When it comes to food, we often have to choose between health, convenience, and taste. Parents struggle to get their kids to eat veggies. The same daily salad can become boring or bland over time. Produce often withers in the crisper drawer.

Betterer Foods set out to make one of the world's favorite foods healthier. Rice is a beloved food across many cultures, but many people now avoid simple carbohydrates due to diet restrictions or health concerns. Innovations and alternative options have mostly been limited to products in the freezer section, like riced cauliflower.

Betterer Foods created RightRice: a dry, shelf-stable grain made from rice and vegetables, including lentils, chickpeas, and green peas. RightRice has more than double the protein, five times the fiber, and 40 percent fewer net carbs than traditional rice. But the product still tastes and looks like rice, and is faster and easier to cook.

RightRice founder Keith Belling, the founder and former CEO of popchips, asked IDEO to design a brand that would communicate the product’s benefits. The start-up needed everything from a defined target consumer and brand story to a stand-out package design, website, and go-to-market materials.

The team listened to people's challenges with rice and eating healthfully: home cooks find it difficult to store fresh foods without them going bad, busy professionals are strapped for time when preparing balanced meals, and parents sneak vegetables into dishes like casseroles or mac and cheese. Some consumers say they avoid rice because it’s a carbohydrate, which is forbidden in so many of today’s diets. People describe themselves as “carb phobic” or say they consider rice a “guilty pleasure.” Others don’t eat rice because it makes them feel sluggish or bloated, or is too difficult or time-consuming to prepare. Overall, people wished rice could be healthier, simpler to cook, and still taste delicious.

IDEO translated these insights into a brand foundation that helped RightRice come to life on shelves, online, and in the world. The package messaging emphasizes the vegetable ingredients, and the cut-out window lets consumers see that the product looks like rice. The shape of the window simultaneously forms a bowl of rice and a smile.

Rice is a household staple around the world. The RightRice brand makes it easier for consumers to have health, convenience, and good taste in one accessible product. RightRice launched nationwide in Whole Foods and Amazon in February 2019.

Since this launch, the company has expanded both its reach and product line. RightRice is now available in nearly 5,000 retailers nationwide in addition to Whole Foods and Amazon, including Sprouts, Wegmans, and approximately 1,800 Kroger stores. Over one million bags have been sold.

The company has received numerous awards and acclaim, including being named “Best Plant-Based” by People’s 2019 Food Awards. Building on the success of RightRice, Belling and his team launched RightRice Medley, a blend of RightRice, ancient grains, and vegetables, in 2020. This new product, which features the same branding the company created with IDEO, has doubled the company’s shelf presence at Whole Foods.

After 40 years of rapid development, China's economic growth has reached a critical turning point.

However, looking at the world, today is also the most complex and uncertain era in human history. The traditional engine of economic development is slowing down, while innovation and other emerging ideas are helping the economy burst into dynamism. To ride this trend, China has already put in place comprehensive policies to ensure that the country can achieve this magnificent transformation—not only to maintain economic growth, but also to achieve high-quality development. To this end, what China needs most is a group of new business leaders with a sense of cooperation and innovation to lead and realize this change as a pioneering force.

People of insight can often see the situation clearly with a forward-looking eye. China's society and economy are undergoing transformation and upgrading, and market demands are constantly changing driven by technology. While seeking business development, many mature entrepreneurs with successful experience have realized that they need to explore some of the most essential issues inwardly, including: The original intention and mission of the enterprise and the role that enterprise leaders should play. However, without a systematic approach, transformation and upgrading, strategic decision-making, management mode and cultural construction cannot truly serve the enterprise

As a top institution of higher learning in China, Tsinghua University has always placed an important strategic position on cultivating innovative talents for China. IDEO is the world's leading design and innovation consulting firm. As a pioneer of design thinking, IDEO has always been committed to applying design and innovation capabilities to solve the world's most complex problems. After discovering the need for China's economic and social transformation and the need for innovative leadership by Chinese entrepreneurs, Tsinghua University and IDEO jointly launched the "Leading China" program in 2018. This program is aimed at senior management of Chinese enterprises, and aims to train entrepreneur trainees to use new perspectives and ideas through a one-year innovative leadership course to seek solutions for the systemic changes that need to be achieved in the process of social transformation in China.

The students of the first "Leading China" program came from more than 30 entrepreneurs from 20 different industries. The teachers who participated in the lecture included 73 Chinese and foreign experts including Shan Jixiang, the former dean of the Forbidden City, Masahiro Kuroyama, the father of Japanese industrial design, and Jake Knapp, the inventor of "Design Sprint". As China's first innovative leadership course with design thinking as the core, the project is equipped with "design to open enterprise creativity", "reshape enterprise competitive advantage", "forge innovative business system", "innovate with the help of finance", "embracing Industrial Revolution 4.0" and "Win-win China Created 2030" six modules. The trainees traveled to nine cities in one year, and completed the courses in the interactive teaching of inspiration and the exchange and sharing of practical experience. Many students said that the course not only helped them find the direction and path of enterprise reform, but also improved their way of thinking, strategic planning and leadership models.

Liu Feng, the founder of Top Intelligence, gave an example of the inspiration brought by the six pillars of "vision-led" enterprise reform. Through "vision leadership", he not only sorted out the original intention and values ​​of the company, but also launched a series of measures based on this starting point, which improved the company's various aspects from the telephone customer service process to the organization of the annual meeting, and mobilized the enthusiasm of employees. This greatly improves the company's efficiency and flexibility. Ting Zhihong, chairman of Hongtu Logistics Co., for example, said that the biggest change brought by the course is her awareness of the importance of empowering the team. The company has now built many platforms to give employees more room to play, to create markets, to put decision-making on the front line, and to let employees play the role of company operators. Her company doubled its profits in 2018. Hu Chao, founder and CEO of Leyou Pregnancy and Baby, introduced that what most executive courses learn is knowledge, and what this course learns is people-oriented values ​​and ways of thinking.

The students of the first class of "Leading China" graduated in December 2018. Regarding the course of this year, Wang Jingwei, former assistant dean of the PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University, commented: "Since the project was launched, we have not only witnessed the true value of design in a business context, but also experienced first-hand the use of people-oriented The difference between the designed executive courses is that the entrepreneurs who participated in the courses quickly entered a state of immersive learning, and many students quickly began to practice the methods they learned in the enterprise.”

On April 8, 2019, the list of winners of the 3rd "Changing the World Innovation Award" was announced, and the "Leading China" project was shortlisted for case nomination, becoming the only Chinese innovation case in the education category. The "Change the World Innovation Award" was announced by Fast Company, one of the world's three major financial and business media organizations.

As one of the world’s leading smartphone manufacturers, the Chinese brand vivo is widely known for its exceptional technological innovation and top-of-the-line photography and gaming hardware. But in an increasingly saturated phone market, vivo understood that it wasn’t enough to lead the pack based solely on technological excellence. To win the hearts of young Chinese consumers, they needed to become a beloved brand.

China consumes roughly 30 percent of the world’s smartphones, presenting a tremendous market opportunity to brands who wish to capture young consumers’ loyalty. In order to achieve that, vivo wanted to design a complete brand experience beyond the devices themselves—one that would express the joyful vivo brand spirit through services and retail experiences. One of their first key initiatives was to build its first concept store in an iconic building in Shenzhen, China.

Before building the concept store, vivo approached IDEO to explore what kind of in-store experience would resonate with young Chinese people. The concept store needed to convey joy in a meaningful, tangible way, while also setting the stage for vivo’s future brand systems. With this in mind, IDEO set out to explore how vivo’s young consumers experience fun.

After conducting research in four different cities, IDEO shared the stories of young Chinese consumers back with the vivo team. Their interviews revealed that young people value experiences that enrich their lives and create a feeling of positive personal transformation. They seek opportunities to expose themselves to new experiences, express themselves in different ways, expand and deepen their social connections, and build knowledge and skills.

Through this understanding of how young Chinese define “enjoyment,” IDEO helped vivo identify the value proposition of the concept store as expressing oneself in new and different ways. The store would allow every visitor to see something unique and find a fresh perspective. The vivo team took that value proposition into a design brief and later built out the space and interactive experiences.

The concept store launched at Shenzhen on March 22, 2019, featuring an upper level dedicated entirely to interactive experiences with photo booths, sound recording, and lighting technology. The engaging, lively and positive atmosphere of the store represents a major milestone in vivo’s transformation from a smartphone maker to a consumer brand.

WATCH: Official launch video provided by vivo.

As China's agriculture moves towards scale and sustainability, helping farmers grow healthier food with resilience is a matter of national economic security and individual livelihoods.

Bayer Crop Science—with its mission to accelerate China's agricultural modernization and benefit Chinese farmers and consumers—has provided high-quality products for millions of growers in China over 18 years. Yet its service relies heavily on multi-layered distributors and retailers across the country. The last mile of Bayer’s product delivery spreads across tens of thousands of highly fragmented retail stores, making the quality of service difficult to monitor and control.

Together with IDEO, Bayer Crop Science aimed to uncover new ways to engage with local farmers and retailers, and develop design concepts for its diverse set of retailers—establishing local relevance as well as the potential to scale nationwide.

With this ambition in mind, a team formed by Bayer Crop Science and IDEO launched into a design sprint in the rice fields of China’s Anhui province. Field research uncovered multiple challenges facing Bayer Crop Science’s retailers. First, each store needed to serve more than one hundred farmers, many of whom rely solely on the store owner to understand how to use the products. Retailers struggled to meet a high daily demand for direct support in a way that provided a positive customer experience.

In turn, farmers felt they had insufficient access to expert advice. While many farmers shared similar needs, there was no system for aggregating requests or arranging group instruction. Given that many rice farmers are illiterate, pre-printed educational pamphlets had limited impact, and retailers lacked tools for providing targeted support. And because the retail stores were also used for storage, little space remained for educational or community programming.

With these constraints in mind, the team needed to come up with ideas and design concepts that could be easily integrated into the daily lives of the retail store owners. The team brainstormed hundreds of concepts and quickly prototyped a select few. One retail store in Dangtu was transformed entirely into a live prototype set. Over three days, more than 50 farmers and retailers came through and provided feedback. From there, the team was able to make daily iterations of the concept, evolving the experience in real-time.

The Bayer team was energized by the potential of these prototypes to enable more customer-centered retail experiences. An exhibition of the concepts was set up during the National Annual Sales Conference of Bayer Crop Science in China, during which a much wider audience from Bayer experienced not only the concepts, but also the immediate feedback from farmers.

One year after the project’s completion, more than half of the design concepts have been included in Bayer's support kit for dealers. In 2019, these concepts will be rolled out in more than 1,000 flagship stores across China.

The work has also accelerated Bayer Crop Science’s efforts to build an ongoing engagement mechanism with its retailers and growers. Its online platform, Bayer Joy Grower, now has more than 10,000 retailers and will be expanded to growers soon.

The students not only explore the social and technological forces poised to reshape society, but proactively design business opportunities for that optimistic future.

Design fiction is one of the tools the students learn to prototype the future of business. Designers often use this strategy to help stakeholders envision divergent scenarios for their organization in the context of uncertainty.

We asked the students to consider the forces at play in today’s fast-changing society, such as artificial intelligence and decentralized governance models, and write a story about the future. Zooming out of this aspirational story, they mapped out what would have to be true from a technological and business standpoint to bring positive aspects of that future to fruition, while calling attention to factors or decisions that could negatively impact our world years from now. At its core, design fiction is a strategic exercise that connects the dots between vision and execution, transitioning teams from imagining the future to taking action.

Below are three of those design fiction stories, expressed as “op-eds from the future,” from a group of students who completed the course in May 2020. Their forecasts, marked by robotic workforces, new forms of currency, and egalitarian policies, can help us understand what actions we might take—or not take—to design a world where humans and technology harmoniously coexist.

"Time Banking Is the Currency of the Future"

By Alex D'Agostino, Cassandra Salcedo, and Alex Severin

It’s 2025, and the economy has somewhat “recovered.” A massive technology company finally opened their “alien dreadnoughts”—giant, gleaming factories producing every conceivable kind of high-quality, low-cost product. The factories essentially run themselves, with little human supervision. In many ways, the soul of humanity has been stripped before our very eyes under the guise of technological progress. As unemployment compounds and inequality continues to accelerate in the Post Pandemic Period (PPP), humans are growing increasingly keen to find alternative ways of leveraging their skills and resources.

Enter timebanking. Through timebanking, a person with one skill set can bank and trade hours of work for an equal number of hours of work in another skill set, instead of paying or being paid with traditional currency for services. For example:

Lucia is an 88-year old grandmother who lives alone. Ever since her children moved and her husband passed away, she’s felt engulfed by loneliness. But Lucia still bakes the best breakfast in town, and she’s always excited to watch the reaction of those lucky enough to taste it.

Carl is a high school senior with dreams of attending the University of California, Berkeley. Carl feels passionate about giving back to his community.

When Lucia needs someone to take out her trash, eager local students like Carl can offer to assist her, and in turn receive a “digital time token,” equivalent to the number of hours performed for the services. If Carl is ever overwhelmed with classwork or missing his family’s cooking, he can ask lonely local chefs like Lucia to prepare food for him and his roommates, while she enjoys their company over a meal. As Lucia and Carl acquire tokens in their digital wallets, they can choose to spend them on other services or save them.

Perhaps the biggest source of momentum behind the timebanking movement is a lesser-discussed pandemic: loneliness. In our PPP world, numerous countries have appointed their own “Ministers of Loneliness” in an effort to find creative solutions to the growing health crisis linked to many other physical illnesses as well as functional and cognitive decline.

We must rebuild the world as we wish to be in. A world in which Lucia, Robyn, and Carl’s contributions are valued and their needs met. Timebanking is a critical tool to strengthen our communities, fight loneliness, and revalue what it truly means to be a human.

"Remember the Forgotten Ones"

By Shaibya Dalal and Kair Duisenov

My wife, Shobha, just got off our monthly portal call with our daughter, Priya, who lives 3,000 miles away. We love these calls—they are our primary connection to Priya. They are also harsh reminders of the loneliness of old age because each call ends with Shobha begging an exhausted Priya to drop in more through the portal and organize more virtual reunions with the grandkids—anything to help us feel more connected.

And, connection matters more than ever before. COVID-19 was merely the first among a series of deadly pandemics that normalized social distancing and accelerated society’s reliance on technology. Working from home became living at work. (Priya, like nearly all of you, is accustomed to a 14-hour workday.) These compounding factors have left the elderly particularly burdened by isolation.

Like other retirees, our insurance company supplied us with mandatory basic robot helpers. From cooking to physical therapy, such helpers are increasingly supporting the elderly. They even provide companionship: Anne, our 70-year-old neighbor, does ballroom dancing and quilting with her helper!

However, the sad reality is that high-quality robot help comes with a steep price tag. Helpers can alleviate loneliness, but the needed capabilities require technological upgrades costing upwards of $1 million. Unlike Anne, Shobha and I will never be able to afford these upgrades.

The late physicist Stephen Hawking warned us in 2015 of technology’s potential to exacerbate inequity; it is doubtful even he could have imagined the full impact decades later. The “Asimov Law” was passed in 2040, requiring the three global insurance companies to provide basic robot helpers as part of mandatory retiree packages. Instead of being the great equalizer, this privatization of robot helpers and AI magnified the power of large corporations. Life has not been this unequal since 2020, and left unchecked, advances in robotic technology will continue to reinforce disparities.

To protect those who come after us, we must collectively organize to advance “Better Helper AI” (BHAI) policies for seniors. (“Bhai” means brother or friend in Hindi.) A growing coalition of aging adults, willing adult children, and social workers is advocating to set rigorous standards and improve the capabilities of the basic robot helper. Moreover, they are pushing to earmark 5 percent of the annual funds allocated through the Robot Helpers Reinvestment Act to develop open source protocols that raise the floor across robot manufacturers. BHAI can ensure that all, not just some, elderly people have access to quality companionship and connection.

I believe there is a brighter and happier future ahead. If we fight together, I know there is.

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"The Demise of the Tweets"

By Fayzan Gowani, Stacey King, Evan Wright

Today, my life looks very different from how it looked back in 2020. Instead of driving around a city looking for clients to transport, I’m managing fleets of autonomous electric vehicles. COVID-19, now known as Pandemic I, was a precursor of what was to come. Things had to fall apart before today’s egalitarian society was given a chance to be real.

Even before Pandemic I, tech companies were collecting data on every Internet user, and consumer skepticism was growing. In Pandemic I’s aftermath, we were all too devastated by the effects to be upset about how they invaded our privacy. Instead, we spoke our grief through the polls: Our votes elected government leaders that implemented more social safety nets. For example, the government guaranteed a living wage to all workers, greatly increasing the net worth (and saving power) of each citizen.

But when Pandemic II—a truly airborne zoonotic disease—hit, big technology companies got greedy. They started using their arsenal of collected data on our lives to increase household spending on their apps, now that everyone had a living wage. Siri was helpful when I needed her to entertain the kids while I worked during the stay-at-home orders, but she started giving me unsolicited parenting advice. CEOs complained that Siri chimed in on their private business deals. Only when whistleblowers revealed the data abuse did the technology sector accept the loss of consumer trust they had precipitated.

Surprisingly, one of the big tech culprits helped create a revolution by working with data unions to enable the average consumer to manage and monetize the data it collected. The company and the government partnered to use centralized blockchain to retroactively compensate every individual for the data abuse, funnelling $134,000,000,000 of revenues and the government’s $693,000,000,000 annual defense budget to good use.

Though my job was soon replaced after Pandemic II by Uber’s self-driving car, the government’s emphasis on protecting its workers ensured that Uber trained me and hundreds of others for the future. That’s how I was promoted to fleet manager. Sometimes, I have nostalgia for the days when I would pick up clients in my Uber.

We’ve come a long way. I’m thriving in this egalitarian world. But we can’t forget the past. Take this next election seriously, and find ways to get your kids and grandkids to vote the way you and I did back then. Remind them—four decades of work can also be erased in the time it takes to send a tweet.

How to start using design fiction now

There’s much more to design fiction than sharing provocative stories. Leaders can apply design fiction to their businesses, no matter the industry, using this four-step exercise. Once you’ve written a story about the preferred future of your organization—whether that’s making insects into Americans’ new protein staple or introducing robots to combat loneliness among elders—the question becomes, how do we reverse engineer a path to get there? This unlocks strategies and tactics for the next five to 20 years—however far into the future you’d like to plan—that can help you and your team prototype your desired business reality.

For three semesters, we’ve had the opportunity to teach the “Designing the Future” course at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

As a writer, I’m particularly interested in getting to know IDEOers on a personal level. By seeing what makes us unique as individuals, I can tell better stories about the company as a whole—people from very different backgrounds and perspectives coming together to design for systems change around the world.

As a queer woman, I’m especially invested in seeing how that work drives equality and acceptance for all vulnerable communities—helping to make the world a place where we can all live as our full selves. To learn more, I reached out to IDEO’s queer employee resource group, PRIDEO, and interviewed the community. I asked about the ways in which they bring their LGBTQIA+ identities to work, the trends they’re starting to see emerge because of it, and the hopes they have for the future of queer design. Here’s what they had to say.

Access is the next wave of design

Historically, queers have had to fight for access. Access to freedom, to healthcare, job security, and a place in society as a normal human being. The fight is far from over, but that is something that all queers remember when they take on a design project, whatever it is. When I was designing brand strategy for a recent client website, I had to ask, “Why is there only one type of person in the room?” (White male.)

My queerness gives me the language and the “radar” to sniff inequalities out with a vengeance. Knowing we have to fight to “redesign” systems to accommodate and accept all types of queerness, it helps me see beyond the demographics listed in the brief, and to know that access is the next/current wave of design. There is a global reckoning for racial equity within design, for our entire process to change, for leadership to perhaps step down to make room for actual diversity at the top, and all of that is just so much more glaringly obvious when you are queer in this world—and in the design field.

—Stuart Getty, Design Lead and Writer, San Francisco

A focus on removing barriers

Being queer, I think a lot about how I might design to remove barriers. I have the opportunity to update outdated language and to create environments that celebrate the beauty of diversity. I can facilitate new cultural habits to bring in needed voices into a conversation. My role as a designer at IDEO is to listen and set aside my assumptions and my ego. There is always a need for collaboration. It takes many of us, with different lived experiences, to see a multitude of barriers to remove.

—Alan Ratliff, Senior Lead, Inclusion, Culture and Change, San Francisco

Choosing pride as an act of rebellion

Being a Black woman in today’s society is hard. Adding queer to the equation makes it even harder. However, I choose pride as an act of self-care. I choose pride as an act of rebellion. It’s extremely important for me to show up to every space, bringing my full self to every conversation, and a company like IDEO provides a space for me to do so. I am extremely grateful for the employee communities I’ve been able to join during my time here. Freely engaging with those who understand and support me is a gift that has helped me bring my full self to work.

—Emanie White-Heard, Coordinator, New York

Moving away from “the way things have always been done”

When you come out, you're recognizing your difference and you choose to express that difference openly. In coming out, you are born into bringing a diverse opinion either with your family, your friends, or society on the whole.

When I came out pre-gay marriage, it was still a quiet thing to be gay—very little representation in the media, The L Word wasn't even out yet. It was in this moment that I embraced my own voice and its ability to create reality.

In that way, I realized that I got to design what sexuality meant to me. It was like I had been given a blank canvas. I could choose what, if anything, I wanted to bring from mainstream interactions into my own perception of what relationship, gender and sex meant. I learned that nothing is 0 or 1, all male or all female, but rather it was a spectrum of choice that could be tweaked from moment to moment if I wanted to. In that effort, you realize that everyone will approach this balance differently for themselves as well. In work, I could hold my “design” as valid just as much as someone else's “design.” Two things, or more, could be true at the same time—none any more “right” than another.

As a designer, you have to be willing to put your ideas out there even if they differ from the status quo or the way things have always been done, you need to cultivate a willingness to question assumptions, even your own, and you have to be able to do all that in the context of others who will bring their own realities to the table as well—being gay helps me do that every day.

—Meg Rice, Lead Learning Architect, San Francisco

The importance of visibility

Queerness at work can have different levels of visibility—and for me, it’s important that I show up visibly queer at work. Growing up gay in Bolivia, I rarely crossed paths with openly queer people. The culture is conservative, and was even more conservative back then. I present as gender fluid, and it was difficult to believe I’d be able to express myself in an authentic way while still having a chance at success. However, feeling free in my expression is really important for my creativity. So, when I started working, I decided to not hold back—even in professional settings—in hopes that at least one queer kid would see visible queerness in the context of work and feel like it means they, too, can express themselves authentically—especially within my Latinx community.

—Bruno Olmedo Quiroga, Senior Design Researcher, Cambridge

Creating your own playbook

I came of age in the 1980s. My introduction to being “gay" occurred when I was an 11 year-old paperboy, made apparent through the headline: RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS. Thus began my fraught sexual awakening: panic, self-loathing, and, most importantly, secrecy. The realization was significant and isolating, prompting me to turn inward, a years-long journey of self-reflection. Emerging from this, I saw everything differently, structurally: the world was wrong—not me.

When the world doesn't reflect you as you are, you have to manage the cognitive dissonance creatively, sometimes in bespoke and idiosyncratic ways. When no playbook exists, you create everything from scratch: norms, family, a sense of safety. You have to work hard to find your people. Coming up as a gay man was my test to pass—and it turned out to be a blessing.

On the iterative path to accepting my identity, I grew aware of the contradictions swarming around me, around all of us. I became comfortable with ambiguity. I learned how to compromise, to collaborate, to be flexible; how to celebrate small successes. I tuned into the inflections in people: what they say and what they do, and could see opportunities. I learned how to listen, to be pragmatic, to be resilient. This is design.

Nothing is ever perfect. And a lot of things are still very much lousy. But everything can be improved upon. Design guarantees this. And it's my life's work. I'm living the dream that my 11 year-old self could never have imagined, that many 11 year-olds can now see writ large: you can love who you want, you can be loved, you can do this without shame. I think of all my brothers and sisters who didn’t make it through their struggle unscathed. For them, pride and progress are things I’ll never take for granted. It's not perfect, but perfecting. Somebody pinch me. How could I not be optimistic?

—Mark Del Lima, Interaction Designer, San Francisco

Having greater empathy for others

Growing up gay in a small town in China has been a rather lonely/alienating experience. From being bullied at school because of my femininity, to being screamed at by parents because they found texts on my phone implying my crush to a boy in class, everything felt like it was denying my existence. Being in that environment, I experienced a lot of emotional pain and it made me into a very sensitive person. I’m now more able to recognize and empathize with someone who is going through emotional turmoil. It gives me the ability to be comfortable around someone who is expressing emotional pain. I’m able to handle the depth that a lot of people are uncomfortable with—meaning that I can better comfort that person, or turn emotion into action to drive change.

—Anonymous IDEOer, Chicago

Recognizing your own privilege

Once I was out with a friend when she had to go to the restroom. Then the police arrived: someone had called security on her. While I was shocked, my friend was not. As a trans woman of color, she was used to being policed for the smallest everyday action, like going to a public restroom and nearly being arrested for her gender identity.

This is an example of how being part of queer and trans communities taught me how systems have failed us. I quickly learned to have empathy for my friend who not only had a different experience than me but faced more barriers as a trans person. I realized how I take things for granted, like the simple act of moving freely or feeling safe as a cis gender person with male privilege. Being queer and a designer, it’s made me want to turn that empathy and realization into actions. I can see how we can redesign systems big and small—from supporting the overhaul of broken social systems to being mindful everyday in how I use gender pronouns to be more inclusive.

2020 marked the 50th anniversary of the first Pride protest following the Stonewall riots in response to police brutality. And since then we’ve had many months of protests against police murders of black people. As a queer person of color, I am deeply saddened by the persistence of anti-blackness and racism, as well as violence against Black trans folx and anti-trans Bathroom Bills that perpetuate harassment like my friend endured. And yet as I look back over the decades of movement building and the past months of action, being queer also gives me hope to envision that another world is possible.

—John Won, Last Mile Money Co-Lead, San Francisco

Illustrations by Cassandra Fountaine

One of my favorite things about IDEO is the people. There is a culture of creativity and openness here that encourages people to really see one another as whole humans, beyond their title or credentials.

Her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” concluded with a galvanizing call to Americans: “We will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. There is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it.”

Gorman’s passionate delivery was a reminder of the power of poetry to captivate an entire nation, invite a collective pause, and inspire both reflection and action.

2020 was a year of reflection and action for business, too. Taking a moment to process it all, IDEO and SYPartners—two of the creative firms that make up the kyu Collective—hosted a virtual gathering called “Poetry Rx” for employees to share their original poetry, recite their favorite works, or simply soak in the pleasure of rhythm and verse.

To kick off Poetry Rx, Lisa Maulhardt of SYPartners said, "Poems are us singing to one another about our shared humanity. And poems are valuable in business because business is simply a context for a bunch of us humans to play out our shared humanity: Our bravery, ego, our ambition, our greed, and even our love, are ultimately what make business run. That's why poems belong in business.”

Here are three of the many beautiful poems shared during the session. We hope they lend some relief, rejuvenation, and inspiration.

divine flow, by Alysha English (IDEO)

flow is supreme truth
flow is intuition
flow is raw sugar
flow is honey
flow is manifestation
flow is freedom
flow is presence
flow is patience
flow is activism
flow is truth to power
flow is 'you are the power'
flow is divine

sometimes flow is an accident that finds us,
and when it does – flow is sitting with it, letting it stick

flow is play
flow is feeling it
flow is rhythm
flow is dance
flow is grace

flow is watching the pieces shatter and then
picking each piece up with love and trusting that every piece will land
exactly where it’s meant to be
a mosaic, a masterpiece

flow is art
flow is ritual
flow is an invisible pulse, a heartbeat
flow is that feeling when you lose track of time
and remember that you are divine

flow is a moment
flow is a breath

flow is me. flow is you. flow is us. flow is energy.
flow is me. flow is you. flow is us. flow is energy.
flow is me. flow is you. flow is us. flow is energy.

Infinite Definitions of Birthright, by Lauren Ito (IDEO)

Infinite definitions of birth right

Is it place
Or people
Or textures
Or graves
Or lullabies caressing cheek
Or…
afterthought

Or contorted masks in shapes we can’t bring ourselves to recognize anymore

I hitchhike towards mirages
Count mile markers in what grows beside the road
Who destroys it
How the invasive species are named
Where resilient blooms atop fault lines keep extinction at bay

And poetry becomes wills only some can inherit.

Tucking affirmations beneath toes at each bend
I ground prayers for cocooned comfort in given skin
As if we were destined to belong here
After all.

Originally published by the San Francisco Public Library

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry After Whitman, by Michael Juretic (Sid Lee)

1.
You are the patient laid out on the table.
Your eyes are peeled fruit,
brimming with low bruised sky.
The butcher ghosts are working.
No anesthetic, no disinfectant,
no intention of stitching up that hole.

Heart specialists. Their pinprick eyes,
their gore-knotted fists, the nylon swoosh
of bloodstained scrubs.

And deep in that bone white cage,
what is it?
Naked, lurching; what a terribly
obvious muscle.

You are laid out on the table.
The butcher ghosts are at work, and,
working, the butcher ghosts
change

2.
You know who you are
I wake up to thoughts of you.
I reach for you like skyscrapers reach
in the pink-bricked morning.

This map is the map of the universe
is the map of time.
It is your stars that dot
my molecule’s chart.

We are fish that swim
in the rivers of our blood.
We thrash, we sound and breach.
We jump or heaven, dripping blood,
we reach for the waters above.

If you'd like, take a few minutes to share your poetry with us on Instagram—we'd love to hear from you.

Amanda Gorman, the United States’ first National Youth Poet Laureate, left many of us awed during her reading at the 2021 presidential inauguration.

I met him in 2005, when he became the art director of my crafty, grassroots Berkeley magazine, ReadyMade.

In the years that followed, we laughed and wept through one of the most fruitful creative collaborations of our lives. Then, in 2011, George strapped on a jetpack, waved goodbye to publishing, and lit out to start his own eponymous juggernaut, McCalmanCo. Aside from his fertility as a creative director, illustrator, and artist, 2020 was a year of honing “Observed,” his column for the San Francisco Chronicle, into a razor-sharp instrument of cultural commentary. One of his pieces shares the backstory behind his exhibition, “Tell Me Three Things I Can Do/Return To Sender,” a collection of bold, typographic renderings of messages he received from white acquaintances in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. I caught up with George in January, 2021, to hear more about an eagerly awaited new project: Illustrated Black History: Celebrating the Iconic and the Unseen, due out from Amistad/HarperCollins in October, 2021.

In one sentence, who are you?

A polymath trying to simplify his life.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

Too many things for this format! I’m a fine artist, illustrator, art director, cultural critic, editor, writer, and professor of graphic design. I also run McCalmanCo, a design studio that does branding for companies, books, and individuals. I learned all of those things through magazine military training. I started at the peak of magazine publishing in New York and left right at the sunset in San Francisco.

One story that sums up that experience was my very last day atEntertainment Weekly. I put in an all-nighter designing the cover story on Heather Locklear at Melrose Place. I had already cleared my desk, but I needed to be there to get it done. I came in at 8 a.m. and left at 8 a.m. the next morning. I said to myself, I never want to do that again. And I never did. San Francisco offered a version of that life without ever getting to that level of insanity.

What are your 3 favorite possessions?

My home is filled with art that my friends have created. This year represents the most time I’ve spent at home, and I realized I’ve constructed my home as an altar—a totem to both friends who have passed and those who are living. So, my entire home is my favorite possession. Also, my studio. And my friendships.

What does a typical work session look like?

Communication. A lot of communication. Because every day is atypical. What is consistent in how I approach anything I do is I try to make sure I have a perspective on what I’m doing first. Whether I’m starting an illustration, painting, doing a shoot for a book, if I don’t know what I’m doing, I stop. I’ve stopped meetings, conversations, illustrations, I’m always like, Wait what am I doing, who am I talking to? It makes everything I do better.

How do you get over creative block?

If I’m having difficulty it has to do with everything outside the creative process. It’s an emotional or somatic block. When I listen to my emotions or body, all the information is there. If my body is tired, I won’t draw for a week, rather than powering through. I am prolific because I’m tuned into the lessons I’m getting from my emotional or somatic state and I don’t challenge those things. But this is not something I knew when I was younger, only in the last 10 years. I think back and my body was sending me all those signals all along.

What was the last item on your to-do list?

I’m directing a photo shoot for Bryant Terry’s new book, so I’m currently organizing a zoom call with the team. The truth is that I’m never not working—I’ve fused my personal and professional life. I learned that from James Lord and Roderick Wyllie of the landscape architect firm Surfacedesign. They are a couple who are very different people, but inseparable. They move through life with no break between work and life—they will work through a glorious dinner and while traveling—but it’s not work that’s breaking them, it’s work that’s energizing them. That joyfulness in treating their work like it’s their choice rather than their burden inspires me.

How do you see the world in 2078?

I think the U.S. will still be a messy, unsatisfying experiment. The pandemic has transformed much of this world and it will be years before we see how that’s manifested. Two words thrown around a lot are hope and optimism. That’s a very American position. I don’t really think in those terms. Do I believe we are going to make progress? Yes. But we live in a country where people don’t want the progress, so we have to figure out how to live with those who don’t think treating people of other races equally is a good idea, or that paying for the health care for everyone is a good idea, or that letting people who enter this country become citizens is a good idea. How do we reconcile these polarities? It’s not optimism or pessimism, it’s just work. My white lady friends say “I’m so hopeful now,” and I think, how wonderful for you, what a luxury that you get to be hopeful.

What's your number one bucket list item?

I’m doing it! To write and illustrate and design my own book. Much of Black history is reduced to 10 people, but the book I’m working on tells the story of 400 years of American history through the eyes of 150 Black pioneers. Their biographies are historical allegories in that you’ll see how the Black community, unlike the white community in this country, is very much a continuum of our ancestors passing down knowledge. It’s a contemporary telling, devoid of the dryness of historical writing. It’s celebratory of the sacrifices that some of these pioneers of business, film, art, writing and science made to enhance our ideas of democracy and justice. I’m treating them like they’re the Avengers. I hope everyone reads it. It’s a gift you can send to your slightly racist cousin, your republican father, and your apathetic aunt. I want it to be read by students and teenagers and 80-year-olds and also by those who don’t care about Black history.

Who are you creative crushin' on lately?

A short list of iconoclasts who are in their own lane:

• Bryan Stephensen of the Equal Justice Initiative
• The illustrator Lauren Tamaki
• New Yorker food writer Bryan Washington

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George McCalman wasn’t always a multi-hyphenate. The art director-writer-illustrator started out as a traditional graphic designer, earning his stripes through the “military training” of New York magazines in the aughts.

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.