Master Kong (known internationally as Tingyi Holding Corporation) is number one in market share in both instant noodles and ready-to-drink teas, with over $10 billion USD in annual revenue. While China has a rich tea culture, most sugar-free bottled tea on store shelves markets itself as “healthy” and “tasty.” Wanting to set itself apart from the competition by uncovering new consumer needs, Master Kong reached out to IDEO. Together, Master Kong and IDEO immersed themselves in modern Chinese tea culture and built a new, premium, sugar-free bottled tea brand that resonates deeply with contemporary tea drinkers. ‍

During research, the combined IDEO/Master Kong team took a two-pronged approach to uncovering new opportunities: industry exploration and consumer research. The team visited various tea-related businesses, from traditional tea houses to modern beverage shops, as well as “third place” tea spaces outside of home or work. They also conducted in-depth, in-home interviews with consumers with various levels of interest in tea, delving deeply into their daily routines to better understand their lifestyles and any emotional or functional needs related to tea.

The team discovered that the essence of Chinese tea culture resonated with contemporary consumers’ longing for authenticity, simplicity, and physical rejuvenation in their fast-paced lives. This insight presented a unique opportunity for Master Kong. Instead of positioning its new sugar-free tea brand as merely a “healthy alternative” to other beverages,  it could spark a meaningful connection to tea culture, seamlessly integrating into various moments of modern life.  

Armed with this insight, IDEO designers and dozens of Master Kong beverage team members participated in a series of immersive, hands-on tea innovation workshops. Teams of experts from R&D, marketing, supply chain, and other company departments temporarily set aside their job titles to explore, iterate, and refine dozens of new tea concepts that were commercially viable, feasible for mass production, and aligned with consumer needs. The cross-departmental collaboration allowed for a broad mix of perspectives, experiences, and expertise, enriching the innovation process.

The co-creation sessions led to a new sugar-free tea product and flagship brand called Cha De Chuan Ren (“Descendants of the Tea”), which celebrates fine, origin-sourced tea and the passion and dedication of tea farmers. The novel concept resonated strongly with consumers and was validated during subsequent rounds of quantitative market testing, ensuring its relevance and market potential.

Cha De Chuan Ren launched with two signature flavors: Tieguanyin (green tea) from Fujian and Pu’er (black tea) from Yunnan. The unique mottled bottle design pays tribute to traditional handcrafted glass containers and the handiwork of tea farmers. The tactile paper label, which features Jia Ma-inspired woodblock illustrations of local tea fields and tea farmers’ hands, nods to the artisanal craft of tea making and the source of the tea inside.

“Descendants of the Tea” debuted on Tmall in April 2024. It claimed the top spot on the commerce site’s Tea Beverage V-List in August and September. Offline, it launched in FamilyMart convenience stores in May and has since expanded nationwide. The new brand received a 2024 Red Dot Award for “Brands & Communication Design.”

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“We are honored to collaborate with IDEO, a global leader in innovation, as our strategic partner. ‘Descendants of the Tea’ is not just an exceptional product but also a tribute to the rich heritage of tea culture. Only by continuously integrating culinary traditions with innovation can we sustainably meet consumers’ true needs.”

Richard Chen
‍CEO, Master Kong (Tingyi Holding Corporation)

“Innovation is incredibly fragile. If even one leader is unsupportive or hesitant, the culture of innovation can collapse. I always encourage my team to take risks, as long as they’re not high stakes. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? At the very least, we’ll have a fair chance at creating something new.”

Wei Hong-Chen
‍Chairman of Master Kong Beverage Holdings Co., Ltd.

Sugary bottled teas were once very popular in China. Today, rising consumer demand for healthier beverage options has expanded the market for sugar-free tea.

#1

on Tmall’s Tea Beverage V-List, August- September 2024

2024 Red Dot Award Winner

‍for Brands & Communication Design

Twenty years ago, carrying a single-use plastic water bottle was a status symbol—no more. Growing awareness of the negative environmental impact of plastic pollution, combined with the adoption of healthier lifestyles and social media influencer trends, has made reusable water bottles “it” accessories for on-the-go consumers. While brands such as Stanley, Yeti, S’well, and Hydro Flask own the under-$100 market, fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, and Prada have etched out a new and growing market for high-end bottles that appeal to discerning, trend-conscious young people looking to perfect their hydration habits.

Spotting an opportunity to disrupt the predominantly utilitarian water bottle market, Steinmann partnered closely with IDEO, tasking the team with developing an industrial design that perfected the tactile and sensory user experience, from drinking and carrying to disassembling and cleaning thoroughly. The collaboration deepened over time, with Steinmann and IDEO working together to develop the high-level engineering concept, the OKAPA logo mark, and packaging ideas.

Key user-centered features of the OKAPA bottle include a medical-grade German borosilicate glass interior for superior taste of hot or cold beverages with no lingering odors; a Swiss-engineered thermoplastic lockable and leak-proof tilt cap that can be easily operated with one hand when driving or doing other activities; and an ergonomically shaped mouthpiece for a pleasurable drinking experience. Precision-engineered for maximum longevity, the inner glass bottle is suspended via a shock-absorbing system inside a bead-blasted, extruded, and anodized aluminum outer shell. Eight modular parts come apart easily for either a quick or thorough cleaning.

At its core, the OKAPA bottle elevates an everyday ritual through meticulous design and uncompromising engineering. Launched in January 2025, the new bottles are available in eight contemporary colorways curated by renowned color and materials specialist Beatrice Santiccioli (BSD), including Misti Pinku, Goldie Samba, and Fetishe Noir, among others.

In the US, the reusable water bottle market is estimated to increase from $10.2B in 2024 to $14.1B by 2031, with 69 percent of Gen Zers owning at least one. Customization trends, such as personalized design and branding, are anticipated to boost the market, ripe territory for disruptive startups such as OKAPA. (Persistence Market Research)

Once a practical accessory for hikers and outdoor enthusiasts, reusable water bottles have gone mainstream. Yet none check all the boxes in terms of purity of taste, hygiene, durability, functionality, and beauty.

8

modular pieces ensure hygienic cleaning is quick and easy

100%

recyclable materials in each bottle

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s mission is to interpret and conserve the earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science. Over its 110-plus-year history, its offerings grew to include everything from a quarterly magazine, popular websites and apps with millions of users (Merlin, eBird), partnerships with outside organizations, and the world’s largest database of photographs and audio recordings of birds. This abundance is a testament to the passionate enthusiasm of its employees. Still, it confused potential members and led to siloed internal efforts, preventing the Lab from advancing its urgent collective vision. “Birds and biodiversity are in peril,” said Executive Director Dr. Ian Owens. “We must take radical action with a coherent vision, united voice, and purpose.”

IDEO began by helping the Lab better define its audience. While primarily composed of people passionate about birds, IDEO discovered its larger audience was nature lovers interested in biodiversity, bioacoustics, conservation, and science. From there, IDEO created a brand strategy and architecture focused on helping the Lab streamline its efforts under the “One Lab” brand. The brand architecture visually articulated the relationship between Cornell University, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Lab’s many products and offerings. IDEO designed a comprehensive brand identity system to work across mediums, including a simplified logo system, new colors, type, graphic language, voice and tone, and key messaging.

When the Lab’s design team began implementing the new branding elements across its website and many digital products, it became clear that the organization also needed IDEO’s help in creating tools to facilitate cross-department collaboration. To better understand the day-to-day nuances of the organization, IDEO designers worked out of the Lab, co-creating a brand activation playbook. The playbook, launched in 2023, contains recommendations for new cross-functional working groups (partnerships, visual identity, and brand voice), as well as exercises and interactive tools designed to build trusting relationships, gain alignment, foster collaboration, and manage change at scale.

Post-collaboration, the Lab has applied the new brand across its website, apps including Merlin and eBird, Living Bird magazine, email and newsletter templates, and its line of merchandise. A new internal brand guidelines site has become central to employee onboarding, while new working groups are helping to bring down barriers between teams and spur collective action. Like a flock of birds, the Lab now sings one collective song.

The Cornell Lab’s 300+ scientists, professors, staff, and students were passionately dedicated to their individual team’s unique conservation projects, but segmented internal systems could stymie their collective impact.

1 brand

unifying 300+ employees and 8 departments

Founded in 2008, Ascend Public Charter Network prides itself on providing “rich, joyful learning experiences that unlock lives of boundless choice” for its students, 93 percent of whom identify as Black or Latinx. The organization is also proud of being Black-led: 78 percent of staff and 80 percent of the executive team are people of color. Using co-design and joy, IDEO held a mirror up to Ascend’s core optimistic spirit during a moment of anxiety and change, helping its new CEO, staff, students, and parents reflect a dynamic, collectively imagined vision.

While the project’s goal was serious, the combined team centered the collaboration on bringing back fun, beauty, and imagination to those who could use it most: educators. Through engaging interactive activities, the IDEO team invited principals, PTA members, student council representatives, and board members to join “organizationally sanctioned play” moments like creating collaged vision boards and writing poems about Ascend’s impact. These interventions helped burned-out educators escape the day-to-day tasks of running schools and dream expansively about Ascend’s future. The team also solicited written, visual, and audio stories, asking community members to describe Ascend at its very best.

Stitching together submissions from 551 students, 75 parents, and 16 staff members, the co-design sessions resulted in a powerful new purpose, mission, and values, as well as a vibrant visual language and activation tools to bring Ascend’s vision of a “dope,” “unapologetically Brooklyn” charter network to life. The joyful, eye-catching visuals are embedded throughout its 17 Brooklyn schools, staff recruiting and training materials, and digital presence.

Shortly after the collaboration with IDEO, Ascend received an unsolicited  $11 million donation from MacKenzie Scott's foundation, Yield Giving, the most significant gift the then-14-year-old institution had ever received. The pivotal funding will allow the organization, with its bold new “grown-up” vision, to focus on becoming the school of choice in Brooklyn by 2027.

In the summer of 2021, one in four K-12 teachers was ready to quit. Pandemic stressors and increased curriculum scrutiny were to blame, according to a 2021 Rand Survey.

In 2022, 44% of K-12 workers reported burnout, the most of any US professions the time, according to a Gallup Poll.

Pandemic exhaustion and leadership turnover left Ascend’s new CEO eager to align staff around an exciting new vision.

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$11M grant

Ascend received an $11M grant from the MacKenzie Scott Foundation a few months after the collaboration

1 collective vision

to guide a network of 17 schools

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It turns out there’s a strong correlation between social media use and nap entrapment. Personally, I found my Instagram use skyrocketed during the first four months of my then-newborn’s life. And during the entrapment days, two Instagram accounts really stood out from the rest. The first was the actor/rapper Will Smith’s energetic, curious, family-friendly account. His posts are a mix of throwback photos featuring Jeff Goldblum, comparisons of his baby pictures to Rhianna, and vintage videos of wife Jada mouthing off to Eazy-E about feminism.

The second belonged to the musician and artist Patti Smith. Her account is poetic, reflective, and sincere. Its posts range from a meditation on the morning light playing upon her “thinking chair,” to fanning out hard over Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Perhaps it was the sleep deprivation. Or maybe it was a hankering to fit some synthesis—the IDEO designer's process of creating a cohesive narrative from a sea of nuanced human stories—into my maternity leave. But I grew intrigued by their common last name.

Thus came constraint number two: Could one create a captive, compelling Insta feed, one that guides the viewer on an engaging, winding, whimsical journey, featuring only Smiths? What story would come out of weaving multiple online personalities together? It was synthesis, but with other people’s lives.

To make things really interesting, I added two more Smith feeds. Kevin, one of the masterminds behind films like Clerks and Dogma, balances goofball humor with poignant reflections on life and health. Singer Sam, the fourth and final Smith, is a modern day crooner who keeps his posts pithy and punchy.

Together, the four Smith feeds created balance in a random sort of harmony. Squinting from just the right angle, I was surprised to find common threads in their posts. Stills from Sam’s iconographic performance stages flowed seamlessly into Patti’s gently-lit trip to La Recoleta cemetery. Kevin’s collection of Weebles set up Sam’s visit to a trinket-ridden open air market, before handing off to Will’s portrait of an eclectic man’s fashion in Tybee Island, GA.

With nothing more than a ubiquitous last name and fame connecting these four, gestural themes emerged. Parenthood, childhood, dental hygiene, activism, Rhianna.

These are more than Smith themes. These are modern human themes. But Instagram’s real-time format muddied this story. I wondered if there was a way to create a thematic flow—one long, chaptered story—rather than a chronological one. The solution lied in a third, and final, constraint: a fixed feed. One in service of a single story in time, rather than a constantly evolving one.

And so, Selected_Smiths was born. A static Instagram narrative, comprised of snaps from all four instagram feeds. The final edit was made on July 22, 2018. 59 posts total, culled from the original Smiths’ feeds. Best viewed from bottom to top and with 30 minutes to spare, so as to read all comments and hashtags.

What started as a nap-trapped experiment turned into a lesson on the power of constraint. Selected_Smiths was born of three constraints: one situational, one coincidental, and one editorial. If Selected_Smiths is the steel ball, then these constraints were the bumpers in the pinball machine of my mind. Launched with gusto, frantically bouncing past flashing lights and through sound fields, the bumpers present a barrier, ricocheting the ball to loss or victory. Constraint demands perseverance, triggers ingenuity, and every once in awhile helps you execute on a weird idea.

Like creating one story with four people who share the same last name. Funny, serious, flip, human—the internet really does it all.

Nap-trapped (noun): When an infant falls asleep on a person in such a way that they are rendered immobile. As in: On maternity leave, I often found myself nap-trapped in a position that demanded complete stillness of all extremities… apart from my right arm. This constraint inspired a somewhat esoteric design research experiment that I took on—sometimes literally—with one hand tied behind my back.

This lack of contextual thinking and foresight is why so many innovation investments fail—it’s not for lack of ingenuity, but because companies build innovation teams, then neglect to design a complete ecosystem to take promising ideas forward.

Here are the three most common traps that cause even the smartest business leaders to throw their innovation money away:

1. The Outcome Trap — If you don’t define a clear vision for how innovation is supposed to contribute to your company’s growth, don’t be surprised when innovation teams fail to make a contribution.

2. The Incentive Trap — No one wants to play Russian roulette with their career. If you don’t incentivize business units to make the right mix of bets, they’ll have no reason to invest in anything other than short term sure things.

3. The Metrics Trap — Success isn’t subjective. If you don’t create innovation metrics that the rest of the organization can understand, the rest of the business may view innovation as frivolous.

The Outcome Trap

About 10 years ago, a parcel courier (one of those companies that brings cardboard boxes to your door) built an innovation unit to help power their future. Senior executives had held inspiring conversations and decided that “innovation” would build the future of their company, so they built a new team and recruited a former startup guy to run it. Everyone had high hopes for the team’s success.

What happened next? The startup guy built them a startup. The team found some cool technology and a strong customer need. They used that to build, launch, and sell a profitable new solution to a small but growing pool of customers.

Was it a success? Well, only to some stakeholders. When the team began to share their results, they faced surprisingly hostile reception: One senior executive wanted to know when the innovation division was going to yield strategic insights for the core company. Another asked when it would start developing new technologies for the core business. A third wondered when it would train her teams in innovation. Despite some wins in the market, few stakeholders were happy with the results. Within 18 months of their launch, they were disbanded.

This company fell into a surprisingly common trap: Everyone thought that “innovation” was important, but nobody ever talked about why they wanted it. It was like the execs had asked a waiter for ice cream and then got upset when their server showed up with Rum Raisin.

So, how can you avoid the Outcome Trap?

Work backwards. First, define why innovation is important and why now. Once you define the outcomes needed from innovation, you can craft a portfolio of projects designed to meet those goals. That portfolio then suggests the talent, skills, and even the number of people or teams you’ll need to drive innovation. When we break them down, successful innovation portfolios consist of a mix of four activities.

In the graphic below, we’ve plotted businesses and teams based on our evaluation of their primary objective (even though many of these teams invest in more than one quadrant).

As shown in the above graphic, Discover teams focus on uncovering new insights or opportunities that could be developed into new businesses or offers. This long-term innovation work includes the efforts of R&D labs focused on emerging technology. Those in the Invest quadrant develop, launch, or acquire new businesses in the short term. This includes the work of M&A teams, accelerators, incubators, and corporate venture capital. Define teams initiate tangible strategic visions for how existing business units may need to evolve to succeed in the future, and reveal opportunities for how current offers can adapt to changing customer demands or new technologies. And lastly, Evolve teams differ in that they partner with existing business units to adapt to a changing environment—develop new offers, approaches, and skills to improve the business in the near- to mid-term. This includes the services offered by SWAT teams, internal agencies, and coaches.

By intentionally balancing the portfolio—say, by focusing sharply on incubating new digital ventures and adapting current offers—the innovation team can define their projects, align their stakeholders, and allocate their staff.

The above graphic highlights the shape of a lab portfolio at a successful retail conglomerate—80% of their efforts are focused on either evolving the current subsidiaries or helping those subsidiaries invest in new digital ventures. The remaining 20% of their effort goes into defining future strategy and discovering new tech to harness.

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To avoid this trap, ask yourself: Why innovation, and why now? What does success look like? What’s the future vision for our company, and how should innovation contribute to that? Where are we facing the biggest market threats—in the short term or the long term? Will innovation provide services to core business units or will it build new subsidiaries? Your innovation portfolio and your teams will naturally evolve over time, but you can control that evolution by intentionally defining the purpose of the team and the outcomes that they need to deliver.

The Incentive Trap

Once you’ve defined the ideal innovation portfolio, you need to find the right sponsors willing to make the right bets on the right projects. The best strategy is doomed if no one has any incentive to make good bets. That’s the Incentive Trap.

Several years ago, a global home appliances company created a Lifestyle Research Lab to design new products that address consumers’ changing attitudes and behaviors. In isolation, the team conducted their own research and used it to develop new ideas that could transform their white goods businesses—creating radically new dishwashers, refrigerators, or washing machines. When they hit on a juicy idea, they would then try to sell it to a business unit for development.

Now, imagine yourself leading one of those businesses: One day, out of the blue, someone you’ve never met pitches you on a new product. Based on some research you’ve never seen and some shiny concept sketches, this team insists that you should change up your five-year product development roadmap. You didn’t ask for this idea, you didn’t pay for this work, and their analysis doesn’t match up with the numbers that you normally track. Your budget, your people, and your manufacturing are already committed. Even if you love their idea, you’d need to do a lot of heavy lifting to justify changing your plans. Few executives at the appliance company were willing to do that work.

Looking at the innovation portfolio and the purpose that’s been defined, what kind of bets should business units to make?

In a completely rational world, a decision between investing on a sure thing or a smart bet should be a toss up. However, to many executives, investing in riskier projects can feel like career Russian roulette. In your own company, how much of a balance do you have between sure things and smart bets?

To create a more balanced mix of bets, many companies fund innovation from some central, corporate pool. This promotes riskier bets—it’s always easier to gamble someone else’s money. But there’s a catch: when the business units pay too little for innovation, they don’t value the work. Business leaders can see this kind of innovation as a sideshow. When the going gets tough, and those business leaders need to improve their metrics, they will kill any innovation projects that aren’t yet proven.

So, what happens when a business unit pays the tab? Although leaders are more invested in the outcomes (literally and figuratively), their demand for innovation is far lower. When betting their own money, most people prefer sure things—even when the expected returns are the same, they choose an option that’s easier to predict. So, how do you promote riskier bets? With corporate funds. We often see these corporate subsidies falling into three tiers. This model isn’t just true for how business units spend their money, it’s also true for how they assign their best people. They aren’t likely to put their best people on their riskiest projects.

The above graphic illustrates that as you define your portfolio, you’ll also need to define a funding mix for the work that incentivizes the right bets. The incentives tend to fall into three tiers: Tier 1 investments feel more like sure things; tier 2 investments feel a little riskier, but still appealing; tier 3 investments feel too risky to make without senior executive support.

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To avoid this trap, ask yourself: Looking at your ideal portfolio, what is a healthy mix between sure things and smart bets? How adventurous are your business units, and how much do you need to incentivize their investments? The more corporate pays, the more risk business units will take on.

The Metrics Trap

Once you make your bets, how do you know if they’re paying off? If innovation isn’t seen to create measurable value, it’s worthless. That’s the Metrics Trap.

One sneaky reason that so many companies throw away good money on bad innovation efforts is that innovation may take years to show impact on metrics that the business units typically track, like revenue, profit, lifetime value, or customer satisfaction. But that doesn’t mean that innovation teams can’t show value in the short term. By setting simple baselines, teams can measure progress over time, showing that their work improves outcomes, drives efficiency, or changes behavior. These progress measures demonstrate indisputable value, and can often satisfy skeptical stakeholders in the short term—until innovation’s portfolio of work hits the market and begins to generate real growth.

To properly measure both the productivity of individual projects and the performance of the overall investment strategy, many innovation units build a basket of metrics that they can track in various timescales, as captured in the diagram above.

One global financial services company has taken some smart steps to avoid the Metrics Trap. They built a Fintech Incubator to develop new digital offers on behalf of the bank’s business units. Before the Incubator will take on a project, a sponsoring business unit must make a business case for the product, put up a majority of the development costs, and define a series of success criteria for further investment. This aligns the innovation process with the business unit’s needs. On top of those project metrics, the incubator’s leaders also track a set of progress metrics across all of their work. These measures demonstrate how, over time, the incubator is moving down the cost curve. They’ve used progress measures as an argument for how the core business should rethink the way that they build and test new concepts.

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To avoid this trap, ask yourself: Once you make your bets, what metrics will you use to calculate whether they’re paying off? What does your business value? What will you measure in various timescales to demonstrate the success of your projects, your progress, and your portfolio?

These aren’t the only innovation traps, but they are the deadliest. Innovation should not be a game of Russian roulette. By carefully considering and designing solutions to each trap, you can get that much closer to crafting an investment portfolio and innovation ecosystem that can nurture the future of your company.

Visuals by Gracia Lam.

With threats looming from every direction, it can be tempting to make precautionary investments in innovation. All too often, though, companies bet on new projects without thinking through how they will integrate with current offers and teams. That's like running a water main up to your house, then not connecting it to your plumbing. Yes, you’ll have water, but you won’t be able to channel it toward anything useful.

The office is an important place, and it’s one we believe should be designed with care. Culture matters—that means everything from the physical space to the values a company shares with new hires on their very first day.

Part of workplace culture is fun watercooler talk and good snacks, but it’s much more than that too. Solid culture lays the groundwork for the lightbulb moments that happen when people feel truly comfortable at work.

Good news: You don’t have to be an office manager to concern yourself with company culture. If you’re interested in building a positive, supportive office experience, check out the advice below from the Octopus archives.

1. When you’re curious about the folks that design the place where you work

How does a company agree on its values? What do truly authentic rituals look like? And how does that translate to business value? Follow one of IDEO New York’s organizational designers through a day to see what org design looks like in practice. (For more on what org designers do, read another piece from Mollie and her colleague, Mat Chow.)

READ: What Org Design Actually Looks Like

2. When you’re trying to convince your colleagues or your boss that culture matters

IDEO Chicago’s Annette Ferrera acknowledges that in some conversations, “culture” can mean “cool perks.” But culture is so much more than that: “It’s about creating an environment that makes it possible for people to work together to come up with innovative products and ideas—the same products and ideas that drive revenue.” Annette’s tips are both a blueprint for enacting your own cultural change and proof that a solid company culture can boost the bottom line.

READ: Why Workplace Culture Matters (And How to Build a Good One)

3. When you’re not quite ready to tackle that big project, but you want to make a small change

Designer, author, and IDEO alum Ingrid Fetell Lee runs Aesthetics of Joy, a blog about discovering joy in everyday life. If you’re not ready to tackle culture at an organizational level, use these bite-sized tips—like adding a plant to your desk—to create more joyful moments throughout the workplace.

READ: 6 Ways to Hack Your Workspace and Find More Joy at Work

4. When you’re not sure how you’re “supposed to feel” at the office

American work culture tells us we shouldn’t feel, fail, or fuss in our place of business, but org designer Mollie West Duffy doesn’t agree—in fact, there’s evidence that a little emotion at work can actually help us connect with our colleagues and feel more confident in our work. Learn more about “emotional culture” (and the book Mollie co-wrote on the subject) in this Q&A.

READ: Turns Out Emotions Do Belong in the Workplace—Here’s Why

According to a survey, the average person spends 13 years and 2 months—that’s 4,821 days—of his or her life at work. For comparison, the survey says we spend 1,583 days eating and 1,146 days on vacation. The only place we spend more time than the office? Our beds (12,045 days, or 33-plus years—thank goodness).

At these conferences, attendees are split up into group sessions: some big, some small, some on specific topics, and some designed to create new connections. Though grouping folks together might seem like a straightforward task, there is actually a dizzying number of ways to put people together—for one recent conference, the number in the neighborhood of 14 duodecillion possible combinations. That’s 1.4 x 10 to the 40th, which is close to the number you would get if you were to multiply the number of grains of sand on Earth by the number of stars in the universe.

Fortunately, for data scientists, sifting through haystacks to find needles is our bread and butter. We looked at this dataset with one goal: to create groups of individuals that foster conversations and catalyze new cross-disciplinary research. Easy, right?

We built an optimization algorithm that scores combinations of people based on diversity, trying to create well-mixed groups. To make sure we had truly excellent combinations, we needed to run the algorithm more than 1,000 times, after which a human had to examine the top scoring combinations. A human ultimately judging the top few options is crucial to making sure we incorporate nuances that the algorithm does not get. But at more than four minutes per algorithm run, it took an average of three days to get results. Three days! Three days between prototypes wasn’t going to cut it.

To solve our time problem, we turned to serverless computing. While we typically use it to deploy microservices, we couldn’t resist using it to massively scale our computational ability on the cheap. After all, we love hacking and repurposing things for atypical use cases, and digital tools are no different.

In a way, putting these groups together is like making chili—there are many different ways to make it, and all are valid (and many are tasty!). But to have a truly great chili, it’s essential that the ingredients are balanced and cooked properly to produce a dish that is elevated beyond the sum of its parts.

Think of each set of groups produced by the algorithm as a chili recipe. In the spirit of experimentation, you start putting together recipes that vary randomly in terms of ingredient amounts and cooking procedure. You’ve written down 1,000 recipes, and you’re going to cook and score them to find your ideal chili.

After a day of chopping, sautéing simmering, and tasting, you’ve only made 10 batches of chili. That's great, but in the grand scheme of things, that's nothing. So you think of ways you could cook and test your recipes more quickly. The most basic way is to make your cooking process (or code for your algorithm) more efficient: Chop faster and keep ingredients nearby. But this yields only a marginal gain. You would only crank out one or two more batches a day.

To really speed things up, you’re going to need some help. You could rent space in an industrial kitchen and hire chefs (servers on the cloud) who take a recipe, follow it exactly, and deliver the finished product to you. The downside: It takes a non-trivial amount of time and money to recruit and train chefs (much like setting up servers with the algorithm code).

But what if you had an army of 100 food trucks that are fully stocked, equipped, and happy to help you? That’s the equivalent of our serverless computing service. Serverless computing allows us to simply upload and then execute our algorithm code on cloud servers, taking away the hassle of setting up machines and allowing us to scale to hundreds or thousands of simultaneous runs effortlessly.

By using serverless tech, analyzing Scialog results goes from a process that runs in about three days to one that takes less than 10 minutes. With pricing schemes that only charge for the time the servers are being used, we can complete our thousand runs for less than $5.

This is great news, because it allows us to prototype our algorithms at scale much faster. What if, after looking at the results, we realize our scoring is missing a specific kind of input, like the balance of cat people vs. dog people? Previously that would necessitate another three-day wait for results. Now, we can tweak our algorithm, upload the new code, grab a cup of coffee (or chili), and come back to analyze the results.

We love the creative freedom that serverless computing enables (the ability to iterate on prototypes), and especially being able to get tons of computing power on demand—and cheaply.

If you’re interested in doing something similar, we’ve had great experiences using Zappa to deploy to AWS Lambda, but you can do the same kinds of things with other serverless services like Google Cloud Functions and Microsoft Azure Functions.

Now go forth and prototype at scale. And if you get hungry, you know what to do.

For almost 10 years, the Research Corporation for Science Advancement—or RSCA—has tapped IDEO for a little data science help. It's a good match, because RCSA shares our enthusiasm for helping people meet and collaborate. Every spring and fall, they organize conferences called Scialogs that bring together scientists of different disciplines to converse on important topics and inspire further collaboration through grants.

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.