For 6-year-old Dave Jr., a long line at Disneyland triggered a massive meltdown. His parents were concerned and a little embarrassed, but not surprised; Dave Jr. struggled to keep his emotions in check.

Hoping to help, Dave Jr.'s uncle, entrepreneur Craig Lund, joined forces with researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, along with a video game designer who had worked on Quick Hit and NBA 2K. Together, they set out to design something that could teach coping skills to kids like Dave Jr. who need to manage “big emotions,” as well as children suffering from anxiety, ADHD, and other behavior issues, which are on the rise.

Their collaboration resulted in a video game called Mightier and a startup called Neuromotion Labs—a 10-person team of psychologists, game designers, and engineers who embedded at IDEO Cambridge for a one-month sprint to improve the game and get ready for launch.

To play Neuromotion's game, kids are first taught simple, calming breathing exercises. During gameplay, kids wear heart-rate monitors on a wrist or arm that detect spikes caused by stress or anger; as their heart rates go up, the game's difficulty increases. Kids have opportunities to pause and try deep breathing to counter the ramped up challenge. As it turns out, "gamifying" restraint builds strong incentives for kids to take charge of their emotions—they have to if they want to win.

Already activated around boosting mental and emotional health, IDEO's design team worked side-by-side with Neuromotion to study how parents and children experience Mightier. From home visits to group interviews to a summer camp-style design session with kid players, live feedback fueled the next iteration of the gaming platform and better product-market fit.

IDEO helped Neuromotion hone the visual design and mechanics of Mightier and expand it's suite of games. The team observed that the Mightier program was more successful the more involved parents of players became, which revealed a need for additional resources for adults. So they created new supports, including a more detailed orientation and a personalized coaching service for parents staffed by trained therapists.

But can a video game actually help kids cope? Early peer-reviewed studies showed that playing Mightier reduced outbursts by 62 percent, oppositional behaviors by 40 percent, and parental stress by 19 percent. After 12 weeks of using Mightier, a survey of kids and parents showed that 96 percent of parents saw positive behavior changes in their children, while 92 percent of kids learned new coping skills.

Shortly after the design sprint, Neuromotion secured its next round of funding and officially launched Mightier’s array of “bioresponsive games.” The games have already been played more than a million times, and Neuromotion has measured more than a 100 million heartbeats. Mightier games are helping kids and families across the country.

What about Dave Jr.? Recently, his sister told Lund she "accidentally" bumped Dave Jr.’s bike off a pier and into the ocean. She was expecting an outburst of anger, but after eight months of playing Mightier, Dave Jr. stayed cool. His uncle couldn’t be prouder.

Many of us have let vegetables wither in the crisper drawer, or thrown out a child’s half-eaten restaurant meal, but the sheer scale of food waste around the globe is hard to grasp. According to the United Nations, about a third of the food the world produces every year—1.3 billion tons—is lost during production or tossed by consumers, with North Americans throwing out the most food per capita. The average American wastes enough food each month to feed another person for 19 days.

IDEO received a series of grants from The Rockefeller Foundation to find solutions, given the power of IDEO’s human-centered design approach to address systemic challenges. Through a number of projects with The Rockefeller Foundation and other organizations, IDEO designers from across the U.S. devised novel ways to tackle food waste.

For IDEO’s first initiative, designers tapped into the enthusiasm of the broader creative community, in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation, the City of San Francisco’s Department of Environment, the Closed Loop Foundation, ReFED, and other groups. In the summer of 2016, OpenIDEO—IDEO’s open innovation practice—launched the Food Waste Challenge, asking how people might curtail waste by rethinking our relationship with food. Between June and October, more than 20,000 people from 113 countries took part in the challenge, tracking their personal waste and brainstorming solutions.

Challenge participants submitted more than 450 ideas. A team of food industry experts helped select the 12 top proposals, which included software to help people buy food collectively from wholesalers and a service that delivers extra meals from corporate events to those in need. Ultimately, the Closed Loop Foundation chose to award Full Cycle Bioplastics a $50,000 grant to scale up its idea to convert inedible food and paper waste into a fully compostable alternative to oil-based plastic.

At the conclusion of the Food Waste Challenge, OpenIDEO launched the Food Waste Alliance, a platform for participants and experts to stay engaged with the most promising ideas and innovators. The alliance helped entrepreneurs share resources, prototype new concepts, secure funding, hire staff, and form partnerships. OpenIDEO invited hundreds to join the alliance, and 92 percent of members told IDEO they made progress in their work as a result. One member company, RISE, received funding from another participant who discovered RISE through the alliance. This investment let RISE prototype its concept for milling spent grain from beer brewing into flour for baked goods and ultimately join the prestigious Food-X accelerator.

The Rockefeller Foundation also supported IDEO’s work with City Harvest, a New York organization that collects 160,000 pounds of unused food each day and delivers it to soup kitchens and food pantries. City Harvest wanted to understand the habits of local families who visit food banks in an effort to ensure all the food the group distributes gets eaten. To get a peek into these families’ kitchens, in January 2017, IDEO researchers conducted observations and interviews across New York City’s five boroughs. Pantry customers cooked for the researchers, giving them an inside look at how the families engaged with the food they had available and what food meant to each of them: tradition, stability, even adventure. Based on insights from pantry visitors, IDEO made recommendations for City Harvest, including community-run cooking classes and a way for families to request specific foods or reserve pick-up times by text message. IDEO also created three video vignettes to help build even greater empathy between City Harvest and the people it serves.

In spring 2017, capping IDEO’s work with The Rockefeller Foundation, the organizations teamed up with World Wildlife Fund and Hyatt hotels in Florida, New York, and New Jersey to rethink all-you-can-eat buffets. IDEO studied diners and staff at Hyatt buffets and found that employees—from event planners to kitchen staff—each add a cushion of extra food to cover their bases, while guests overfill their plates to avoid missing out. In the end, diners eat just half the food organizers serve, while the rest goes to waste. This and other data-driven insights gleaned about diners’ habits led to subtle substitutions, including smaller plates of meats and cheeses that can be ordered from servers and individual pastries rather than whole cakes. These alternatives have not only built on Hyatt’s existing food waste management strategies, but have also helped reduce buffet costs at Hyatt Regency Orlando and continued to receive support from guests.

The problem of food waste is too enormous to ignore. Wasted food means squandered resources, lost money, and ultimately, hungry people—more than 15 million in the United States alone. Designers and innovators from coast to coast have helped find solutions to the crisis that fulfill a variety of needs, from preserving produce sent to food pantries to keeping plastic packaging out of the oceans. The Rockefeller Foundation and other IDEO partners are leveraging powerful design techniques to pave the way for a waste-free future.

In 2017, IDEO acquired longtime partner Datascope and integrated the company’s data scientists and engineers. Datascope team members aren’t just passionate data scientists; they’re human-centered designers who happen to work with data, as illustrated by successful collaborations like this one:

In today’s job market, there’s no such thing as being "done" with your education. This is particularly true in the fields of data science, machine learning, and AI, where significant advances are made on a monthly basis. To meet this need for more in-depth training, Metis—part of Kaplan—wanted to create a comprehensive data science program for students from all backgrounds. Metis asked Datascope to design the curriculum from scratch, drawing on the company’s deep expertise in the field.

Datascope spoke with practitioners across industries to identify the key skill sets that make them successful: a grasp of design; fluency with data management, coding, and algorithms; and effective communication with coworkers and the wider world. The team crafted a 12-week bootcamp that develops these specific abilities.

In order to prepare students for the work world, the bootcamp is structured less like a class and more like a company, where students are “hired” as data scientists—with projects to complete—starting on day one.

Students collaborate on group projects and presentations in a way that mirrors real workflows, and practice pair programming to learn from one another. Using techniques drawn from design, students are invited to refine their project briefs and continually reevaluate their approach.

Instead of a final exam, at the end of the course, students tackle five real-world, open-ended data science projects inspired by Datascope’s client work. One project involves using data from subway turnstiles to detect patterns in the volume of street traffic; another asks students to use data they scrape from the web to predict a movie’s box office profits using regression analysis.

After students complete the bootcamp, they receive an additional three months of career support, from mock interviews to site visits with potential employers. In addition to designing the curriculum, Datascope taught the first three student cohorts and helped Metis build its teaching team as it expanded the program from New York to San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle. Metis now offers online courses, evening classes, and corporate trainings in data science.

If you’re going to take a data science bootcamp, it’s best to take one designed by data scientists.

You’re whizzing along on your bike, en route to a new restaurant for a client meeting. You reach an unfamiliar intersection; which way to go now?

Instead of dismounting and digging for a phone, you brush your hand along your jacket sleeve for directions, then double-tap the denim to re-start your music. Without taking your eyes off the road, you’ve taken care of the problem.

This intuitive interface for connected apparel began with Levi's, makers of durable workwear for 140 years, and Google, creators of forward-looking technology, which joined forces to fashion the first item of clothing with touch-sensitive, copper-core threads woven directly into the fabric. Once it was established that the first connected garment from the partnership would be a jacket within Levi’s Commuter line, with interaction on the sleeve, Google worked with IDEO, leaders in designing for human needs, to develop the gesture language of the jacket and industrial design of the technology within.

This is the first connected garment that helps us break free from devices. It seamlessly incorporates Jacquard by Google technology to perform digital tasks, such as navigation, communication, and music playing with a few swipes or taps on the sleeve.

Jacquard by Google—a platform that makes it possible to integrate touch and gesture interactivity into fabrics using conductive yarn and standard, industrial looms—was inspired by a curious twist of history. The Jacquard loom, invented in France in 1804, used punch cards to automate the process of weaving complex patterns into fabric. In the 1940s and ’50s, engineers employed a similar punch-card technique to program the first computers.

IDEO spent time on the project early on, collaborating with Google engineers and Levi’s clothiers on the jacket’s development, helping craft an experience that would make the intelligent threads intuitive to wearers.

Working alongside Google and Levi’s, IDEO’s work included:

• The industrial design of the electronics integrated into the snap tag and connector (the tag snaps onto the jacket’s cuff and connects to your phone via Bluetooth)
• A vocabulary of gestures on the cuff of the jacket that lets you interact with the jacket’s technology
• Early exploration of the basic design philosophy and conceptual design for the interaction model of a corresponding smartphone app that ties it all together (works with both iOS and Android phones)

The IDEO team’s first task was to validate what commuters of all stripes wanted from the garment, in addition to the work Levi’s did in researching with its consumers. In interviews, group exercises, and wear tests with urban cyclists and other workers on the go, the team learned that cyclists needed a way to stay connected, while still living in the moment. That meant being able to answer calls, hear text messages, get the next direction, and control their music without using a screen.

Levi’s, Google, and IDEO developed a language of movement for Jacquard-enabled fabric that feels familiar and human and builds on the ways people would naturally interact with a garment (a whole-hand brush along the sleeve, as opposed to a one-finger tap on a touch screen, for instance).

Then came the design and engineering of the snap tag on the jacket’s cuff, which gently notifies you of calls, texts, and other jacket interactions with light and vibration feedback. The flexible, lightweight strap incorporates the look and feel of a Levi’s jean button, while housing advanced electronics that capture touch data. The tag is removable, charges via USB connection, and works in conjunction with a mobile app that lets you configure settings for the garment, set notifications, and customize gestures and interactions.

The Levi’s Commuter Jacket with Jacquard by Google changes the game because it’s simply that—a jacket—with technology that adds new utility and value, allowing us to wear our everyday interactions on our sleeves.

The Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket with Jacquard by Google hit stores in October 2017.

IDEO and Google have a long history of collaboration. Learn more about our work on Google Bloks here.

On that day, they pulled us into a room that resembled a basketball court. Wide, open decks were marked by signs and little flags identifying team workspaces: Purchasing Boulevard, Operations Corridor, and Design Central. The walls of the space were adorned with customers stories, insights, and frameworks that had been collected during design research and now pointed toward new opportunities. At the center of the room sat a new kind of prototype of a vehicle, which had been the focus of a startup-style development team made up of members of purchasing, HR, legal, design, accounting and more. The process of creating the low-fidelity prototype had been entirely new for this cross-functional team—defined by collaboration and experimentation—but the prototype that now appeared before us proved the value of their approach.

This was just one of dozens of war-rooms now filling the buildings of Ford's Dearborn campus, and also in Ford’s campuses around the world. This new kind of problem solving and rapid prototyping were new to the greater Ford team. And while the IDEO team had been alongside Ford through many projects, we had not touched this prototype.

When developing a new vehicle, defining the concept is a significant investment in time and resources. Using this approach, the team achieved a massive reduction in design development time, in turn reducing cost to the company and accelerating the time to market. It was a light-bulb moment for us. We suddenly saw that a comprehensive organizational change was in motion here—design thinking now lived in Ford’s DNA and they were taking it forward.

Over many years of deep collaboration with designers at Ford, we’ve worked primarily on specific projects or initiatives, all the while broadening our points of connection within the company. Early on, the IDEO team functioned like a pirate brigade on the edge of the business, with a mandate to run fast and break the rules—but you can’t scale that up.

Where scale has been achieved is in the aggregate, as numerous individual projects have exposed more and more members of Ford to the power of human-centered design. Although we did not do the work to create some of the vehicle prototypes we viewed that spring day, our deep collaboration with Ford over many years has helped enable the organization to shift its way of working, and that may be the greatest and most lasting success of our partnership. Together, we’ve moved with Ford toward the precipice of becoming a new kind of company, suited to lead not just auto manufacturing, but a radical revolution in mobility.

Mapping the entire span of our time with Ford, it’s clear that the way we’ve been working is its own kind of strategy. Design thinking has been permeating the organization system-wide, often spearheaded by inspired employees eager to explore new ways of working. At its best, design enables people to tackle complex, systemic challenges. Within a large organization, the work isn’t so much about applying a process, but helping the company itself improve its resilience and uptake of new ideas. We can push the edge by asking tough questions about what people—the customers or users of their products and services—really want, and figuring out what needs to change in order to fulfill those desires.

That unifying anchor point during this shift has been Jim Hackett, who took over as Ford’s CEO in 2017. Hackett came from Steelcase, a world-class furniture company that has been instrumental in applying design to shape the future of work. It was at Steelcase where Hackett first worked with IDEO, and through that collaboration cultivated an approach to business that put the customer at the center, evolving the company from simply a furniture manufacturer to a hub of leadership in the changing workplace landscape. When he came to Ford, he brought this human-centered approach with him.

The whole purpose of a business, ultimately, is to meet a customer’s need. Many legacy businesses that have been operating decades or centuries find themselves with very established business models. They know how to make money through those methods. But the consequence of entrenched models is that everything drives toward efficiencies and returns. If you live in that mode, you lose your customer. It’s easy to say legacy companies need to change the lens through which they’re viewing and operating their business; it is everything to get it done well.

During his tenure, Hackett has built an ecosystem that enables design to spread from the core innovation teams out to all corners of the more than 190,000-person organization. Creating change is about convincing networks of people to make different choices, which means unconvincing them of their current behaviors and helping seed the potential of doing things differently. By helping them align in new ways around ideas, they gain the bravery to make choices that may not be supported by their corporate or cultural DNA.

In an effort to be more intentional and comprehensive with this diffusion of ideas, Ford is moving forward with two primary initiatives: First, a global design lab network called D-Ford, with teams around the world focusing not on products, but on customers. And second, a robust, enterprise-wide learning program to give everyone at Ford access to the design tools and skill sets that the collaborative team of Ford and IDEO spent years refining together. With these two efforts in operation, design thinking can be disseminated from the inside out, spreading throughout the organization.

Ford’s global innovation labs represent the design-intensive core of the company. The D-Ford studios are housed in Detroit, London, Palo Alto, and Shanghai. In each, a nimble group of design practitioners gets their hands dirty iterating, fixing, and prototyping possibilities for the next era of mobility.

To be human-centered doesn’t just mean to put humans at the center of the design problem, but to put humans at the center of the design solution and empower them in different ways. The D-Ford Labs, and the associated learning program, are creating a radically new way of working that is accelerating Ford's evolution. It's not IDEO, it's not Ford, it's a third way.

Outside of these hands-on labs, the uptake of design thinking is more variable and sometimes controversial. Thousands of employees cross paths with the small group of radical experimenters so transformation happens more slowly. Communicating the value of design in this broad population requires moving from provocation to persuasion and proof, demonstrating how much leverage design can provide in solving problems that have seemed intractable through more conventional approaches.

Design requires being on the ground with the people who will use and experience any new offerings from Ford, but it also means reaching across aisles and opening dialogues where previously deep, daily collaboration has been unheard of.

This never would have happened had they not felt invited into the room to help with the design. Having cross-functional teams from engineering, design, purchasing and more, has been a breakthrough, because they gain empathy and respect for each other’s practices and work together, rather than sitting in silos that tend to block each other’s effort.

Perhaps one of the clearest proof points for Ford’s new way of working is the groundbreaking, all-electric SUV Mustang Mach-E, which was unveiled in Los Angeles late last month. The Mustang Mach-E came to life just a few blocks away from Henry Ford’s first factory in Detroit, through a development process grounded in human-centered design, concentrated entirely on customer needs and desires.

The development team, called Team Edison, was made up of broad expertise, including members leading the design, charging strategy, infotainment, and marketing of electric vehicles. Thanks to the company-wide shift toward human-centered design, Team Edison was truly able to exercise creative license and operate in a different way. The Mustang Mach-E represents change not only within Ford, but worldwide. Customer outlooks and desires are evolving, and by listening to what’s true for their user, the team created a vehicle that aligns with the changing world.

While this new mindset is thriving within the walls of the labs, it’s a feat to communicate the nuance and potential of human-centered design to parts of Ford where design itself isn’t necessarily top of mind. Across every level and department, the principles can apply, but putting them in context matters. In order to activate that deeper saturation, Ford has developed an internal learning program that guides employees through the different phases of design thinking. From teams assembling child safety seats in Nanjing, to a Dearborn group researching the nighttime patterns of taxi drivers, to sales representatives in London, Design Thinking at Ford unifies people across the organization around the mission of putting humans at the center of their work.

The learning tools and experience are available to anyone at Ford who wants to better understand design. Practical tools include methods cards that can be applied at intervals in the development process, and videos illustrating how design thinking has come to life at Ford in the past.

Ford believes that all of its employees will benefit from a human-centered perspective, and is making progress in its enterprise-wide effort to create a unique, design-led creative culture.

One of the most exciting aspects of the early learning about design is realizing just how many areas it encompasses. From making autonomous rideshare vehicles to designing an ecosystem of connected services around sustainable transit, human-centered design in particular enables individuals to rethink how they go about their lives and how they look at the world around them.

As a designer, I was always taught it’s valuable to be able to say, I designed that—it’s on a shelf somewhere. Now we’re getting to a moment when it’s more valuable to create impact and influence rather than an object in space. We’re beginning to see new ways to measure impact, and better ways to affect change.

If you teach people to question what they do, and to collaborate and take cues from others with diverse skills, they will learn to change on their own, and the company will follow suit. This is how large-scale transformation happens. This radically different approach is what will determine the future of Ford.

Illustrations by Johan Papin

On a warm spring day in Dearborn, Michigan, where Ford Motor Company has its world headquarters, our team met up with some of Ford’s senior leadership. It’s a visit we’ve made regularly during the 15 years IDEO has worked with the century-old carmaker.

Did you just cringe? Perhaps your nostrils flared in suspicion. I’m at the far end of the extroverted spectrum and even I have on that grimace.

I’m here to talk to you about creative warm-ups, and to once and for all distinguish them from their brash, single-toned—that tone being forced, high-energy social interaction—cousin: the dreaded icebreaker.

But first, a brief interlude for sports. If you have played or watched any sport on the planet, you know that athletes do not run straight onto the field, into the pool, or out on the court. (If they did that, their game would be garbage and they'd likely pull a hammy.)

Athletes always warm up, and I’d argue that if you were to take one thing from the world of sports to use in your everyday work, it’s this: warm-ups are the thing that can radically change your game.

But if they’re not uncomfortable team cheers or cringe-worthy partner games, what are they?

Warm-ups are a critical part of the collaborative design process. They're a strategic way to set individuals, the team, and the work up for success. And if you do them consistently, you'll build your team’s awareness muscles. You'll become more self-reflective, tuned-in, empathetic, and intentional about the work you are setting out to do.

Here are 4 reasons I believe every collaborative work session needs one.

1. They build psychological safety

Warm-ups can create space to show our humanity. Instead of diving straight into the work, take three minutes to go around the room and check-in with the question: “On a scale of 1-5, how is everyone doing today?” In doing this, we acknowledge that we are not business-people-robots, but are instead complex humans with emotions. Moments of vulnerability help build a foundation of trust, especially when modeled by those with seniority.

Though it may seem trivial, asking people to start off a session by sketching, then sharing a place they loved to play as a child invites everyone to put their voice into the room in a way untethered to expertise or authority. A first contribution is often the hardest, particularly for people farther down the power hierarchy. If you actually want everyone there to collaborate, create a safe invitation for them to participate.

Small moments where you make space for people to bring their real and unique selves to work add up. They build a sense of safety that will allow your team to take risks, challenge the status quo, and propose new ideas.

2. They help you get into the specific mindset the work needs

Ever had someone walk into your meeting in a crappy mood and subsequently prevent your entire team from getting down to business? Everyone is coming from someplace different, whether that’s a stressful one-on-one, a heads-down working session, or a two-hour European lunch.

Take the time to design a transition into the new mindset your work requires. It could be as simple as giving people two minutes to write the to-do list that’s clogging up their brainspace, then putting those Post-its outside the room. Mode switching is hard!

Don't forget to consider not just where people are coming from, but where you want them to go to. The mental place your team needs to be in for a synthesis session (perhaps pattern-finding or decision-making) is totally different than for an ideation jam (maybe pattern-breaking or generating). Think critically about what specific mindsets the work you are embarking on needs.

If you need folks to compromise and build together, have everyone draw an ambiguous squiggle on a Post-it, then pass their drawing to the right; turn that new squiggle into something, then pass each squiggle once more; and have the final person give the squiggle a provocative title and share it with the group.

Getting the right muscles firing up front will grease the gears, and you’ll find your team will be able to go farther faster.

3. They help you practice critical skills

Warm-ups are also a means for you to tangibly grow the core skills you need for your work. When you start a meeting with a three-minute brainstorm on the slimiest, bumpiest, or most laughter-inducing things you can think of, you’re creating a place for people to practice diverging in a low-risk way. If you try having everyone stand at the same spot at the window, each pointing out something they have never noticed before, you’re having them flex the skill of looking at something familiar with fresh eyes.

Working on these skills in a context not tethered directly to business outcomes builds creative confidence. It makes space for folks to grow through trying, flailing, or failing without pressure. When the time comes for them to apply these skills to the work at hand, they will have already built the muscle memory.

4. There's power in starting from a shared experience

The start of a meeting is mission-critical. As an experience designer, I know that it’s impossible (and not actually worth it) to design every moment to perfection. Rather, I focus on the few that really matter, like the beginning.

A warm-up is a way for your team to all start on the same page. If you set off on the wrong foot—or don’t set off at all, leaving everyone wandering whatever alternate plane they were on before your meeting started—you’re not going to get far.

This is especially true for a team where there is currently tension. Designing a human moment that everyone can share will help people start the work at hand with a common understanding. Having each person describe one thing that brought them joy this week can shift the dynamic and set the team up to think collaboratively rather than combatively.

Warm-ups are a breath—a moment to pause in days spent running continuously from list to thing to email. They help us create the necessary space to check-in with ourselves and each other, leave the unnecessary outside the door, and invite in the things we actually want.

Can warm-ups really do all these things? Yes, they can. But they're not a one-size-fits-all solution. You have to be intentional in how you use them.

Let's go back to sports. What can we learn? You have to warm up slowly—jog before you sprint. You have to warm up specific muscle groups—shot putters and synchronized swimmers don’t warm up the same way. And lastly, you warm up together as a team.

When you make it a ritual that every meeting starts with a warm-up, your team will come to expect one, start to feel like they need one, and eventually take shared ownership in leading them. All because they have built the habit of asking what they, as individuals and a collective, need in order to shine.

Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts on warm-ups for all your needs (like when anxieties are high, the 3pm slump hits, your team needs a laugh, or you are diving into convergence).

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Imagine yourself at a conference, team-building event, or bar mitzvah. The person at the front of the room claps their hands gleefully and announces they’re going to lead an icebreaker.

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IDEO’s global client and partner network gives us a unique view into how organizations are responding to rapid change. Recently, we decided to ask our clients what problems are keeping them up at night, and what promising solutions keep them leading with optimism.

We reached out to 55 global business leaders spanning 25 cities and 18+ industries. What we heard is that while uncertainty isn’t new, there have never been so many compounding causes for concern. A decade ago, it was easy to see what triggered the recession. Now, volatility surrounds us—in politics, markets, regulations, the environment, and society at large.

Leaders cited increasingly complex consumer expectations and interactions. They pointed out tension between fueling growth and tightening belts, and pressure to sustain their core businesses while spinning up new growth horizons. And they noted growing difficulty attracting and retaining the right talent.

Leaders agree that growth is still the primary business objective, but increasingly understand that the methods and mindsets to achieve growth have changed. In particular, it’s becoming more important and impactful to consider people—customers, employees, shareholders, and stakeholders—when making business decisions. A human-centered approach to strategy and innovation makes it possible to turn obstacles into opportunities.

How do leaders become more human-centered? By looking both inward and outward to identify the needs and conditions that drive innovation. Inwardly, it’s about evolving leadership qualities to encompass a combination of creativity, strategy, technology, and soft skills. Outwardly, it means testing tangible solutions with customers to inform execution and scale.

These shifts can unlock trapped value, fuel growth, and build trust and loyalty.

Our research identified six key tensions leaders face now. While tension can create stress, it can also—when approached thoughtfully—enable sustained balance between opposing priorities. In our client network, we see numerous examples of inspirational leaders and organizations learning to strike that balance, and in turn finding a new way forward that leads to profitable business growth.

1. Improving efficiencies while exploring new growth opportunities

In 2014, The Times and The Sunday Times worked with IDEO to define and design a new digital publishing strategy. The decision to move to four editions a day—and stop competing with round-the-clock breaking news—freed up tremendous resources to focus on big stories, and balance efficiencies with growth. Since moving to online editions in 2016, subscriptions are up 15% (April 2018) in a market where most content is free.

2. Balancing the needs of shareholders and stakeholders

Intercorp is a Peruvian conglomerate whose strategy focuses on providing Peru’s growing middle class with high quality and accessible healthcare services, competitive education, and financial service offers. In 2010, IDEO started working with Intercorp to design and launch Innova, a low-cost, for-profit education model built on the needs of families and aiming to make Peru an education leader in Latin America. Innova has become a successful business that investors are confident to back and scale. Innova has opened 63 schools in Peru, which will serve 52,000 students by 2020. They also recently opened the first Innova school in Mexico, welcoming 1100 students, and plan to open three more schools in 2020.

3. Rethinking data collection to unlock actionable insight

Ascensia Diabetes Care, a global healthcare company, has been a leader in diabetes treatment for over 70 years. In 2017, Ascensia set its sights on moving the company beyond producing blood glucose metering devices, to become a comprehensive health support provider for people living with diabetes. IDEO’s team worked with Ascensia to leverage real-time data from people with diabetes to identify behavior patterns, then share that information on demand with certified diabetes educators (CDEs). The team used the insights from the data to prototype various ways of connecting those health educators to people with diabetes, ultimately enabling a different kind of patient-provider interaction through live remote support and a suite of digital tools.

4. Approaching talent acquisition as a strategic venture

In order to future-proof its business, Mitsui & Co., one of Japan’s largest investment and trading firms, believes that they need to build greater internal capabilities to start and launch new businesses of their own, instead of relying purely on their trading investments. To that end, they have partnered with IDEO to create Moon Creative Lab, an innovation hub aiming not only to launch new ventures but also to develop entrepreneurial talent and capabilities as a strategic asset for Mitsui’s future. IDEO is working with Mitsui to attract, hire, and onboard new talent with skills and backgrounds radically different from that of the parent organization.

5. Investing in culture to build purpose and values

Leaders at Europe’s largest online fashion retailer, Zalando, recognized that staying competitive would not just require new offers, but new ways of working internally. IDEO partnered with Zalando to rally teams around a renewed corporate purpose, to deliver a best-in-class fashion experience, generating a greater sense of engagement and pride in the company culture. Zalando has since become a European success story that has sustained a high level of growth. The number of active customers grew by more than 15% year over year as of August 2019.

6. Refocusing leadership from individual experts to collaborative teams

Ford has spent nearly 15 years steering its global enterprise toward design-led innovation. By integrating teams to include diverse expertise and setting up dedicated innovation labs, the company has reduced both time and money spent on new product development while becoming a leading player in future mobility solutions.

Outside of the corporate context, there is a need for learning and development programs that can teach these new leadership approaches. IDEO and Tsinghua University, an esteemed Chinese academic institution, have created a year-long program to guide and support executives who aspire to transform China’s economy. The goal is to cultivate a generation of collaborative, creative, and purpose-driven leaders, enabling the country’s transformation from “Made in China” to “Created in China.”

Special thanks to a global team of IDEO collaborators including Charles Hayes (Shanghai), Michael Hendrix (Cambridge), and Madison Mount (San Francisco).

Illustration by Tynan Collins

With so many global challenges converging at once, businesses face unprecedented tension between present demands and future goals. Smart business leaders are formulating responses that will fortify their resilience and sustain growth. But many are also losing sleep over the monumental task of navigating through ambiguity in order to successfully adapt and thrive.

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.

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.