Hello, I’m Ed White

As design director of IDEO Europe, Ed keeps his eyes on the horizon. That forward-looking view has been baked in over a career spent helping brands and companies consider and understand the future.

With a background in journalism, storytelling is core to that effort. Ed uses stories as a way of helping teams and clients empathise with their customers today, get excited about a vision of tomorrow, and clearly understand the strategic choices they need to make to get there.

What that has looked like: Ed co-led much of the work involved in the initial shaping of Ford’s global innovation lab, D-Ford, including the design of its name, purpose, values, brand, ways of working, and space. He helped design a new government ministry for the United Arab Emirates—the Ministry Of Possibilities—dedicated to a radical new way of tackling the country’s most pressing challenges. And he led a global retailer through the process of designing an experience strategy around how to support women experiencing menopause across everything it does.

Ed studied art history at the Courtauld Institute, cut his teeth in journalism at the Financial Times, and was formerly editor of Contagious magazine, a quarterly B2B print magazine and website for marketers dedicated to marketing innovation, consumer behaviour and emerging technology. He was also a senior consultant at Contagious' digital innovation consultancy, Insider, working with clients like Nike, BBC, LVMH, Google, and Diageo. His writing has been published in Wired, The Guardian, and, The Globe and Mail, among other publications.