IDEO Reviews

Pros

Three things I think attract and keep people at IDEO.
1) Nature of the work. By far the most interesting and exciting buffet of consulting work you can find. If you contrast to other consultancy, corporate, or even startup jobs where ~80% of your time goes to planning, aligning, and doing ground work, and only ~20% of the time you get to do cool work, at IDEO 100% of your time goes to exciting work, either w clients or internally. Because clients largely come to IDEO when they are most ready to shake things up, you get to focus 100% on great content. Projects are among the most difficult creative challenges you’ll find. Also worth noting that IDEO is as hands-on as innovation consulting gets.
2) People and culture. The community is built on trust, humility, and creative smarts. From recruiting and career development, to activities and initiatives, it feels like IDEO tries to take the most human-centered and creative road, hence everything looks and feels different from any other job I’ve had. A lot more organic. The people shape your experience, and the more open you are to being exposed and collaborate with people from all fields, the more at home you will feel at IDEO.
3) Career platform. There’s really no common path at IDEO. While some may choose to focus on international experiences, or on certain portfolio vertical, others may focus on more asymmetric paths eg. convergence of tech R&D + design, data + design, inclusive design, etc. The world is your canvas here. The paths in and out of IDEO are also interesting, many move out to gain different experiences and then rejoin, others decide to incubate a new venture inside IDEO, and the network seems very close and fluid. Ultimately people at IDEO are encouraged to pursue their passions, whether inside or outside IDEO. What else can you ask for?

Advice to Management

Incredible ship you’ve built! Continue to experiment and try new things, timing, people, and luck may get you different results. Love the opportunity to further apply design to all parts of the firm, and let it become a living case of our own methods and practices.

Pros

IDEO is a wildly creative and optimistic company with a fun, supportive, and open-minded culture. People are incredibly talented and passionate about what they do. You'll always be learning about new projects your colleagues are (somehow!) finding the time to take on—fashion design, non-profit work, Burning Man installations, and so on.

Work/life balance is unbeatable. Nearly unlimited vacation days, lots of flexibility, free coffee and espresso machine, and happy hours where a makeshift bar gets rolled out into the studio for people to make cocktails and play music.

People are happy, curious, and genuinely excited about what they do.

Pros

Warm, inspiring, supportive, driven. A truly special and rare environment that makes play and personal development a top priority.

Advice to Management

Do everything you can to support internal diversity and inclusion efforts that are currently underway.

Pros

Extremely talented colleagues that help you grow professionally

Advice to Management

Diversify your business model quickly before market prices for design consultants drop below the level needed to support your business -- before you're forced to sell another limb to the Kye Collective. Good luck!

Pros

An amazing, fast paced and innovative culture that will accelerate learning and skill development in the world of design. You're surrounded by the best talent out there and equipped to tackle a wide range of challenges.

Advice to Management

Make sure you are letting people flourish in the things they are good at before moving them into new growth areas where they may struggle to be successful.

Pros

Great people. Great Resource. Can meet the best talents in the industry

Advice to Management

Great for intern.

Pros

IDEO is a place that can afford you a lot of autonomy in how you want to grow and what you want to do. That being said, it's still a consultancy and is in service of others to drive their ambition. The employee experience can feel like you're thrown in the deep end of a pool, and then realize you're not even in a pool at all. But if you're able to have an open mindset, figure out what tools and levers to pull, understand that collaboration with a POV gets you buy-in, it can be a really rewarding place where you can really push an organization, design, and transformation in many ways.

The people that work here are generally pretty amazing coworkers that you'll be hard pressed to let go of. Build as much community as you can here, and you never know if you might work with another IDEOer again in a future state.

Advice to Management

Like many others have said, being transparent helps a lot to understand the fact that we're all human. If full transparency isn't available, then communicate clearly at different levels of management and influence so that everyone gets aligned more quickly, instead of constant backchanneling.

Teach leadership skills, and practice them at the senior levels.

Realize the burden of aspirational leaders who have to demonstrate success on so many levels in order to seek the recognition and rewards of a Director title.

Re-think your comp structure in order to stay competitive for the best and brightest talent.

Pros

Working with incredible people on innovative projects

Pros

– The people you start with may very well become life-long friends. IDEO does an amazing job at recruiting interesting, thoughtful, and curious people all of whom have unique and interesting backgrounds.
– The offices are all great and inspiring environments to be a part of.
– IDEO as a whole has an inspiring network of connections, which are only an arms-length away

Advice to Management

– Be more transparent
– Make a concerted effort to support people at the "Team" level grow
– Teach IDEO leaders (even partners) how to lift the little guys up and create a more nurturing culture (Notably, Tim Brown does do a good job of that–it's the partners below him that are usually egomaniacs)
– Give more opportunities to others and don't take all the credit for the work a a team of people supported.

Pros

Great place to work, learn and grow.