Over more than a century of leadership in the food and beverage industry, The J.M Smucker Company has expanded its range of products to maintain its relevance and address market demand. Today, the company leads numerous categories, with beloved products like Jif, Milk-Bone, and Folgers, which are the top choices of millions of Americans. By growing and diversifying their brands over the decades, Smucker has successfully weathered major shifts in consumer habits and technology. Today, though, CPG companies are experiencing unprecedented disruption, and leaders at Smucker understand that the escalating pace of change will require more than just new products.

Geoff Tanner, Senior Vice President, Growth & Consumer Engagement at The J.M. Smucker Company recognized the need to identify new market opportunities and establish practices that put innovation and growth at the heart of their business. And he saw the potential to bring those goals to life through his relationship with IDEO.

WATCH: Balancing innovation and efficiency through design has helped Geoff Tanner, Senior Vice President, Growth & Consumer Engagement at The J.M. Smucker Company, brave the unfamiliar, transform organizations, and ultimately bring game-changing ideas to market faster.

Geoff has stewarded a close partnership with IDEO for over a decade and throughout roles at numerous organizations. Together, Geoff and IDEO have worked on 25 projects, beginning while Geoff was VP of Marketing at Big Heart Pet Brands, and continuing on throughout his career at The J.M. Smucker Company. By working with IDEO to adopt a design thinking approach, Geoff has enabled collaboration across teams and empowered his organizations to find new ways of working that result in measurable business impact. For The J.M. Smucker Company, the partnership has brought creativity and human-centered design to the forefront of its operations, strengthening its ability to bring new products and brands to market and create a pipeline of growth.

WATCH: The J.M. Smucker Company has shifted to embrace growth and innovation as a mindset throughout the organization to bring more consistency to the innovation process.

Looking to the past to creatively connect with the future

As an example of this, Geoff and The J.M. Smucker Company suggested to IDEO that they explore how Folgers, America’s leading at-home coffee brand, might resonate more deeply with a millennial audience. Design research revealed that the mindset of today’s millennial coffee drinkers aligned with Folgers entrepreneurial brand roots. The teams collaborated to create a new concept: a brand called 1850 and an end-to-end, go-to-market product experience, including packaging, retail, and merchandise. 1850 hit shelves in 2018 and has since been reported by IRI Advantage as the top launch in the Coffee Category for 2019.

Frankly, I don’t think innovation gets any easier. You just get a little more comfortable with the discomfort, and that’s when the work starts to get consistently better.

Geoff Tanner, Senior Vice President, Growth & Consumer Engagement, The J.M. Smucker Company

Creating an innovation pipeline that’s inspired by consumers’ needs

With 1850 underway, Geoff and The J.M. Smucker Company continued to invest in human-centered design to drive new offerings. The next collaboration with IDEO explored how Jif, the iconic peanut butter brand, could extend beyond the jar and become more readily accessible and appealing to busy parents who want to feel confident about the snacks they give their kids.

The design team was moved by the challenges that parents face: They want the best for their kids, but struggle to choose between what’s wholesome and what’s convenient on a daily basis. The ideal foods are filling, nutritious, and energizing, but often take more time to prepare and aren’t backpack or carpool-friendly. On the other hand, more convenient options tend to be full of empty carbs. Based on this insight, IDEO and Jif decided to tackle the snack-time parenting struggle. The IDEO and Jif teams worked side-by-side to prototype multiple product ideas and formats and tested them with on-the-go families to ultimately create Power Ups.

Available at over 200 retailers worldwide and online at Amazon, Jif Power Ups make wholesome, delicious grab-and-go snacking possible for kids and parents alike, across products ranging from Soft Baked Bars to Creamy Clusters, which are filled with peanut butter and rolled in whole grain oats. All are made with peanuts as the first ingredient and contain no high fructose corn syrup. Since going to market in 2018, Jif Power Ups has been named the top innovation launch in the Snack Bars category by IRI Market Advantage.

Design thinking underpins everything we do.

Geoff Tanner, Senior Vice President & Corporate Officer, Growth & Consumer Engagement, The J.M. Smucker Company

WATCH: The J.M. Smucker Company is on a transformational journey, committed to three pillars of growth: Lead in the best categories, build brands consumers love, and be everywhere.

The J.M. Smucker Company has experienced accelerated growth and speed to market by testing bold new ideas and evolving the role of innovation at the company. Design thinking and consumer empathy have permeated the organization’s new product development process, making it easier to uncover sharp, human-centered insights that lead to thoughtful and uniquely differentiated brands in a competitive, ever-shifting, and overcrowded industry. The work has fueled Geoff’s vision to inspire a culture of innovation at the company so that it can move at the speed of consumers and remain a best-in-class family of brands for future generations.

It’s a Thursday afternoon in Oakland, California. A line of lunchtime diners snakes out the door of dosa by DOSA. Upon entering, eaters are greeted by the smell of tangy dosa—a large paper-thin crepe made from a fermented batter of rice and lentils—and sweet, spicy chai. Turquoise chairs pop against a floor-to-ceiling mural by Oakland artist Namita Kapoor that transports diners to Chandni Chowk, one of the busiest markets in Old Delhi, as if enjoying their food at a local vendor.

In 2003, Emily and Anjan Mitra spent their honeymoon in India, savoring the street food of Anjan’s childhood in Mumbai (often still called Bombay). After returning to San Francisco, they found themselves longing for those distinctive flavors and dishes. Realizing that most Bay Area diners had never seen nor tasted these foods, Emily and Anjan founded DOSA, an upscale, full-service restaurant that introduced the Bay Area to Southern Indian cuisine. Locals came to try the unique, plant-forward dishes, and left with satisfied bellies and a broader understanding of Indian culture.

The entrepreneurs envisioned a brand extension of DOSA: a counter-service restaurant that could scale nationally. The hospitality venture, called dosa by DOSA, would offer healthful Indian street food made from local and seasonal ingredients. Emily and Anjan also set out to expand their existing product line-up—including cold lassi beverages, simmering sauces, and grab-and-go-meals—to national grocers and retailers and needed launch-ready packaging that was convenient, eye-catching, and environmentally-friendly. The new expression would enable consumers to experience dosa by DOSA and Southern India in a variety of forms and places. Emily and Anjan partnered with IDEO to establish a cohesive and consistent brand experience, from the restaurant and to-go meals to retail stores and mobile delivery.

In close partnership with the founders, their staff, Feldman Architecture and MPADA, IDEO set out to bring dosa by DOSA to life and help it scale through brand, environment, and experience design. This included creating everything from the logo and packaging to the menu and operations strategy, with each element tying back to the founders’ vision of sharing Indian heritage and traditions through cuisine.

The group began by seeking cultural inspiration for dosa by DOSA’s brand identity system—the logo, colors, values, fonts, and messaging—to guide future designs. They were inspired by Indian truck drivers who decorate their trucks with garlands, signs, or flags that engage other drivers or bring luck. The dosa by DOSA logo design and its wood-cut typeface are inspired by the dimensionality of this homespun art form, while the vibrant, eclectic colors reflect the streets and textures of urban Mumbai.

The goal of opening people’s minds to Indian cooking and culture extends to the packaging, which meets customers’ needs and playfully educates them. The food containers—made from recycled and compostable material—feature brightly patterned labels reminiscent of the trucks. Some have built-in compartments suited to multiple dipping chutneys, making it convenient to sample a variety of Indian flavors. Paper tray covers resembling Mumbai newspapers offer eating tips like “Be civilized. Eat with your hands,” encouraging diners to experience an Indian custom.

The vibrant brand comes to life across an array of packaging, including cold cups printed with the phrase “thanda thanda pani”—meaning “cold cold water”—which comes from a popular Indian parody of the Vanilla Ice song "Ice Ice Baby."

To design the diner experience and restaurant environment in a way that invites curiosity about the culture and cuisine, the team started with diners: They identified key moments in their experience like entering, waiting in line, and paying. The floor plan, furniture, lighting, signage, and menu were designed around these touchpoints. For example, while customers wait in line, they can watch dosa being prepared, as if they’re eager and hungry travelers awaiting street food.

The dosa by DOSA menu includes distinctive items like coconut kale mung bean salad and hot masala chai made with caramelized milk—the way Anjan’s mother prepared it. To help the restaurant scale, the team created a preliminary furniture, fixtures, and equipment (FF&E) budget, 3D renderings of the space, and an operations strategy for the founders and their employees.

The dosa by DOSA flagship launched in January 2018 in Oakland, California. The IDEO brand guidelines have enabled the dosa by DOSA team to independently and easily shepherd new product lines to market, including salads, wraps, curry bowls, samosas, and simmer sauces. The brand’s packaged food launched in over 200 natural food stores in 24 months—including over 100 Whole Foods locations—as well as online retailers and delivery services like Good Eggs and Caviar. These items and the restaurant have helped Emily and Anjan realize their vision of bringing the flavor and spirit of Southern Indian cuisine to new communities around the world.

In recent years, due to shifts in Japan’s demographics, the food industry has faced challenges such as a decrease in market size and a shrinking number of producers. As a result, social impact opportunities abound in this field.

When Japanese software company NJC (Nippon Jimuki Co. Ltd.) approached IDEO seeking to identify new business opportunities that would build on the company’s core strengths, the food and agriculture industry rose up as a promising area of focus.

NJC is a well-established software company that has spent over 50 years helping to build backend business systems for small to medium enterprises. NJC works across healthcare, retail, and food and beverage, computerizing core processes to support and improve operations.

In partnership with IDEO, NJC explored its strengths and potential as an organization, as well as the ideas and visions of the employees, and emerged with the goal of using their capabilities to address large-scale issues facing regional farmers.

During research across Japan, local growers described challenges with multi-layered supply chains and analog systems, which led to “overwork for minimal profit,” as well as a gap between supply and demand. Because agricultural wholesalers lacked clear information in advance on the status of crops or the volume to be harvested, they struggled to negotiate with buyers, which led to wasted food On the other hand, the farmers who grow the crops are engaged in manual labor, and do not always have the energy to focus on business aspects such as efficiency or the pursuit of increased profitability, which leads to a diminished interest in farming among young people.

One question that emerged through research was why agricultural producers weren’t utilizing IT. This evolved into “How can profitability be improved for all stakeholders?” and, “How might we create a system that will provide useful data without creating a burden for either farmers or agricultural wholesalers?”

The result was fudoloop.

fudoloop is an app that enables farmers and wholesalers to conduct business more profitably by bringing transparency to the fluctuating produce market. Through fudoloop, wholesalers receive information from farmers a day in advance, and can coordinate the various requests of buyers, such as order size, production location and other special requests. As a result, wholesalers can function as “community managers,” doing business with both producers and buyers at a more appropriate price point.

NJC aims for fudoloop to be the first step in a cycle that brings value to all stakeholders, from farmers to wholesalers, retailers and even customers, by redefining the “middleman” role of produce wholesalers.

The population of Tokyo’s metropolitan area is twice as big as New York, and the daily influx of workers from the suburbs increases that number sixfold. Congestion on trains traveling through the center of Tokyo during commuting hours is said to reach somewhere close to 200 percent of the trains’ capacity.

East Japan Railway Company (known as JR East) is the world’s largest railway company by revenue, operating 12,000 trains daily and serving 6.4 billion passengers per year.

In March 2014, JR East leveraged their extensive operations and passenger data to publish a consumer app that provided train location information, congestion status, air conditioning temperature, and wayfinding tools.

The app was downloaded more than 3.8 million times; however, its features and usability proved unsatisfactory to users. In an attempt to be comprehensive in addressing passenger needs, the app was weighed down with data and worked sluggishly. Competitors’ apps were named above JR East in customer satisfaction surveys, highlighting the company’s need to address the tool’s usability.

JR East’s Technical Division approached IDEO to help design an attractive and consistent user-centered experience through its digital ecosystem. With a team of interaction designers, they launched a project to create a new version of their app.

During the research phase, the IDEO team observed passengers’ behaviors and decision-making processes and noticed that people were using several apps at once to get more personalized and complete information.

The team created a set of paper-based prototypes to test how users would react to various functionalities. Surprisingly, users ranked versions with limited functionalities higher than those with a broad range of features.

This insight informed a new prototype that enabled a customized user experience based on traveler needs. Wayfinding proved to be the most frequently selected feature, so the new app was designed around helping passenger navigate during their trips.

Although JR East had traditionally outsourced their app development, IDEO encouraged them to organize their own internal team. In cooperation with Pivotal—a frequent IDEO partner familiar with human-centered approaches—the internal team was trained in agile development and built the new app themselves. A prototype was released in November 2017 as “Go! by Train.” It was so successful in the market that the earlier JR East app was replaced entirely with the content of the new design.

JR East's internal development team was recognized by the company for their exceptional output, and will be integral to the company's human-centered digital transformation going forward.

“If you look at TikTok and Insta, it’s fluffy ‘me’ content…that’s what people are watching,” he said. That tension—between commercial pressure and editorial purpose—was palpable. The organization needed to evolve without losing the very principles that make news valuable.

The news industry isn’t just undergoing a crisis—it’s grappling with existential freefall. News is increasingly commodified and polarized, with rampant misinformation and blunt-force efforts to blur the boundaries between propaganda and fact. Technology—and AI specifically—are cracking open how we experience news and how content is created. Algorithms are growing ever more ambitious in their quest to deliver information tailored to our every whim. At the same time, the zeitgeist pulls the strings, pushing news consumption toward shorter, snappier, more visual experiences, leaving readers with less incentive to pay for it. All while subscription fatigue deepens.

But it’s not all catastrophe! News organizations can rebuild trust and resilience by leading with core differentiators and using technology to deepen impact rather than chase trends. IDEO has worked with many outlets—from national newspapers to niche publications—and we’ve come away with some hard-won lessons for designing for what matters: trusted, viable publications that support the craft of journalism and the readers and listeners they serve.

Trust is earned, not engineered

The more crowded the landscape, the greater the demand for reliable information, and the more critical the integrity of those who deliver it. Successful brands build trust by owning what makes them unique, whether that’s a stalwart reputation for journalistic excellence or a tailored offer to a niche audience. That clarity builds loyalty. News outlets need to avoid trying to be everything to everyone and anchor in what only they can offer: trust, delivered with integrity and intention.

Humanity matters, too. Readers are more likely to engage with content when they feel a sense of connection—when it’s clear there’s a real person behind the words. That’s part of the appeal of platforms like Substack and Medium, which offer personalized, niche content alongside direct access to individual writers. In our work with a national news outlet, one reader shared that he often reached out to journalists, not expecting a response, but just wanting to connect. When he did hear back, the unexpected thrill deepened his loyalty to the publication. News organizations looking to build trust can design for those connections by creating new elements like newsletters from particular reporters or live digital events where readers can engage directly with their favorite writers.

AI is not a strategy

Despite the doomsday proclamations about AI becoming the death of journalism, it may be one of the most promising tools for keeping it alive. Deployed correctly, it’s an accelerant rather than a replacement—a powerful means to help journalists offset menial tasks like transcriptions and copyediting. It brings additional data-driven objectivity to content without adding to reporter workloads. The technology that supposedly threatens to replace us may free us to do the work only humans can do: investigate the facts and elevate what matters.

On a recent project, we were exploring how AI could unlock deeper, more layered storytelling by mining the client’s vast content archive. We imagined a digital experience where a story doesn’t just relay the facts of an event, but also shows how it unfolded over time, maps where it happened, surfaces the key players, and connects the dots to similar stories from the past. Some folks in the newsroom were admittedly skeptical, both in terms of maintaining editorial integrity and fear of overburdening busy reporters with new tasks. So we built a custom ChatGPT-based prototype: no third-party data, just their own archives, stitched together into a dynamic proof-of-concept. We won over our client by showing that the technology could augment their excellent reporting while streamlining the editorial review process.

But AI isn’t the solution to every problem. As we were prototyping, we created a custom chatbot that allowed readers to “talk to” an article, riffing on the rise of voice-to-text interfaces and conversational AI. It seemed promising, but it fell flat. Users found the interaction awkward and unnatural—even those comfortable with Siri or Alexa said it felt off in a news setting. On the editorial side, it felt like a poor replacement for journalist Q&As. Readers made it clear that even if a ChatGPT-powered AI can synthesize articles with dazzling coherence, it doesn’t beat a feeling of connection with real human reporters.

Don't shrink perspectives—expand them.

Everyone talks about personalization like it’s the panacea for all things digital. But personalization is often just an exercise in subtraction—editing things out until only the familiar remains. The result is a tighter feed, but usually a narrower perspective. In our many projects with news organizations, we heard again and again from readers and listeners that they come to the news because they want to learn something new, to broaden their horizons, and to have smart things to say to their friends and colleagues.

On a project with a U.S.-based media organization, readers told us that editorial curation was key; if they were only fed news that catered to their own interests, they were afraid they’d miss out on important stories. This sentiment was especially true for readers paying for news. They were willing to invest money because they trusted the outlet to tell them what they needed to know, not just what they wanted to know. One research participant told us that one of his favorite series chronicled the drama behind the acquisition of an elevator company. And yet, “if they’d asked me if that’s one of my topics of interest, I’d have said ‘no.’” Another noted they would generally choose to skip sports coverage, but didn’t want to miss big moments like Simone Biles performing at the Olympics. Many readers are wary of filter bubbles and want to be aware of what’s happening in the world.

Less feed, more focus.

Personalization isn’t just about which stories you get, but also about how you access them. News products must offer flexibility in format, shifting seamlessly from mobile to desktop, from text to audio, from immersive deep dives to quick AI-powered summaries. For a UK-based client, we identified three user modes—Skimming & Dipping, Exploring, and Chilling—and designed different ways to engage with different formats at key moments in the day. The goal was thoughtful curation that feels like discovery, not a narrowing of options.

Volume is also important. A few years ago, we worked with The Times of London as it struggled to stay relevant in a 24/7 news cycle. Our research revealed readers didn’t want more breaking news—they wanted perspective. They wanted The Times to be the adult in the room, not another endless feed. So we designed a product anchored in four daily drops—carefully curated digital editions that refreshed throughout the day. This decision freed up tremendous resources, allowing the newsroom to focus on big stories. By moving away from the churn and toward intentionality, The Times saw a 19 percent year-over-year increase in digital subscriptions.

The approach also fulfilled a need we heard about across these projects. People don’t want to doom scroll; they want to get informed, then get to the end of the news. Unlike social media, where personalization means serving more of what users already like, news algorithms need a different intention.

Silos are the enemy of innovation

Creating a great digital news experience requires untangling the messy process of how that news is made and delivered.

That starts with creating an ownable product vision that teams can rally around, and a strategy that’s authentic to the current organization and aspirational for the future. When we worked with a PBS member station, we developed a vision anchored in a shared sense of place that centered local voices, reflected the region’s cultural richness, and positioned the organization as a neighborhood pillar and a global voice. Their CEO called the work “a vision we can achieve,” noting that it was both inspirational and actionable, designed to galvanize the entire organization, not just leadership, toward renewed purpose, greater trust, and lasting impact.

It’s also essential to break down the silos that separate editorial, product, and tech teams, making it easier to communicate across departments, so people feel invited to bring their unique lens to major product updates. This is not an invitation to design by committee! Creating space for people to surface ideas and red flags early helps with product innovation (the best ideas can come from unexpected places) and organizational buy-in (as people are more inclined to support what they help create). One of our clients started a cross-functional design council to bring new voices to the table. As we worked with another client to build a new editorial product, IDEO led critiques with teams across its newsroom, subscriptions, advertising, and brand departments, and also hosted demo hours to let a larger group of stakeholders in on the creative process.

Once teams are united around a shared vision and working cross-functionally, they need a place to de-risk ideas. In such an evolving industry, it’s critical to learn what works (and what doesn’t) fast, putting ideas in front of the end user early and often. An experimentation sandbox allows teams to test new ideas in the wild. One of our clients built a beta app to test feature updates and rolled it out to the entire newsroom and a small panel of subscribers. By shipping and iterating quickly, the team got the app into the hands of readers fast and updated it in real time, building confidence in useful features and avoiding investment in the ones that weren’t working.

A more human future for journalism

The promise of news has always been to teach us something new—to expand our sense of the world and how we fit into it. At its best, it challenges our assumptions, sharpens our thinking, and gives us new reasons to engage with one another.

But that promise only works if we trust the process and the organizations behind it. If we believe the stories are the product of care, curiosity, and intention. That’s why how the news is delivered matters just as much as what it says. The best digital experiences don’t just inform; they reflect an understanding of who we are—our needs, our frustrations, and our desire for something that feels both technologically sophisticated and unmistakably human.

In one of our first workshops with a veteran public media organization, an editor told us they needed ways to bring in new viewers while maintaining their credibility.

For businesses navigating these turbulent conditions, the traditional linear “take-make-dispose” model isn’t just environmentally unsustainable—it’s becoming a competitive disadvantage.

At IDEO, we’re seeing this anxiety reflected in the briefs landing on our desks. Leaders from multinational organizations are no longer just asking us to help them optimize existing systems—they’re seeking fundamental resilience against mounting global pressures. They sense, correctly, that future success demands a shift toward systems that can weather disruption by design.

This shift isn’t just about “being green;” it’s about strategic necessity. It’s time to embrace the circular economy—not merely as an environmental initiative, but as a core strategy for building resource independence and business resilience in volatile times.

Closing the loop

By prioritizing strategies like reuse, repair, refurbishment, and remanufacturing (restoring products to their factory settings), businesses keep resources cycling within their control, dramatically reducing dependence on virgin raw materials and volatile global commodity markets.

Recent analysis from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation reveals something telling: companies with higher circularity performance exhibit lower financial risk profiles and superior risk-adjusted returns. The numbers tell a compelling story—circular businesses are simply more resilient.

Furthermore, substituting imported virgin materials with secondary resources recovered closer to home directly reduces exposure to international trade disputes and supply chain disruptions. As the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act demonstrates, policy is increasingly focused on boosting domestic recycling and processing, creating new market opportunities for businesses ready to capitalize on this shift.

Embedding advantage by design

This isn’t just an operational pivot—companies must embed circularity into the very design of their products and services. As a European Parliament report highlights, design choices determine more than 80 percent of a product’s lifecycle impact and, crucially, its potential for profitable circularity.

On a recent client project exploring circularity in healthcare, we discovered a steep shift to single-use everything. Everything, everything. Not just the obvious, but complex items like endoscopes, which combine plastics and electronics, and often rely on imported components. Disposable tools may be convenient, but it’s easy to see how incinerating tens of millions of endoscopes leads to waste generation and supply chain vulnerabilities.

By redesigning these devices differently—creating a single-use-like experience that is hygienic and maintains practitioner confidence while enabling refurbishment and reuse—we discovered a path to cut dependency on virgin materials and volatile overseas electronics supply lines. Thoughtful designs like these can directly support business models resilient to external shocks.

The most effective circular strategies focus on:

• Designing for durability, repairability, and modularity: Creating longer-lasting, easily fixable products with interchangeable parts extends asset life, enables component harvesting for remanufacturing, and reduces total cost of ownership.
  
  
• Designing for disassembly and material selection: Ensuring products can be easily taken apart into constituent materials chosen for safe reuse or high-quality upcycling becomes fundamental for efficient recovery processes.
  ‍

‍New business models

Even the most circular design requires innovative business models to unlock its economic potential. As identified by the World Economic Forum and others, key models driving this shift include:

Product-as-a-service (PaaS): Retaining asset ownership incentivizes providers to maximize product lifespans and facilitates efficient takebacks for high-value recovery. PaaS shifts the profit focus from unit sales to lifetime asset value—a profound transformation in how businesses create and capture value.

Reverse logistics systems: Building efficient capabilities to collect, sort, and reintegrate used products and materials is the operational backbone of circularity. Innovation here involves interconnected software platforms, Internet of Things (IoT) tracking, and collaborative partnerships to manage complexity and cost.

Data management and collaboration: Successfully managing circular flows demands advanced data systems for tracking and traceability across multiple use cycles and partners. Digital product passports are becoming essential tools for managing these complex material networks.

Strengthening operational stability

The strategic logic of circularity aligns powerfully with the growing trend toward nearshoring and onshoring. Bringing production closer to end markets makes circular models like take-back and local refurbishment far more economically viable, reducing logistical complexity and cost. These localized material loops are inherently more resilient to global disruptions by mitigating exposure to geopolitical hotspots, international shipping crises, and tariffs. Building shorter, more adaptable value chains is a key priority for forward-thinking organizations, and we’ve been seeing it more and more with our clients.  

However, effective local loops require more than just relocation. They demand a fundamental rethinking of product design, supply chain infrastructure, and consumer engagement. To achieve this, organizations should consider:

• Evolving product ownership into a seamless user journey: What if user experience could be a continuous flow of value, with products that adapt to a consumer’s changing needs, can be effortlessly upgraded locally, and seamlessly returned for responsible renewal, creating a sense of ongoing connection and trust?
  
  
• Making reverse logistics effortless and rewarding: What if, instead of a chore, returning used products was as easy and satisfying as receiving new ones, integrated into local community hubs with engaging digital interfaces and personalized incentives, fostering a sense of participation and satisfaction?
  
  
• Creating thriving ecosystems of shared value with local collaboration: What if businesses, local artisans, and communities co-created circular products tailored to their unique context, with local makerspaces, repair cafes, and material marketplaces empowering people, generating local wealth, reigniting a strong sense of place and belonging, and attracting new forms of tourism?

By embracing design and innovation, businesses can create resilient and circular local economies, mitigating the increasing risks of long supply chains and unlocking local growth and innovation opportunities.

The new competitive edge: resource independence

Shifting a company’s focus to circularity does require investment in new capabilities, particularly in design, reverse logistics, and data management. It requires cultivating new collaborative ecosystems and partnerships.

But the rewards are substantial. Businesses that successfully integrate circular strategies build operational resilience by reducing reliance on volatile inputs, mitigating geopolitical and tariff risks through greater resource independence, ensuring greater supply security, and forging stronger long-term customer relationships.

As we navigate this uncertain landscape, one thing becomes clear: building circular capacity isn’t just adaptation; it’s the deliberate choice to forge a competitive edge in an unpredictable world. The future belongs to those organizations bold enough to design it.

The waters of global trade are choppier than ever. Tariff storms gather and break unpredictably, geopolitical currents shift constantly, and the very resources our supply chains depend on face increasing pressure.

Many companies are withdrawing financial guidance, and stock markets are whipsawing against tariff talks and social media speculation. Global uncertainty is now on par with—or even higher than—the peaks of the COVID-19 era, according to indices like the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index. Even trade experts can’t confidently answer pretty simple questions like: How many units will we sell? What will it cost to deliver our service in the next three months?

Every leadership team we talk to is operating in a fog. Whether they admit it or not, that fog is affecting their risk appetite: They are delaying projects, sitting on approvals, and slashing budgets. With tariffs swinging wildly, it’s tough to plan ahead. A once-profitable offer can turn into a loss overnight. Even companies with limited exposure to physical goods can feel the ripple effects through disrupted supply chains, spooked investors, or sudden stock price drops.

It’s no wonder leaders feel paralyzed. But resilient organizations don’t wait for certainty. They aren’t afraid to rethink how they lead, focus, and design for the future. In times like these, fear can’t be your compass. It’s time to step out of preservation mode and chart a course toward where your organization needs to go.

So, how do you lead through uncertainty and regain momentum? Here are four methods we’ve been using with our clients:

1. Focus beats forecasts

When everything feels urgent, nothing gets done. Leaders must help teams focus their energy on what truly matters—starting with the courage to say no to outdated initiatives, pet projects, or business-as-usual efforts that no longer serve your strategy. Focus isn’t just about doing less, it’s about freeing up capacity and renewing energy to go bolder on the bets that will shape your future. A global retailer navigating supply chain turmoil and changing consumer habits might choose to pause low-impact projects to focus on one priority: last-mile delivery. That kind of clarity can boost fulfillment speed, earn customer trust, and drive revenue. Achieving this kind of focus means aligning across functions, reaching beyond silos, and creating momentum—even without perfect clarity. Because in moments of uncertainty, focus is the fuel that keeps progress alive.

2. Rethink where to play

Whether we’re designing a product, service, strategy, or experience, we also have to design for where, how, and at what cost it gets delivered. It’s no longer just about customer segments; it’s about navigating geopolitical risk, regulatory change, and supply constraints with agility. That requires a new playbook—one that views the landscape like a moving chessboard—where your next move depends on which pieces are in motion and how the board is evolving. Imagine a toy company facing price uncertainty, choosing to prioritize growth in regional markets closer to where they produce, and then amplifying their sustainability efforts and local stories in their marketing. Routing the right products to the right markets still matters. But so does staying light on your feet. Embracing flexibility—and even a playful mindset—can help your teams move forward with confidence, not fear, as the environment continues to shift.

3. Momentum > perfection: redesign for rapid experimentation

When the future feels uncertain, the instinct is often to pause. But pausing comes at a cost. The businesses that thrive now are those that experiment faster, not because they know exactly what will work, but because they’re willing to learn their way forward. You may not have enough certainty to build a multi-year roadmap. But you do have the tools to test, iterate, and adapt in real time. A beauty brand facing increased production costs on all of its packaging might rapidly pilot makeup refillables via mobile pop-ups to prove out a new customer behavior that is both more sustainable and lower cost for the brand to deliver. This also shifts how your teams work: embedding lightweight prototyping, faster feedback loops with customers, and an emphasis on small bets that unlock new opportunities into the day-to-day. These small wins build resilience. And resilience builds momentum. In this climate, progress—even if it’s imperfect—is the boldest move you can make.

4. Digital products can offer a beacon of hope

With physical goods and global delivery models under pressure, we’re seeing renewed interest in digital experiences and revenue streams. For many, digital feels like the one domain where they can move faster and iterate more freely. Consider re-imagining the digital experience not just as a supporting channel or companion app, but as a core engine of new customer acquisition, brand loyalty, and resilience. Let’s say a health-insurance provider is facing rising service costs: launching an AI-assisted care-navigation app where members could check symptoms, book telehealth visits, and file claims all in one place could help the company cut support call volume, improve the customer experience, and help people catch health issues early, avoiding costlier medical interventions later. To unlock the full potential of digital, invest in product-led growth strategies across customer touchpoints—where value is delivered through the experience itself, and innovation is driven by real-time data and user feedback.

Where we’re going, there are no roads.

There’s no map for what comes next—but that doesn’t mean the answer is to stand still. Regaining momentum is less about knowing the final destination and more about having the right compass to guide you through the fog. At IDEO, we’re working with leaders across industries to shift out of survival mode and design for the clarity, confidence, and energy their organizations need right now. If you’re ready to move through the uncertainty, we’re here to help you chart your course.

The business world runs on planning: forecasts, earnings calls, revenue projections. But right now, that’s mostly guesswork.

He had taken a disability leave from work to prepare for the removal of a tumor on his spine. The drives to his appointments had become routine, each trip a reminder of how much his body was changing—and how much he now relied on me. He said, “I’m going back to work after my surgery.” Despite my uncertainty, I didn’t argue. The surgery gave him a 50 percent chance of walking again, and for him, that was enough. But the probability alone was not enough to prepare me for what came next.  

At 22, I came face-to-face with the hidden costs of healthcare when my father became paraplegic. Since then, I’ve become his sole full-time caregiver. This role has profoundly shaped my perception of the healthcare system—not only exposing the many gaps in healthcare but also the massive opportunities to improve how care is designed and delivered.

Today, alongside my role as a caregiver, I am an interaction design fellow at IDEO, where I spend my days collaborating with other designers to shape and refine human-centered experiences. Part of our job is to listen with empathy to user pain points to craft useful solutions that foster trust and understanding. As both a caregiver and a designer, I deeply understand these pain points and how we can design solutions that ease the burden on the 24 million caregivers in the US alone—whether it’s creating clear, comprehensible medical bills or developing devices that help prevent further health complications. Here are four massive opportunity areas I believe we need to solve for.

Mitigating enormous burnout

The first few years were by far the most difficult. My peers were embracing the newfound freedom of adulthood, while I was responsible for everything from dealing with insurance companies to daily cleaning and bandaging his stage-four wounds. I was in and out of the hospital, drowning in paperwork and trying to make sense of my father’s condition, his medications, new routines, and medical bills. I spent countless hours battling with insurance reps, demanding appeals, chasing down unreliable case managers, and pushing charge nurses to advocate on my father’s behalf. The burnout was debilitating. But there are so many opportunities to lessen that load.

Technological tools that patients and their families can trust can help close the gap in an inequitable healthcare system. Already, AI tools like Hyro AI and SICURA by Nohold are taking on some of these pain points by reducing the complexities of dealing with insurance, treatment options, and medical jargon. Hyro AI is even integrated into many electronic health record systems, allowing patients easy access to their personal health information to understand and manage treatment.

But what if AI patient advocates could take things a step further, flagging biases, challenging questionable denials, and assisting with appeals? As insurance companies increasingly use AI to deny claims, such a tool could help level the playing field, ensuring that vulnerable patients aren’t silenced by the very systems meant to support them.

Navigating the system

My father was hospitalized for over a year following his surgery, moving between the ICU, skilled nursing facilities, and acute rehab centers. Each stay brought hefty bills, frequently arriving months later with little clarity about their origins. They were outrageously expensive, and I struggled to understand what we actually owed—or why we owed it in the first place. Between the maze of Medicare, state programs, and private insurance, determining financial responsibility was completely overwhelming, and cost transparency was non-existent.

What if medical bills were as clear as itemized receipts, with straightforward descriptions alongside hospital codes? Originally designed to prevent fraud, medical billing systems rely on cryptic codes like “ICD-10” and “CPT”—effectively standardizing claims but making them nearly impossible for patients to decipher. While these systems serve the industry, they often do so at the expense of patient transparency and accessibility. An app that translates these complex codes into a simple, easy-to-read breakdown would be invaluable.

Beyond that, there’s an opportunity to design a visual progress tracker or dynamic dashboard, helping caregivers and patients manage payments, track processing status, and reduce the financial guesswork that adds unnecessary stress to an already difficult journey.

As a young adult learning to manage my own financial responsibilities while taking on my father’s, I found myself in need of a financial “buddy”—someone who understood my situation and had the expertise to guide me. While some companies, like the AI app Cedar, are tackling this issue, there’s still significant potential for innovation in this space.

Providing physical care

Whenever my father developed a stage-four bedsore, I had to administer IV antibiotics every six hours for eight to 12 weeks. During these times, I was stuck at home, bound by the six-hour window, having to reposition him every two hours to help the wound heal and prevent new sores from forming.

When you care for someone with limited mobility, bed sores are one of the most challenging issues. In the US alone, nearly 60,000 people die from bed sore complications annually. They emerge shockingly quickly and can go from the size of a nickel to so deep you can see bone. For caregivers, the physical toll of lifting and repositioning their loved ones can be overwhelming; it often left me physically drained and emotionally exhausted.

After dozens of hospital trips and many sleepless nights, I decided to invest in a specialized bed that could handle repositioning. But insurance doesn’t cover them. And they range from $2,000 to $15,000. A pressure-relieving mattress adds another $500 to $3,000, and professional assembly—often required—can cost an additional $200 to $500.

Imagine if there was a smart, modular bed for paraplegics that automatically adjusted using an AI-powered scanning app to track movement and prevent pressure sores. It could offer personalized configuration by allowing users to add or remove features as needed, enabling customization at home. Additionally, an affordable smart mattress that monitors sores and relieves pressure could greatly benefit both the caregiver and the patient. Accompanied by an AI-powered scanning app, the bed could track movement and prompt timely repositioning. Companies like Tidewave and Arjo already use technology to help mitigate bedsores, and the ForeSite Intelligent Surface (IS) by XSENSOR uses AI to monitor the real-time emergence of sores. However, these solutions are largely limited to hospital settings. If a company could create an affordable version for home use, it could significantly improve the lives of millions of patients and their caregivers.

Accessing home modifications

When my father was discharged from the hospital, it was up to me to find a wheelchair-accessible home in the Bay Area. Whether it was too-narrow doorways, steps, or tight corners, none of the homes I toured had the necessary modifications for him to navigate in his power wheelchair. The home we finally found had enough space to meet his mobility needs, but we still had to pay out of pocket for ramps, touchless light switches, and other accessible features. Even now, he can’t leave the house on his own. He can’t reach the door handle from his wheelchair, and the ramps are too narrow for him to safely navigate alone, leaving him at risk of getting stuck—something that has happened more times than I’d like to count.

Instead of having to tour each house with a tape measure in hand and the wheelchair measurements stored in my phone, it would have been incredibly helpful to have an app that could instantly tell me if a wheelchair would fit through the doorframe or if adding a ramp was feasible.

Imagine if that app connected to stores like Home Depot or Amazon, curating a list of items I could purchase directly, without the hassle of checking measurements myself. Or, what if real estate or rental apps had a special section for homes that had already been modified or were built with accessibility in mind? With the right tools in place, I could have avoided much of the uncertainty and frustration, making the journey to find an accessible home much smoother for both my father and me.

What began with inexperience and uncertainty has evolved into a journey of growth and adaptation, both as a caregiver and a designer. Together, my father and I have learned a lot about how to live our new life—and each other. It has not been easy. And there is so much opportunity for insurance companies, healthcare providers, and startups to alleviate the unnecessary stress for caregivers and their loved ones. As the caregiver population continues to rise, the need for innovation is clear—without it, millions will continue navigating these challenges alone. As designers, we’ve only scratched the surface—there is so much more that we can do.

As my father and I prepared to head to Stanford for yet another doctor’s appointment, I remember asking him, “Are you prepared to never walk again?”

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.

‍

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.