Hello, I’m Joe Brown

IDEO is known for designing the future of everything from telephones to toothpaste to teaching. But knowing what to build is useless if you don't know how to build it. So Joe is often tangled up in building innovation labs, rethinking product development processes, and scaling new capabilities.

Joe has also helped several dozen companies foster purpose-driven cultures—not just creating powerful purpose statements, but activating them with teams at every level of the company. Much of that experience is baked into IDEO U’s class, Power of Purpose, which Joe teaches. Joe’s writing on purpose, culture, and innovation has been featured in Harvard Business Review and Quartz.

Prior to IDEO, Joe taught courses in Marketing and Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he also earned his MBA. Before that, he edited textbooks for the SAT, moonlighted as an interaction designer, and sold art in several New York galleries.

Joe likes finger painting as much as he likes financial modeling, but his true passions are donuts, robots, and pulp crime novels. His only patent is for a frozen novelty dessert.