#1 — IDEO
ideo.comBest for: Innovation consultancy, service design, healthcare, education, social impact, enterprise transformation
Services: Design research, service design, product strategy, organisational design
Notable clients: Kooth, plus healthcare, education, and public sector programmes
At a glance
- Founded
- 1991
- Location
- San Francisco, plus offices across the US, England and China
- Team size
- 500+
- Budget
- $$$$
- Hourly rate
- Not published
IDEO engagements begin upstream of the brief, mapping a problem space before anyone proposes a solution, and the output of an early phase is frequently a redefinition of the problem rather than a design for the one you described. In an enterprise context that is the whole value, because the expensive mistakes are made in the framing rather than the execution.
Research and structural thinking are the core strengths. Accessibility is harder to judge from the outside, because much of the output is service and strategy work rather than a deployed interface you can test. Over 500 people also means the principal you meet early is unlikely to be on your project throughout.
Not the right fit when your brief is clearly scoped and what you need is execution. You would pay consultancy rates for a discovery phase you have already completed internally.





