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.

Inspired by the recent overhauls of government sites like gov.uk and boston.gov, Georgia tapped IDEO to explore how it could give more than 80 state agencies flexibility in the look and feel of their websites, while also preserving a uniform branding experience that residents could recognize and trust.

To get acquainted with the state, we took a road trip, wandering around the historic streets of Savannah, getting to know the resilient spirit of Macon, and soaking up the innovative energy of Atlanta. We learned a lot about what Georgians would like from their government, and took a strong look at how the look, feel, and content of a digital experience might impact delivery of services. But we also learned a lot about the difficulties of accessing—and providing—government services. Soon, we realized that this project could be more than just an identity exercise.

The state of Georgia’s population has grown 25 percent over the past decade while the size of its government has decreased by 25 percent. These diverging trends have put a strain on government staff, adding even more pressure to the promises of efficiency that come with civic tech. The transition to digital delivery is not easy, and governments around the world are working to define digital best practices. Because the work is still in progress, service delivery is a serious challenge. Our project wasn’t just about identity, but about how changes in CSS, information, and color schemes could fix the concerns residents had about trust and access to information and services.

During our journey through Georgia, residents told us they felt that government was removed from their lives, monolithic, opaque, and solemn. While it plays a necessary and—in some cases—critical role in their lives, their relationship to it was transactional. Armed with that feedback, our goal was to leverage Georgia.gov to make that relationship feel more collaborative from both a functional and emotional perspective. Thanks to conversations with many people from the great state of Georgia, we synthesized the shortcomings of government websites, explored the needs of the people, and came up with a list of three rules for anyone looking to create a better digital link between a government and its people.

1. Empower users to make an impact

When there are limits to what government can do, give constituents a clear role in how they can work with government to solve problems together. In our research, we chatted with civic technology expert Cliff Lampe, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Information Studies. In one project, Professor Lampe and his students developed a technology that allowed residents to flag the presence of rats in their neighborhoods. Though the technology empowered residents to report health and safety issues, the staff in Ferndale, Michigan didn’t actually have the capacity to keep up with them. They started replying to requests for support with information about what residents could do to help mitigate the rat population, like getting rid of clutter in the backyard or keeping pet food inside. Instead of ignoring work it couldn’t get to, the government brought the people into a collaborative relationship, so that they could fight the rodent population together.

2. Leverage UI to let residents know that government is on their side

People on both sides of the conversation called interacting with the government “a necessary pain.” Government staff recognize that if you’re coming to a website to pay taxes, you’re probably not in the greatest mood. Residents often mentioned that the look and feel of the websites didn’t give them the sense that they were welcome to reach out and call agency staff for help.

Our testing of early prototypes revealed that shifts in language and color schemes could change how both government staff and residents felt about their experiences. When we changed the color scheme from a traditional red, white, and blue to more approachable and ownable peaches and greens, residents used words like “warm” and “welcoming” to describe the look and feel. Adding language that invites people to call if they needed help also lead to a much better reception.

One resident told us that these changes gave her the feeling that the government services actually wanted to help her, rather than giving a feeling of what in the past felt like reluctant support.

3. Give constituents insider knowledge

When we visited Atlanta, we spoke to Tara, a program manager at a nonprofit that connects low-income individuals to state financial and educational resources. As an intermediary, Tara knows that state workers are stretched thin, so she advises her clients to do what they can to help move the process along. To this end, she has developed a series of strategies that make the process a little bit easier for everyone involved. Tara, like other superuser intermediaries we spoke to, relies on these strategies to empower herself in her work, helping to move the process along more efficiently.

Sharing tips on how to best navigate the application process brings residents into a collaborative relationship with agency staff, helping them understand obstacles and needs. Some of the tips that Tara shares with her clients include scheduling periodic check-in times to get updates on applications, keeping a file on previous conversations, and having key information on hand before making a call. Following her example, we provided step-by-step application instructions as well as advice from agency staff. Articulating these strategies on the agency website allows constituents to have smoother and more efficient conversations with agency staff without doing a deep dive overhaul of the service model.

Supporting collaboration between government and constituents doesn’t have to mean an overhaul of services. You can make things better with seemingly surface-level changes, like changes to tone, color schemes, and the way information is shared. Though they may appear to be band-aid fixes compared to solving larger systemic challenges, they really can change the way people see and experience their relationship with the government.

Special thanks to the residents of Georgia who shared their experiences with us, and to the IDEO design team of Tom Kershaw, Lindsey Turner, and Emma Baker that shared in this journey. See the state of Georgia's new website at pilot.georgia.gov.

Illustrations by Matteo Berton

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There’s a reason government sites don’t have a reputation for great user experiences. They rarely have the budget or staffing even for digital updates, much less innovation. But the state of Georgia wanted to change that.

New York is a city that invites (or demands) personal reinvention and grit, a home where you choose your own adventure and meet your true self.

While everyone comes to New York for different reasons, chances are each person is drawn to the seemingly endless opportunities, rich culture, and potential for discovery. The city is a blank slate for bucket lists that keep on growing. But New York is also notoriously difficult for many to navigate and discover. In the midst of everything going on, it’s hard to stop and see the magic that brought us here in the first place.

In the true spirit of design provocation, a handful of us at IDEO New York asked ourselves: How might we help New Yorkers get lost in the city, and by doing so, allow them to discover something new and surprising along the way?

In between projects, we gave ourselves a job—design some speculative concepts to bring these two complex, potentially oppositional ideas to life.

Lost

The first design concept, Lost, explores how we can lose ourselves in the city by going off the grid. As we asked people how they disconnect in the Big Apple, we heard about different rituals to reclaim time and attention: from turning on Do Not Disturb mode to giving an iPhone to the local bodega for safekeeping.

Intrigued by the implications these tactics had on a person’s digital footprint, we took this idea even further. Instead of simply flipping a switch or hanging our phones off to a confidant at the corner store, we explored sealing off our entire digital footprint with a 3D-printed aluminum Faraday cage. By blocking all wireless emissions, a Faraday cage is one of the only surefire ways to ensure your phone is safe from transmittance.

We added a touch of personalization to the design—the grids of the 3D printed file mirror the New York City map. By going off the grid before setting out to explore New York, you reclaim your anonymity, commit yourself to living in the moment, and immerse yourself in the serendipity of the city.

Found

You can find virtually any tidbit of information with a few taps: movie times, breaking news, the exact Pantone shade of a celebrity’s jacket. Our second design concept, Found, explores how we might reintroduce discovery and spontaneity into our daily lives.

As a nod to the legacy of open-world gaming maps, the app—affectionately named Streetheart—begins with the map of New York City shrouded in darkness. As the user moves, the app reveals the paths of the city that you explore, block by block, avenue by avenue.

By illustrating how much of New York City is (always) left to uncover, Streetheart encourages you to leave your comfort zone and embrace the curiosity and spontaneity that made the city magic in the first place. The percentage discovered feature reminds you of the scale of New York City and humbles even the most high-handed New Yorkers.

We pushed things a little further and coded a web prototype to test our concept out in the Big Apple. In just an hour and fifteen minutes, we discovered beautiful brownstones in Boerum Hill, a bustling downtown Brooklyn, an unusual park hidden near the Manhattan Bridge, and so much more. Yet a quick peek at the app revealed we only discovered 0.6225% of New York City.

In a city fueled by efficiency and hustle, we’re fascinated by choices that help us slow down, even if it means intentionally designing not for convenience, but inconvenience. We hope that Lost and Found allow you to lose yourself in New York City—and by doing so, rediscover the city and each other.

Taking the subway in the wrong direction for many stops; getting blindsided by the unimaginable smells emerging from the MTA; living among 8.6 million people but feeling completely anonymous, even isolated. These are some of the experiences IDEO’s New York community described when asked what living in the Big Apple is like.

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.

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.