IDEO Futures

We have an action packed episode 20 (!!!!) for you this week, chock full of goodness. It’s officially summer, which means the Bits + Blocks Lab is in full swing at the Harvard Innovation Lab. We’ll introduce you to two of our student design entrepreneurs, Eric + Shuya, in a new segment we’re calling the Bits + Blocks Bite. We’ll continue to share stories over the next few months, attempting to bottle up a little of the excitement and energy happening there. If you’d like to read more about the Lab and our exploration into bitcoin + blockchain, visit our Humans + Bits + Blocks publication on Medium (https://medium.com/humanizing-bitcoin-blockchain). Our guest this week is our dear friend, IDEO alum and all-around awesome person, Colin Raney. Colin is currently the global marketing lead at Formlabs, doing groundbreaking work in the 3D printing space. Colin and Diego chat about everything from World of Warcraft to 3D printed instruments to how and why to stay inspired everyday. If you’d like to see the 3D printed film Colin mentions, you can find it here: www.chasemefilm.com. And what about VDTBOM, you ask? We’re living in a digital world and our Venture Design That Blew Our Mind reflects that this week. First up, the massive one article coding issue of Bloomberg Businessweek (http://www.bloomberg.com/company/announcements/bloomberg-businessweek-releases-code-issue-special-multi-platform-package-demystifying-code/). Joe rolls that into a conversation about this recipe list on IFTTT (https://ifttt.com/recipes/collections/161-recipes-for-your-car?utm_avenue=june). You might also notice that Diego sounds a lot like Piper in this episode. Oh, wait, that IS Piper! But don’t fret. Diego will be back in time for Episode 21. We promise. Want to keep in touch? Follow us on Twitter, @ideofutures, send us a tweet or send us an email at futures@ideo.com. You can also sign up for our King Ship newsletter at www.ideofutur.es. As always, the IDEO Futures podcast is available on iTunes. Please subscribe here: http://ideo.is/1arKzKT

We have a lot of things on our minds, but as is ever the case, the Dude abides. This week Piper (our Chief-of-Staff + Editorial Director + Marketing Lead) joined us for an edition of Venture Design that Blows Our Mind (VDTBOM) that might change the way you see things. Along the way we talked about robots and that music you can only hear in the woods. All the rest this week is questions and more questions: How about "Uber for Robots"? Why not, indeed? We're sure someone out there is already working on it. Let us know if you are. In the meantime, don't pick a fight with a robot... ask Joe why. What's the significance of the number string 123456789? It's not obvious to you, it will be after a few minutes of listening to us discuss number theory. We're also interested in another number: $123,456,789,101,112. Please call us if you know how to make that one happen. Have you ever bought anything with Bitcoin? We discuss that topic with some lack of depth, as well as where this entire Bitcoin + blockchain thing might be going. I (Diego) am not adept at catching baseballs, so that was a chance to talk about Joe's recent article on sports and block chain. WATCH OUT - DUCK! Want to keep in touch? Follow us on Twitter, @ideofutures, send us a tweet or send us an email at futures@ideo.com. We read every one of them. You can also sign up for our King Ship newsletter at www.ideofutur.es. As always, the IDEO Futures podcast is available on iTunes. if you want to forever lower the IQ of your smart phone, please subscribe here. In the parlance of our times, thank you for listening, dudes! #kingship #dontgetreadygetstarted #peace

Hard to believe it's been three weeks since we released Episode 17. Joe and I were on a long patrol North of the Wall, but we're now back safe and sound in the good company of the interwebs, our microphones, and a whole bunch of Venture Design That Blows Our Minds (VDTBOM). In the future we aim to hit a regular stride of podcast releases every two weeks. So, here's Episode 18. We talk through a wide range of topics, from the fermentation process to Charlotte's Web to Star Wars. Maybe a bit too much Star Wars. We're joined this week by Susan O'Malley. Susan is a Business Designer at IDEO, and as you might expect she combines an incisive mind for business systems with an extremely creative and well-read mindset. We hoped having Susan join us on the pod would help us achieve some new heights of VDTBOM awesomeness, so we hope you enjoy our conversation together as much as we did. We hope to have Susan back as a regular on future pods. By the way, if we were measuring the progress of this podcast in a unit of Sopranos Seasons, we would now be about a third of the way through Season Two. One of the things we've learned along the way of creating these 18 podcast episodes is the surprising amount of time editing and production takes—and we're not even shooting for a Roman Mars level of seamless audio quality here at IDEO Futures (though we want it to be great). Roughly speaking, for us every ten minutes of podcast requires about an hour of editing time. We're not bringing this up as a complaint, more to identify a big opportunity for someone to come in and make podcast a whole lot easier. We're not sure what the solution is, but if there's an entrepreneur out there working on a solution, we wish you the best of luck! Want to keep in touch? Follow us on Twitter, @ideofutures, send us a tweet or send us an email at futures@ideo.com. We read every one of them. You can also sign up for our King Ship newsletter at www.ideofutur.es. Our next one comes out this week! As always, the IDEO Futures podcast is available on iTunes. Please subscribe here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ideo-futures/id938339249?mt=2 Thank you for listening! May the Force be with you! #kingship #dontgetreadygetstarted #peace

We're back from Spring Break, feeling centered, serene, and mellow. Because what you create reflects what you feel, we hope you get a sense of that state of mind while listening to this podcast. As always, we're super grateful for the time you give us as listeners and as part of the greater IDEO Futures community. Our special guest for Episode 17 of the IDEO Futures podcast is Gabe Kleinman of Medium. Also known in the halls of Medium as "The Wolf", Gabe joins Joe for what we think is a really interesting plunge into the future of media and hacking tools for expression and design thinking. Along the way, Gabe and Joe have an in-depth discussion about holacracy. Wikipedia defines holacracy as follows: Holacracy is a social technology or system or organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested at the top of a hierarchy. Those of you who are organizational design aficionados will know that both Medium and Zappos have been at the vanguard of the holacracy movement. You can see articles about each of their experiences with holacracy here: http://firstround.com/review/How-Medium-is-building-a-new-kind-of-company-with-no-managers/ and here: http://www.fastcompany.com/3044417/zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-adopt-holacracy-or-leave. Gabe brings a unique perspective to what it means to live, work, and lead within a holacratic work environment, so we hope that you enjoy listening to his thoughts, insights, and stories about holacracy at Medium. Of course, it isn't the IDEO Futures podcast without a big helping of VDTBOM, Venture Design That Blows Our Minds! Diego returns to his emerging obsession for the overlap of innovative business models and great food with a VDTBOM inspired by MAD and Korean tacos. This one focuses on Roy Choi and Loco'l, and it's awesome. It reminded us of our Taco Truck DDP episode. Joe investigates an entrepreneur who has reinvented the coloring book, but for adults. Many thanks to the folks at MAD for the clip from Roy Choi's MAD presentation. If you're curious about our design themes for 2015, take a listen to Episode 10. And if you'd like to check out the "Humans + Bits + Blocks" series we mentioned, you can find those articles here on Medium: https://medium.com/humanizing-bitcoin-blockchain Want to keep in touch? Follow us on Twitter, @ideofutures, send us a tweet or shoot us an email at futures@ideo.com. You can sign up for our newsletter at www.ideofutur.es. As always, the IDEO Futures podcast is available on iTunes. Please subscribe here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ideo-futures-king-ship/id938339249?mt=2 Thank you for listening! Kingship! #kingship #dontgetreadygetstarted #peace

In Episode 16 we focus on our IDEO Futures design theme of "Hacking Creativity and Design". Specifically, we took Episode 16 on a mission to explore the future of a broad spectrum of digital media: the media we listen to, the media we write on (blogs and Twitter that is, not so much paper), the media we broadcast with, and even the media we print with. We're very honored to have John Lilly join us as our guest and co-host for the middle portion of Episode 6. The three of us got together to discuss the idea of using social media as a tool for creativity and design. How do we choose to express ourselves in different types of social media? Should we be consistent across everything, or tailor our content to fit? How does Twitter fit into our workflow? Is it an aid to creativity? And how about the recent emergence of broadcasting via Periscope and Meerkat? John is not only a prolific tweeter with a massive Twitter following, but is one of us, a dreamer, a builder, and an operator. He loves to ship stuff. He is a partner at Greylock Partners, where he has invested in a few companies you may have heard of, including Tumblr, Instagram, and Dropbox. Before joining Greylock he was the CEO of Mozilla and a serial entrepreneur. He is also on the faculty of the Stanford d.school, and last year he and Diego taught a class there about hacking refrigerators. We think you'll agree with us when we say that it was educational and fun to have John join us as a co-host. Back in Episode 15 Joe promised us a new "How Might We?" segment on this new-fangled thing called Meerkat, and so went there. Meerkat, Periscope — we find them both fascinating and entrancing, both as users of these apps and as business designers trying to make sense of it all. Check out the last third of the pod for that HMW. Before that we take you on a rip-roaring journey through the land of Venture Design That Blows Our Minds (VDTBOM). Three words: Wu Tang Clan. Say no more! Episode 16 is a bit of a wild and mysterious beast, as wide and free-ranging as the Western slop of the Rocky Mountains. We love the big open spaces of the internet and the beasts that roam across its packet-beflecked tubes... how else to explain the cosmic convergence of John Lilly, Wu Tang Clan, and a revolutionary new 3D printing technology, all in one place? What can we say? It's the IDEO Futures podcast. Please follow us on Twitter, @ideofutures, to send us a tweet or shoot us an email at futures@ideo.com. And as always, the IDEO Futures podcast is available on iTunes. Thank you for listening! Performance image by Napalm Filled Tires: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wu_Tang_Clan_on_Stage.jpg

This week, we’re excited to talk to Katie Kirsch and Jenna Leonardo, co-founders of Girls Driving for a Difference. Jenna, Katie and their teammates Rachel Chung and Natalya Thakur are embarking on a journey to empower middle-school girls through design thinking workshops across the country this summer. Their passion is clear and we hope you’re as inspired by their mission as we are. We love their perspective on the age-old question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Find out more about Girls Driving for a Difference on their Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1066334211/girls-driving-for-a-difference-a-design-studio-on And follow them on Twitter: @girlsdrivingfor. Diego calls in from the TED conference in Vancouver, BC and gives us an insider view into what actually happens on the ground (hint: it looks just like Richard Scarry’s Busytown). Some of his highlights included: - June Cohen: https://twitter.com/junecohen - Elora Hardy: http://ibuku.com/ - Theaster Gates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theaster_Gates - But most of all, Moon Hooch! (Watch here: https://youtu.be/wwBhxBBa7tE) You’ll also get a sneak peek of next week’s HMW, as Diego and Joe dip their toes into Meerkat. Not this meerkat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meerkat). This Meerkat! (http://meerkatapp.co/) And, of course, a fresh dose of VDTBOM (venture design that blew our mind). Like what you've heard? Not so much? Either way, please follow us on Twitter, @ideofutures, to send us a tweet or shoot us an email at futures@ideo.com. And as always, the IDEO Futures podcast is available on iTunes. Please subscribe here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ideo-futures-king-ship/id938339249?mt=2 Thank you for listening!

On Episode 14 of the IDEO Futures Podcast we are honored to welcome David Kelley as our guest. David is the founder of IDEO and also the visionary behind the creation of the groundbreaking d.school at Stanford, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. We hope you enjoy our interview with David, in which we talk about his life experiences as a serial entrepreneur. David is quite rightfully renowned for creating IDEO and the d.school, but did you know that he's also created a slew of other successful ventures? Listen to hear his insights on what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. And also what it means to pursue a full and happy life. Here's a video of David's TED Talk on Creative Confidence: https://youtu.be/16p9YRF0l-g We also look at the state of our Future Design Themes for 2015, specifically the Future of Trust and Transactions. Joe gives an update on his 10 days of swimming in the world of Bitcoin and blockchain at MIT and Harvard. Our weekly look at Venture Design that Blows our Minds (VDTBOM) focuses on Hoffice, a completely different way to think about "working from home". It's probably the most interesting approach to group synchronicity and work dynamics since Asterix in Switzerland. In terms of Hacking Creativity and Design, Hoffice is a provocation that must be taken seriously. How might we use rituals in the workplace to make us more productive, happy, and healthy? Plus, in all of your 15 minute breaks, you and your co-workers for the day can take advantage of this amazing exercise video, which is a favorite in the Hoffice community: https://youtu.be/LezARmLDu6U Like what you've heard? Not so much? Either way, please follow us on Twitter, @ideofutures, to send us a tweet or shoot us an email at futures@ideo.com. And as always, the IDEO Futures podcast is available on iTunes. Please subscribe here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ideo-futures-king-ship/id938339249?mt=2 Thank you for listening!

Here's a special edition of the IDEO Futures Podcast, our full-length interview with Chain.com founder Adam Ludwin. A few days after we taped this interview, Adam and Chain.com were mentioned in this article from the New York Times, Data Security is Becoming the Sparkle in Bitcoin (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/business/dealbook/data-security-is-becoming-the-sparkle-in-bitcoin.html?_r=0) It's a great complement to Joe's interview with Adam. Like what you've heard? Hate it? Follow us on Twitter @ideofutures or email us at futures@ideo.com. Enjoy the interview!

Episode 13. Is this our unlucky episode? Are you superstitious? Should we have just skipped to old 1-3 and gone directly to trusty Mr. 14? Certainly not! We're very proud of 13 and what it represents. So proud, in fact, that we're also releasing 13.5, too. The Future of Trust: LED torches strapped to our ever-growing foreheads, we continue to spelunk our way through the cavernous intellectual depths of Bitcoin and the block chain? Where will it all end? Well, partly in Cambridge, MA (our fair city) sometime in late July. The rest, we just don't know. Our esteemed guest interview this week (also known as the Good Part of the Podcast) is Adam Ludwin, founder of a fascinating startup called Chain.com. In this interview Joe and Adam explore the Future of Trust, and talk about ways in which the block chain might revolutionize how we think about not only transactions, but also the internet, markets, and a lot of what we take for granted as the pillars of modern life. In the interest of time, we provided the choicest morsels of their conversation here in episode 13. For the complete meal (prix fixe), please check out episode 13.5, where you can hear Adam and Joe riff about block chain until the cows come home. Truly fascinating stuff. Because this is IDEO Futures, we can't help but dish up two healthy servings of Venture Design That Blew Our Minds (VDTBOM), to wit: - Hyperloop is Real - How Noma took Tokyo Sadly, no Noma food (let alone cricket flour cookies or sour vinegar drinks) were to be had this week, but something along those lines may reappear in episode 14... As always, many thanks to Piper Loyd for producing this week's episode. Like what you've heard? Hate it? Either way, we beseech you: follow us on Twitter @ideofutures or email us at futures@ideo.com. Enjoy!

Pull your ears out and get 'em ready for 35 minutes of mind-blowing discussion of design, innovation, and making it happen. In all seriousness, we think is our best pod yet—definitely in our Top 20. At the center of Episode 12, Joe has a fantastic interview with Rob Poel, who works as the Director of New Business Innovation at Steelcase. He and Joe discuss a variety of topics, ranging from our Futures design theme of "Humanizing Smart Things" to what it's like to leading new business initiatives in an established, highly successful organization. What's it like to be an internal entrepreneur endeavoring to build things out beyond the horizon? Rob lives that, and has a lot of wisdom for anyone trying to make a dent in the universe. Rob, we can't wait to have you back on the King Ship pod! In our weekly installation of Venture Design that Blows Our Minds (VDTBOM), we discuss two excellent venture design articles: - How Twitter Found its Money Mojo - Chipotle: The Definitive Oral History Our Chipotle discussion harkens back to our Taco Truck DDP pod, one of our favorites. Plus, the merits of cricket-flour cookies, a truly excellent listener question about "linked prosperity" and the future of organizations, and a bunch of reasons why you shouldn't drink tasting vinegars while you pod. Many thanks to our producer Piper Loyd and our engineer Aaron Soloway for setting us with our new, professional-grade recording setup. While recording inside of our new Brundlefly chamber gets us all hot and sweaty, we think you'll agree this new setup is miles better acoustically than what we had in our earlier pods. Like moving from an 8 Track to satellite radio! Or from a Schwinn 10-speed to a Porsche GT3. Thanks, Piper and Aaron! King Ship!

Continuing the conversation we began last week, in Episode XI (aka "11") we dive into our Tools for Trust design theme. For this edition of the IDEO Futures podcast, Joe spent some time talking with Dr. Reid Williams about Bitcoin, Blockchain, and the future of trust and transactions. Like many of our IDEO colleagues, Reid is a creative polymath, fluent across the fields of electrical engineering, computer science, interaction design, machine learning, molecular biology, and computational biology. As a Bioscience Designer at IDEO, he brings a unique perspective to what the future of Blockchain may hold, so we hope you enjoy his conversation with Joe — the first of many. Though we're releasing this pod a week after the event, we recorded it in the pleasant afterglow of a Sunday spent watching Super Bowl XLIX. We apologize in advance for our temporary fixation on Roman numerals in Pod No. XI... whoops! There we go again! Our weekly installment of Venture Design that Blows Our Minds! (VDTBOM) is a tasty one. Joe discusses what it means to live in a design-led company, while Diego got a bit animated about Nissan's big Super Bowl commercial and what it represents. Ne paraveris, incipe! King Ship!

In Episode 10, we look ahead to some design themes we'll be exploring at IDEO Futures in 2015. We'd like to invite you to a conversation about four design themes we consider important and inspiring. We believe that these four design themes are, if not the most interesting ones out there, at least great areas to start exploring in order to learn by doing. We hope these will help guide our Startup in Residence program, help us connect to interesting entrepreneurs outside of IDEO, and guide our own human-centered design of new IDEO ventures. They're literally in their infancy, so all debate, feedback, and alternative recommendations are most welcome: Hacking Creativity + Design Thinking: for example, tools like Noam, Mural.ly and Paper by 53. Humanizing Smart Things: how do we make the Internet of Things and ambient intelligence an awesome experience? Like our latest IDEO Startup in Residence Catalia Health. Tools for Trust: Blockchain and new ways for people who don't trust each other to trust each. See our friend Joi Ito's recent essay about Bitcoin and Blockchain. BioDesign: the price of biotechnology is going down significantly. As these technologies become more accessible, how might they enable new, personalized diagnostic offerings, as well as new ways of creating products and experiences? Hampton Creek is a fabulous example of the latter. Please give Episode 10 a listen and let us know what you think! Again, none of these themes are set in stone. Send us a tweet or send us an email at futures@ideo.com. Also, tune in to find out what happened to our friend Madison's desk! Hint: be careful when you go on vacation at IDEO. And as always, the IDEO Futures podcast is available on iTunes, as well. Enjoy! Ne paraveris, incipe!

Where entrepreneurship meets design. Episode 9 is a heaping serving of VDTBOM — Venture Design That Blows our Mind! Enjoy! And Chewbacca.

In this episode of the pod, Joe and Diego return to the theme of Discovery Driven Planning (DDP) and the Taco Truck. For a refresher on DDP, please give a listen to Episode 3. Along the way, there's a veritable six-pack of venture design-related topics: - Travis Pastrana - overshooting your airport - our obsession with Boston - cricket protein - the startup story of Tesla - hair and power, power and power hair - what refried beans can teach you about innovation We hope you enjoy Episode 8!

It's our lucky pod! Number seven is here! This one has a heavy and roll + pop star theme running through it, as well as an Oprah Winfrey reference which will surprise and delight. We guarantee! We crank up this week's venture design fiesta with an update on IDEO U (our new online learning platform) and the launch of its beta. We're learning a lot, and trying to practice what we preach. Spoiler alert! Justin Bieber is following IDEO Futures on Twitter. Joe and I discuss this supernatural occurrence with IDEO's own Piper Loyd. How might you use Twitter to grow and develop your new venture? From a venture design point of view, there's a bunch to learn about how and why it came to be that this great Canadian is now our follower. Joe and I also discuss two things which recently blew our venture design minds, Better All the Time by James Surowiecki, and a new video from OK Go. Along the way we talk about incentives and organizational structures, and how those fit into the innovation equation. From that point of view, it's really interesting to figure out why things like the UNI-CUB pop out of a place like Honda and not out of other similar (at least on paper) corporate entities. ------------------------------------------------------ Music: "Jimmy H. Boogaloo" by Juanitos with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 France License Image: video still from I Won't Let You Down