their purpose—a reason for existing beyond making a profit.

But establishing purpose isn’t simple, particularly for parent companies that own a variety of businesses. Mergers and acquisitions can put the purposes of different enterprises at odds with one another when they find themselves under the same corporate umbrella. Individual employees create their own goals and motivations. But beyond the structural and financial ties across entities and employees within a corporation, there often is no consistent, unifying vision.

With so much complexity in a conglomerate organization, where do leaders begin to create a purpose that functions across many businesses? The solution lies in “nested purpose”—a layered approach that starts at the business level and ladders up to the parent level. Nested purpose builds unity among all employees and businesses, making everyone feel connected. We’ve seen it shift leaders’ mindsets from “running a business owned by a parent company” to “being part of a family of businesses that are stronger together.” Nested purpose has the power to inspire new individual behaviors that in turn catalyze global impact across a corporation.

Walt Disney Company, for example, defines their “why” within their mission statement, “To entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.” This statement applies across nine subsidiaries, each with different audience engagement, content, and distribution. A tier down, ESPN, which is owned by Disney, describes their “why” as, “To serve the sports fan, anytime, anywhere.” This statement is more focused on the ESPN consumer and their habits, but it nests comfortably within Disney’s higher purpose, enabling the two to function in tandem toward their ultimate goal, and giving employees in the smaller section of the business a sense that they’re meaningfully connected to the parent corporation.

The following is a series of tools and exercises to help foster nested purpose, based on our experience working with a global corporation hoping to drive transformational change within their organization. Like the Business Roundtable executives, this particular CEO knew that developing purpose at the parent-company level would be both virtuous and strategic, but needed leaders from each of the businesses to be engaged, aligned, and inspired. In addition to engaging these executives, we included promising talent—from mid-level managers to vice presidents—in the work to define and activate parent-level purpose.

Begin by setting the wheels in motion

At the first session with the heads of the businesses and their employees, we introduced the Purpose Wheel: a tool designed to foster conversations about purpose. The Wheel helps teams envision the various ways the parent company might have impact in the world. Simultaneously, the Wheel builds the foundation for an eventual purpose statement. Before crafting the specifics and poetry of a purpose statement, leaders must first find common ground around the idea and how it’s nested throughout the company.

Spinning the Purpose Wheel, the group imagined what the parent company’s future might look like if their purpose was grounded in the following five underlined areas:

We exist to Enable Potential
This suggests a parent company creates impact by inspiring greater possibilities, such as Nike, whose products and services exist to motivate and empower athletes.

We exist to Reduce Friction
By simplifying and eliminating barriers, companies like Spotify make daily pleasures—like listening to music—more accessible and seamless for customers.

We exist to Foster Prosperity
Brands like Warby Parker, which donates a pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair sold, creates impact by supporting the success of others.

We exist to Encourage Exploration
This suggests that a company’s purpose is to champion discovery. Adobe, for example, offers a creative suite of tools and services that people can use to design and explore.

We exist to Kindle Happiness
Zappos purpose is “to live and deliver WOW.” The retail company creates impact by inciting pure joy.

While spinning the wheel, we posed the following questions to encourage discussion: If we exist to [ insert one of the five areas ], how might that purpose ultimately show up in our individual workplaces and in the world? What would all of us—together—have to agree to start or stop doing in order for this parent-company purpose to be true?

The Wheel’s five areas are intentionally designed to be fluid. Phrases like “enable potential” and “encourage exploration” are similar yet different. Though Spotify’s purpose is grounded in reducing friction, the company’s purpose could also be rooted in kindling happiness for its millions of listeners. This kind of flexibility is especially useful when establishing shared purpose among diverse businesses, as it enables generative conversations and more opportunity for alignment.

The Purpose Wheel also opens teams’ eyes to new possibilities: If a parent company exists to foster prosperity, for example, what innovative ideas or growth opportunities might this foundation unlock for one of its business groups? Perhaps it’s tweaking the manufacturing process to be more environmentally-friendly, developing a more human-centered customer service strategy, or instituting a new parental leave benefit for employees.

Get tangible through storytelling

Once this groundwork was laid, we broke the executives and employees into small groups and asked each member to share stories about their business that made them proud or represented their workplace culture at its best—focusing on humans and experiences, not profit or performance.

One business head talked about an entry-level employee who works at one of the energy plants her business operates. During a shift, the worker put his job at risk by persistently questioning a supervisor’s recommendation. His willingness to push authority ended up preventing an accident at the plant, one that would have put both the business and worker safety at risk. A mid-level manager shared a story about his business providing the financial resources to send a customer’s son to engineering school. After graduation, the son returned to his village to help the community learn to irrigate crops and generate food for the local area.

When asked to boil these stories down into values, the groups landed on words like bravery, dedication, trust, protection, empowerment, and generosity. Articulating these values prompted even more storytelling: Other participants began considering and sharing stories from their own organizations. Eventually, they generated a collection of stories about a particular shared value from across the parent company.

Look to the future with optimism

While stories of the past help illuminate purpose-oriented practices already in play, considering the future encourages leaders to articulate hopes and dreams for the parent company. During another workshop, we gave the team blank front covers of magazines, ranging from WIRED to National Geographic. We asked them to reflect on the purpose statement and values they’d derived from the previous exercises to imagine how their company might show up on a magazine cover in the future. What image would appear? What would the headline say?

One participant proudly taped his National Geographic cover on the board. The headline read, “Plastics Now Completely Eliminated From the World’s Oceans.” Another’s cover said, “[Parent company’s CEO] Named Time’s Person of the Year.”

When creating purpose at the parent company level—or any level for that matter—it’s helpful for tools and exercises to toggle between the accessible (sharing real stories) and aspirational (spinning the Purpose Wheel and imagining the future). This ensures that the eventual purpose statement is ambitious and inspirational, but also relatable and within a business’ reach.

Collaborate to drive improvement and alignment

To ground the group back in the tangible, we guided them through a writing session, asking them to draft three potential purpose statements for the parent company, based on the structure established from the Purpose Wheel, the values derived from their favorite stories, and the visions captured on the magazine covers.

Each team presented their favorite to the larger group, then switched tables and left their favorite purpose statement for others to inherit, build on, and improve. At the end of the rotations, every participant had contributed to five strong purpose statement prototypes to continue refining and testing with teams.

Putting purpose into practice

Nested purpose isn’t simple. Done poorly, it can confuse, distract and compound already complicated dynamics at the parent company-level. But when carefully planned and designed with both leaders and their employees, nested purpose can invigorate an organization by clarifying roles and creating cohesion across industries and countries.

Written by Kristin Kelly and Nate Carter
Visuals by Louisa Liu

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Business Roundtable, a lobbying group composed of executives from some of America’s largest companies, recently released a statement arguing that today’s corporations must do more than simply drive shareholder value.

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.

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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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