If history has taught us anything, it’s that wars aren’t won with weapons alone. It’s only in how you use them that the scales are tipped.

And in the world of business, those weapons are innovation and the applications of new technologies.

As part of our new podcast series, The Studio, we spoke with IDEO Futures’ Iain Roberts about blockchain, the future of design thinking, and bringing design and academia together. Listen to the full episode here:

Think of how Blockbuster, once a staple of neighbourhood street corners, fell victim to Netflix’s adoption of streaming technologies and has all but disappeared. Or how quickly Nokia’s dominance of the mobile phone industry plummeted after Apple and Samsung released the world’s first smartphones.

Time and time again, it’s not just knowing about a new technology that shapes the future, but knowing how to best empower users and customers with that technology.

“We had moments in the past year and a half when we could have done some things differently had we known that the industry was changing so rapidly.” — Stephen Elop, CEO, Nokia

It’s the job of places like IDEO — one of the world’s largest design and innovation consulting firms — to see ahead. To know what’s around the bend and switch gears before the hill comes into view.

And they know this because they lived it.

Back in 2001, they faced a dare-to-be-great moment as the original Internet 1.0 bubble was bursting and companies around the world were searching for new ways to make their mark through leveraging new technologies.

Iain Roberts — credit: IDEO

“I joined back in 2001 and IDEO was in the midst of a reinvention. We had built our brand over the past maybe 5 or 6 years on working at the intersection of new technologies: hardware technologies, Internet technologies. And so when 2001 happened, we rapidly had to reinvent what we were doing as an organization,” explains Iain Roberts, a partner at IDEO involved in IDEO Futures, who cut his design teeth in the UK working with James Dyson building tangible products such as vacuums and washing machines.

“So imagine a company back then that was still referred to as ‘IDEO Product Development’ known for making physical things and starting to connect them to the Internet 1.0 era.”

In the face of change, however, one lesson — one lens of viewing the world — has helped IDEO maintain their course: Always start with people.

This means using an anthropological and ethnographic perspective and being inspired by what people actually want or find usable and desirable.

Only then will new technologies move from being simple tools to integrated and integral parts of our lives.

And while this human-centric design process has been shaped since the company’s start in 1991, the breadth with which they’re applying these ideas has changed drastically.

Roberts’ lessons on the future of design

Inside IDEO you’ll find a group of designers and thinkers focused on what the future holds. They call it IDEO Futures, and it’s a lean group of people led by IDEO partner Diego Rodriguez that focuses on looking forward, connecting the dots, and seeing what the future of design and technology hold. And then building it.

Roberts, who is deeply involved in Futures, explains their approach to design as ‘a way to shape how humans live and interact at a core level’.

A lofty statement, but one that’s being put into practice around the world.