Ela Ben-Ur

Ela is passionate about the capacity of human-centered design and design thinking to empower people to create their lives, organizations, offerings, community and world. She believes that innovation is fundamentally about human experiences: experiences leading people to innovate; and experiences of all those touched by an innovation, leading it to be embraced and impactful.

She consults, coaches and teaches in design research, strategy, and innovation through her independent business i2i Experience, with other senior IDEO alumni, through organizations including Experience Point (IDEO's workshop partner), and at academic institutions including Olin College.

Ela steeped deeply in the people and process of design in thirteen years at IDEO. At the time of her departure in October 2012, Ela was a Content Guide coaching teams and clients in Design Research and Strategy.

Throughout her IDEO time she worked to share design thinking with professionals and young people by leading collaborative "transformation" projects, workshops, and courses internally at IDEO as well as with organizations including MIT/Sloan, Olin, Harvard, the Eileen Fisher Leadership Institute, and the International Development Design Summit. She was chosen to help share IDEO process and culture in IDEO's Shanghai studio as it was getting established.

With depth in both design research and engineering, Ela led projects at IDEO through front-end user research, opportunity synthesis, concept development, and prototyping. Her work spanned products, services, packaging, and merchandising including the consumer health, financial, telecommunication, consumer electronics, pet, and food & beverage industries. Ela has worked in both developed and developing markets, and with both for-profit and non-profit organizations.

Whenever possible her work has focused on positive change, including work around education, elderly independence, diet and diabetes for clients like Beaver Country Day School, Eli Lilly, PepsiCo, GSK and GM.