Who Owns IDEO?

IDEO formed in 1991 through the merger of four design firms: David Kelley Design, founded in 1978; ID Two, founded in 1979; Moggridge Associates, founded in 1969 by British industrial designer Bill Moggridge; and Matrix Product Design, founded in 1983 by Mike Nuttall. The combined practice took the IDEO name and established itself in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley's product development scene.

The firm's early work produced some of the most recognizable products of the personal computing era. It designed Apple's first production mouse in 1980 through David Kelley Design, worked on the GRiD Compass, widely considered the first laptop computer, and later designed the Palm V personal digital assistant and stand-up toothpaste tubes for Procter and Gamble.

Through the 1990s and 2000s IDEO expanded from industrial design into service design, organizational consulting, and what it popularized as design thinking, a human-centered methodology it spread through teaching, publications, and the founding of the d.school at Stanford. David Kelley and Tim Brown became the public faces of the movement.

Steelcase held a majority stake from 1996 until a management buy-back returned control to the partners around 2010. In 2016 Kyu Collective purchased a minority stake, tying IDEO into a network of creative firms under Hakuhodo DY Holdings.

Leadership transitioned from Tim Brown to Sandy Speicher in 2019, then to Derek Robson in January 2023. The firm cut roughly a third of its workforce in 2023 amid a post-pandemic downturn in consulting demand, closing its Munich and Tokyo offices and shrinking below 500 staff. Mike Peng, a former partner returning from Moon Creative Lab, became CEO in June 2025 with a mandate to adapt the firm to an era of AI-driven design demand.