Looking to understand the role of instant noodles in middle-class Chinese life, the IDEO team conducted in-home research with consumers across a range of life stages and levels of attachment to noodle culture and convenience foods. The first finding was reassuring: Everyone kept instant noodles at home. The category still had a place in middle-class kitchens. But beneath that was a more complicated, emotional story—and an unmet need for convenience and quality to coexist in a single product.

The team discovered that instant noodles are more than just a quick, on-the-go meal; they are a nostalgic comfort food that evokes fond memories. But since their heyday, their role in daily life has evolved. Once a complete meal in itself, instant noodles now often function as a versatile flavor base or culinary accent in other dishes. Because they don’t align with the healthier, higher-quality, and more novel food choices that middle-class consumers aspire to, noodle shops, delivery noodles, or fresh-cooked instant options often win out. Yet, even these alternatives come with trade-offs. Delivered noodles lose texture during transport. Sit-down noodle shops preserve quality but offer limited flavors.  Cooking from scratch meets the bar for both texture and flavor, but requires a significant time investment. As one young mother said, “If I could get the texture of fresh-cooked noodles without turning on the stove, I’d buy that instant noodle for sure.”

The research inspired the creation of a new category, which the team termed “fresh-brewed noodles.” More than just a noodle or broth upgrade, Master Kong’s fresh-brewed noodles would offer the speed of instant noodles with the quality of freshly cooked options, plus flavors not found in traditional noodle shops. The strategic positioning was clear. Executing it by making fresh-brewed noodles mass-producible, affordable, and eventually profitable presented a category-innovation challenge. To get there, IDEO designed a series of dual-track co-creation workshops with the Master Kong team and consumers.

One track focused on prototyping the core product experience: noodles, broth, and toppings. IDEO and Master Kong’s R&D team began by studying the traditional craft of Chinese noodle-making, starting in Shanxi, a region renowned for its noodles. Through successive rounds of prototyping and consumer tasting, the team identified a critical insight: for “fresh-brewed noodles” to be convincing, the innovation had to be centered on the noodles themselves.

Texture alone was not enough. Consumers needed to see a meaningful difference before they tasted the product. IDEO translated this insight into a distinctive noodle profile: irregular, dimensional shapes designed to remain springy, hold sauce and broth, and mimic the resilience of freshly cooked noodles using only hot water. Because this visible shape represented the product’s core value proposition, it became a hero feature on the packaging. The graphic design made a bold visual statement about the noodle form, turning a technical R&D breakthrough into an immediately legible consumer promise: these are not ordinary instant noodles.

A parallel track explored the broader commercial experience: trend-forward and reimagined classic flavor profiles, light yet deeply satisfying broths, carefully selected toppings, and packaging that signals a new level of quality on store shelves. One key insight was that utensils carry meaning. Conventional instant noodles are often associated with disposable plastic forks, while higher-quality noodles are eaten with chopsticks. IDEO translated this cultural cue into the design of the bowl’s lid.

Instead of treating utensils as an afterthought, the team designed a solid, rounded, heat-retaining lid that embeds a pair of small wooden chopsticks. The gesture creates a small ritual of anticipation and reframes the product—not just a convenient instant meal, but a more considered noodle experience. Once opened, the product fulfills that promise with satisfyingly bouncy noodles, a rich liquid broth pouch that replaces the traditional oil-and-powder packet, and a vegetable packet reformulated with more premium whole ingredients.

The first batch of “Te Bie Te” Fresh-Brewed Noodles—Chinese wordplay that emphasizes “special”—launched in August 2025 with three trendy and tried-and-true flavors. Within just three days, sales exceeded 100,000 bowls. Within a week, “Te Bie Te” topped the instant noodle category sales ranking on Douyin, China’s domestic counterpart to TikTok. The outcome was bigger than a product launch—it served as proof that a mature, declining category could be fundamentally reinvented to meet consumers’ real needs. For Master Kong, the project became a North Star and a model for internal category innovation in beverages, ready-to-eat foods, and beyond.

Once a popular, affordable staple, the instant noodle category in China has been declining rapidly due to shifting demographics, rising food delivery options, and increasing customer demand for healthier, more nutritious meals.

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According to the World Instant Noodles Association, between 2020 and 2023, China’s instant noodle consumption fell by 4 billion packs.

100,000+

“Te Bie Te” bowls sold in the first 3 days on the market

#1

on Douyin’s instant noodle category ranking within one week of launch

Taylor’s legacy began in 1969 with the founding of Taylor’s College and soon expanded to include Taylor’s University, one of Southeast Asia’s top private universities, as well as many other institutions that serve 35,000 students per year. The family-owned group also operates Taylor’s International Schools, Garden International School, and Nexus International School for students ages 4 to 18. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital city, annual tuition at premium private schools like these ranges from about $10,000 to $25,000 USD. Taylor’s wanted to do something different: provide the same level of academic rigor and immersive learning experiences at one-third the cost.

IDEO began by speaking with over three dozen students, parents, teachers, and experts across the capital to understand what was working, what wasn’t, and what was missing from such moderately priced international schools.

A few themes quickly emerged. Families, students, and teachers were worried about the stability of these new private schools, which tended to have higher-than-normal teacher turnover rates and were plagued by financial instability, negatively impacting talent attraction and retention, as well as student learning. Parents appreciated that the schools offered holistic learning experiences, such as field trips to rural areas, including jungles, but wished they were more consistently part of the curriculum. And now, the looming challenge of AI—how to use it, how to teach it, and how to teach with it—was in the background, a persistent cause for concern. The big unmet need? Reassurance that Taylor’s was thinking long-term and systematically about developing the skills, knowledge, and mindsets that would prepare students for an ever-changing world. Parents wanted a school that measured growth in academic, social, and character terms over generations, not just school semesters.

With these insights in hand, IDEO began developing a design Playbook for Taylor’s new brand—Lexel International Schools. A combination of “lexicon” and “excellence,” Lexel’s mission is “building what lasts, learning for life.”

The schools are centered around three key differentiators: 

• Always Ahead: Lexel schools commit to staying current with the topics and subject matter they teach, as well as the tools they provide to students, parents, and teachers.s.  
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• Learning That Builds for Life: The schools ensure programmatic, systemic, and consistent learning experiences from Pre-K to Year 11. Interested students can even continue their post-secondary journey in partnership with Taylor’s University and other higher education institutions within the Taylor’s ecosystem.
  
  
• Educators for the Long Run: These schools commit to ongoing investments in professional growth opportunities for teachers and stable learning environments for students.

Four Lexel Literacies—AI, Digital, Financial, and Nutrition—integrated into the Cambridge Curriculum bring the school’s vision and mission to life.

By systematically integrating AI literacy into its spiral education framework, in particular, an approach where major topics are revisited multiple times through a curriculum to build fluency over time, Lexel ensures parents that the school is thinking a decade ahead from Day One, setting the school apart. In addition to enhancing AI fluency, Lexel offers unique end-of-term experiences called Jungles & Junctions.

Combining three important strands of learning—community engagement, nature-based personal and interpersonal development, and career and university exploration—Jungles & Junctions leverages Taylor’s extended educational network and Lexel’s strategic founding campus within the Gamuda Gardens development in Selangor. Surrounded by tropical rainforests, the township’s residential neighborhoods, theme park, and various sports facilities, including an Olympic-length swimming pool, are transformed into an extended Lexel campus, with a GenAI-driven planner to help teachers streamline the organization of class outings. “The Township is Your Campus” became the tagline for this approach.

In September 2025, just months after IDEO’s collaboration ended, Taylor’s began classes at its first Lexel International School. By mid-year, the new school had achieved 115% of its year-one student enrollment target, with significant inbound demand for Year 2 already demonstrating the school’s market resonance.

The modern campus features spacious classrooms, science and technology labs, a library, a multipurpose hall, and a canteen. Annual tuition ranges from about $2,800 USD for pre-K students to about $6,100 USD for secondary students.

Most importantly, by combining Taylor’s deep academic expertise, Gamuda Land’s development prowess, and IDEO’s innovative design Playbook, Lexel brings quality, affordable international education closer to home for Malaysian families. According to one parent, “My daughter looks forward to going to school every day … and has a lot of opportunities to express herself. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give [Lexel] an 11.” Based on the IDEO Playbook, a second flagship campus in the Southern Klang Valley, which is scheduled to open in September 2026, has already exceeded its year-one target enrollment expectations, with plans to continue extending the Lexel network to other parts of Malaysia and the wider Southeast Asian region in the near future.

Malaysia’s private international school sector has grown significantly as parents seek quality English-language education. However, high tuition fees and limited access to reputable schools are continual challenges for those in the emerging middle class.

115%

of Lexel’s student enrollment target reached during the launch year of its first campus
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Year 1 enrollment target exceeded

at Lexel's second campus several months ahead of classes commencing

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The American news industry has long been a competitive and saturated market. This has only intensified with the emergence of social media outlets and AI-generated news. Even so, SAN’s rigorously unbiased, fact-based reporting style and rich video storytelling had enabled the ambitious startup to rise above the media fray in just three short years.

With a strong foundation to build on, IDEO sought to further differentiate SAN’s cutting-edge news product and build deeper engagement with a wider audience through a new user experience.

‍Collaborating closely, IDEO and SAN began by delving deeply into media consumption habits. They met with early SAN superfans, news consumers who spent hours a day absorbing content from traditional outlets like Fox and USA Today, and those who looked to their Ring doorbell app or Reddit for news. The takeaways? People were tired of clickbait and clunky interfaces. They sought clear, factual news that was easily accessible, with additional context to help them interpret events and understand their significance. They craved more than one perspective on important topics, so stories felt balanced rather than polarized. They also valued having control over how they consumed news, so making it easy to switch between text, video, and audio formats was crucial.

Together, IDEO and SAN created features across SAN’s website and app that put facts, trust, and transparency at the core of the product experience. Fact Cards distill key data points into clear, shareable units, while the Sources feature allows readers to trace information directly back to its original source. To make complex stories easier to grasp, Big Picture insights drill down into why events matter, surfacing underlying themes, historical parallels, differences in reporting, and common ground. The Why This Story Matters section provides readers with clear framing and sets the story within a broader context, while the Timeline illustrates how events unfold over days, months, or even years. An antidote to news polarization, See All Sides presents left, right, and center narratives for key topics side-by-side, and Media Landscape visualizations reveal how coverage varies across outlets. Finally, to ensure SAN fits seamlessly into readers’ daily lives, the redesigned Today Page is organized into three highly scannable sections: Latest News, Top Stories, and SAN Originals. The combined features create a balanced, clear, and non-polarizing news experience, making it easy for readers to delve deeper into the sources of their news.

SAN now delivers a news experience as modern, dynamic, and trustworthy as its journalism. A month after its debut, the SAN app’s page views increased 1,170 percent year over year compared to June 2024, while active users rose 700 percent. Readers also give the updated mobile experience a 4.8 rating on the Apple App Store. “Our team is delivering reporting that’s both deeply factual and accessible,” said Derek Mead, SAN’s Chief Content Officer. “This redesign is pivotal to the direction journalism needs to take and the leadership role Straight Arrow News is taking on as we help guide the news industry into a brighter future.”

SAN built a loyal readership and gained recognition for its unbiased reporting. To expand and stand out from legacy media, SAN  wanted a redesigned user experience that reflected its commitment to fact-based journalism.

1,170%

increase in app page views YoY 

700%

increase in active users

4.8 rating

on the Apple App Store

Sanofi was the first company to supply the polio vaccine worldwide. Because of the global fight against the disease, endemic wild poliovirus transmission is now limited to just two countries. However, attitudes toward vaccines and immunizations have shifted significantly. To ensure a smooth launch of Beyfortus in a time of increased vaccine hesitancy, Sanofi asked IDEO to conduct research across four important and very different healthcare markets: Germany, Spain, China, and the US.

IDEO worked with parents, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and healthcare administrators to identify potential barriers to vaccine adoption and understand the emotional needs of all stakeholders involved in the immunization process. Navigating cultural differences and diverse healthcare environments, the team uncovered a set of insights.

For healthcare professionals, the team discovered there was no one-size-fits-all approach to immunization training across Sanofi’s 20-plus global markets. While consistency of key information was important, trainings needed to be flexible and customizable. This way, regardless of whether the vaccine was administered by midwives, OB-GYNs, nurses, or doctors, they could  confidently discuss the pros and cons across cultural contexts and administer the drug correctly.
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For new parents, receiving information about a new immunization immediately after giving birth could be too stressful. But simply leaving pamphlets about Beyfortus in waiting rooms didn't address their real concerns, either. Caregivers needed to engage in conversations earlier in their pregnancies and continue them after leaving the hospital, when they might have additional questions.

IDEO translated these research insights into a highly accessible global communication toolkit that uses simple, straightforward language, metaphors, and illustrations to support informed conversations between healthcare providers and parents before, during, and after a child is born. IDEO then conducted a series of market-fit co-design workshops with representatives of Sanofi’s global immunization business to iterate on the print and digital tools, make them more resonant with regional customers, and ensure compliance with local regulations. IDEO handed the toolkits over for development to support the launch of Beyfortus in January 2024, just in time for RSV season.

Beyfortus saw enormous demand in its first year, demonstrating strong efficacy in real-world applications and achieving blockbuster status as a $1.8 billion therapy. Sanofi’s global launch team credits the patient-centric toolkit with increased requests for communication materials from its regional markets as well as from healthcare and government organizations that have typically been hard to reach, key goals of its global-local launch strategy.

Since its development, Beyfortus has received swift regulatory approval from the US, EU, China, and Japan, with patient demand causing Sanofi to triple its worldwide manufacturing capacity to meet the needs of the 2024-25 RSV season. Ahead of the larger global distribution of Beyfortus, IDEO and Sanofi partnered with equity expert consultants, Fearless Futures, to conduct a DEI review and worked with doctors and nurses who participated in the initial drug launch to make the materials even more accessible, relevant, and successful for 2025 and beyond. To date, six million babies—and counting—have been immunized with Beyfortus.

Worldwide, childhood vaccination hesitancy among parents fluctuates between 25-45%, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), a trend it considers one of the biggest global threats to public health.

85.9%

‍reduction in hospitalizations for infants who received Beyfortus compared to those who did not (2023–24 RSV season)

$1.8B

in first-year sales of Beyfortus

‍

I’ve always been a self-taught coder, so a few months back, I decided I’d get a jump on AR by playing around with 3D coding. What better way to figure it out than to create 3D dancing avatars of my friends so I can host virtual dance parties? (The idea may have been inspired by some of my previous work.)

So I went around asking my colleagues if I could 3D-scan them. I know what you’re thinking: How did I get anyone to agree to this? When I asked people to be scanned, they were so excited to "be 3D" they didn't even ask what I was going to do with the scans.

Left: IDEO CTO Tom Eich IRL. Right: Tom's 3D model mid-groove.

Once I got the scans, I "rigged" them—meaning, I gave them bones. Once they had bones, I could assign motion capture dance data to them that I pulled using 3D software. Finally, I loaded them into my code, which I had written with the help of countless tutorials on three.js, an API for 3D graphics. I created a desktop, AR, and VR version so that people could experience the dance party in the reality of their choosing. (3D assets in motion are surprisingly easy to transition between realities.)

The IDDDEO New York dance floor.

Tom Eich dancing in AR.

When participants saw their avatars in motion, they were definitely confused; for many, it was their first time seeing themselves in 3D. Being able to rotate a camera 360 degrees to see yourself from every angle is just not possible in reality, especially when you’re in motion. Most people immediately pointed out all the color/modeling imperfections in their 3D likenesses that resulted from my use of (what is clearly) an off-the-shelf 3D scanner.

Once the studio saw their coworkers’ 3D models dancing, everyone wanted an invite to the dance party. My fellow tinkerer Danny DeRuntz even brought the party to IDEO Cambridge, where he had long lines of people waiting to be scanned in.

The IDDDEO Cambridge dance floor.

My next endeavor will be creating an audio-visual beat machine that lets anyone sample and manipulate YouTube clips using my own pseudo format, AZZ. (Here’s a demo for the curious.) In the meantime, I’ll be fine-tuning the 3D dance code in hopes of eventually bringing this experience to real life parties in NYC. Sadly, elegant and portable 3D body scanning does not yet appear to be a thing. Hopefully soon?

Check out the dance floor and create your own party here.

Want to follow the project? I’ll be posting updates on my Instagram.

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As an interaction designer, I’m always testing my limits and teaching myself new technologies. And whenever possible, I like to use those new tricks to make people smile. My projects often have no purpose other than giving me an excuse to play on the computer. But I’ve found that combining my passion for the absurd with my passion for learning new tools can lead to glorious outcomes.

As designers who have worked on multiple preparedness and relief projects, we start by understanding why people choose not to prepare, then identify ways to make resilience easier.

Just like buying life insurance, or saving for a rainy day, a future emergency is an abstraction that’s hard to connect to our day-to-day priorities. And unlike seeing everyone else’s trash cans line the curb once a week, preparedness doesn’t have any visible prompts to encourage all of us to get with the program.

Symbols of participation can be powerful change agents, and we know that something as simple as filling out a checklist or talking about a plan can make the abstract tangible.

So what can you do today, for tomorrow?

Break down the process into bite-sized tasks, attach them to a concrete timetable, and connect with the people around you. By building strong connections with your community and taking the time to create a plan, you’ll be more equipped when the big one hits (whatever the big one might be.)

Here are a few simple steps to get you started—collaboratively—in just a week. Share this with your family, your roommate, your colleagues, or your book club.

Now: Follow Local Alerts

Make sure you know what’s going on around you. Follow local emergency alerts from the Fire Department and/or your local Department of Emergency Management on the social media platform you use most (Twitter, Facebook, NextDoor, etc.).

Tomorrow: Copy Your Documents

Scan and store a copy of your important documents. Take a photo of or scan your driver’s license, passport, lease/ownership documents, social security card, and other important documents. Save them (somewhere safe) in the cloud.

This weekend: Gather Your Stuff

Start assembling an emergency kit. Print out a of essentials, useful stuff, and personal items to get started. You’ll be surprised at how much you already have—it’s just a matter of getting it all in one place. And when it comes to supplies, a good rule of thumb is to have enough for three days.

Next week: Make a Plan

Make an emergency plan with your people. Have friends or family over for dinner and hatch it together. It’s like giving a spare key to a neighbor. Do it once, and hopefully, you'll never need to use it.

Cross these four things off your list, and we’ll all be better off when the next wildfire or bomb cyclone hits.

This winter, wildfires raged across California. The air has been heavy with smoke and thick with the power of Mother Nature. And the Left Coast isn’t the only place to be hit by a natural disaster recently (Hello Eastern Seaboard, Houston, Puerto Rico, Florida). As climate change accelerates, getting prepared is on all of our minds.

I took this picture at the beach festival in Chiba, Japan. Sudden rain is hard to avoid in the Japanese summer. When it started pouring at the beach, a man covered himself with the tarp he had been sitting on. After about five minutes, a bunch of people joined him under the tarp, which had been turned into an improvised umbrella. I loved that the man helped his fellow festival-goers escape the rain without a second thought.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

Then one year I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and was quite taken by this line: “What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.”

Huh, I thought.

The next January, I made a resolution to "Run every day." To exercise daily, I had to change my mindset. I couldn’t be too hard on myself — if there were only 10 minutes, then a 10 minute run had to be okay. In other words, I had to be a bit of a slacker.

It worked!

Building a small daily habit was way easier than a big sometimes habit. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like magic. I fell off the wagon several times, but each time I managed to get back on. Since the goal was doable, if I missed a day or two, I didn’t have to break the ice when I resumed. It worked, and the habit stuck!

Next, I tried a New Year’s Resolution for writing. Previously, I’d only bothered writing if I had at least 90 minutes of uninterrupted time (which is pretty rare). Using my new slacker method, I resolved to "Write every day, even just 10 minutes."

Again, it was easier to stay in rhythm, and the habit stuck. (Although I had to get a little creative to stay focused.)

I even tried this approach with meditating, which always seemed like The Hardest Thing In The World. To make it a daily habit, I downgraded my expectations. I didn’t wake up early. I didn’t meditate for 60 minutes. I didn’t force myself to sit in silence on a zen pillow.

Instead (nerd alert!) I just used Headspace every day, on the bus or even while I was falling asleep. And I decided that even 10 minutes of meditation “counted.” The habit stuck.

Sometimes the magic doesn’t work. Sometimes I’ll keep the same resolution two or three years in a row before it sticks. (This year I’ll finally stretch my hamstrings!) Still, for me, getting even 50% of my resolutions to stick is pretty good.

So take it for what it’s worth. But if you’ve been frustrated with resolutions in the past, consider applying my Unscientific 5-Step Recipe:

1. Dial it back

Don’t be too ambitious. Like, do you really want to run a marathon? I mean, you’ve seen people at the end of marathons, right? They look pretty tired.

Seriously though, we have a culture of intense expectations, and many of us are too hard on ourselves. It’s okay to dial back your goal and make it more doable. Resolving to read 500 books is admirable… but resolving to make (or maintain) a daily reading habit is also great.

2. Make it very specific

My “Exercise more” resolution is a prime example of way-too-vague. “Run every day” is better, “Run around the park in the morning” is better still. Best of all would be something like “Exercise every day, ideally running in the morning, but other forms of exercise and other times of day are also cool.” You get the idea.

3. Add the magic words "for at least 10 minutes every day"

If you decide 10 minutes a day is enough to count, you’ll find it way easier to do it every day. And if you do it every day, it’s way easier to keep the habit.

4. Do it every day for a month

Don't think about al 365 days at once. If you make it through January (or any 30 consecutive days), there's a pretty good chance the habit will stick for the year. If you don't believe me, ask Jerry Seinfeld.

5. Be nice to yourself if you miss a day or two

Just start again. In fact, if you miss a day or two but get right back on it, you don’t even have to count it as breaking your 30-day streak. I hereby grant you permission!

Who knows, your small habit might set the foundation for bigger things. But don’t worry about it in January. Be kind to yourself as you maintain the rhythm, and let the good things happen. They will.

Now go write yourself a nice doable resolution. Good luck, fellow slacker—you got this!

To learn more about Jake's methods subscribe to his newsletter here.

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My New Year’s Resolutions used to fail every time.

For example, I set a resolution to “Exercise more.” I vaguely imagined running marathons and wearing headbands. Then in January, I took two or three long runs and forgot about the resolution. It was sorta like that every year.

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As an experienced business and design leader, I have a proven track record of seeing and building the next big thing for IDEO and our clients.

When I work with executive teams, I use the tools of design, strategy, and change to help answer two questions: What’s our desired future? And how must we evolve to realize it?

I am driven by my belief in the potential for business to do well by doing good.

In addition to my work at IDEO, I am the Design Fellow of Conservation International and a core design team member for the Aspen Institute First Movers Fellowship Program. My work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and The New York Times.

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.