This work is a labor of love.  People like you have offered the questions, observations, ideas, and experiments that shaped this tool, and have shared it—the real mission.

CONNECT

Please sign up for email updates, and reach out to me at ela@innovatorscompass.org! I’ll gratefully learn from your questions and experiences, and help in any way. Till we speak, a bit more about me and some of the many other contributors…

Ela Ben-Ur (Photo: Dirk Ahlgrim)

Ela Ben-Ur (Photo: Dirk Ahlgrim)

Ela Ben-Ur, Founder

Ela Ben-Ur is passionate about seeing people of all ages articulate and amplify their natural ways of making things better. She has worked and co-experimented deeply with educators and organizations interested in design thinking since 2012. Ela worked 13 prior years at renowned innovation firm IDEO. Her design practice and leadership at IDEO spanned diverse industries, geographies and sectors. She went on to coach teams, facilitate for clients and co-found IDEO’s Leadership Studio for developing project leaders. Ela has taught courses from product design to life design at pioneering Olin College since 2007. She’s led workshops at venues from MIT (her alma mater) to SXSW EDU, the National Science Teachers’ Association, AIGA, International Development Design Summit, and US Conference on AIDS.  Her daughters are her inspiration. 

Read more about my mission and journey, or follow me on Twitter.

SOME OF MANY "COMPASS INNOVATORS"

Please meet the wonderful folks below. Check out some of their Compass stories here. Reach out to them! Find far more than I can keep up with on twitter. And join us by using Innovators’ Compass to help people around you get unstuck, and sharing your experiences!


So many more to thank...

Many more Compass experimenters on Twitter. And others like Artemis Akchoti, Aram Armstrong, Coeylen Barry, Linda Gerard, Sara Hendren, Jenny Jin, Michael Ninh...

Help with words and graphics: HUGE shout-out to Kara Krumpe, Daniel Koff, and Tim Sauder for their work on the latest set of compass graphics and tools! And to Kara again, Kim Zajac, Coelyn Barry, YeSeul Kim, Karen Boutet and Gdalit Katz for extensive feedback on our kids’ books. Further heartfelt thanks to Jennifer Audette, Kelly Sherman, and Amy Leventhal on the earlier language and graphics. The fonts used are Century Gothic (very common) and Mix Sonatina (the handwriting, by wonderful Mikko Sumulong).

Help with video: Gregory Mang

Help with this website Kathleen McKissack

The incredible support and community of 4.0 Schools

The inspiration and support of Tom and David Kelley and their message of Creative Confidence. And Otto Scharmer, and his incredible work, Theory U. 

The light and memory of longtime friends and IDEOers Rhonda LeRocque and David Duncanson. Lost too soon to the Las Vegas mass shooting, and to cancer, respectively. And Austin Veseliza, an incredible young person whose heart and mind tried to hold the world and failed. I wish that this work might help us move forward on challenges like these.  And, my dad, whose ways of deeply questioning and jumping into making things with his hands have found their way through me, my daughters, and this work into the world.

My family who’ve supported my complete investment in this work—and are very much a part of it.