Ela Ben-Ur

Ela Ben-Ur has worked and co-experimented deeply with organizations and educators interested in design thinking since 2012. One focus of her present experimentation is an Innovators' Compass.

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 co-found of IDEO’s Leadership Studio for developing project leaders, coach teams and facilitate for clients.

Ela has taught courses from product design to life design at pioneering Olin College since 2007. She has offered workshops through MIT (her alma mater), Sloan, Babson, Dartmouth and Harvard.

Ela earned BS (1997) and MS (1999) in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. As a research assistant in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Haptics Group, she developed a force-feedback laparoscopic surgery simulator that been patented and is on display at the MIT museum.

Her 3- and 5-year old daughters are her inspiration.

Publications

• Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career (The 99U Book Series)
• Essay “Keeping a Diary to Catalyze Creativity,” September, 2013
• Chapter “Developing portable, powerful Design Thinking: Innovators’ Compass” in Stanford REDLab (Research in Education and Design)’s upcoming book Taking Design Thinking to School, November, 2016
• Guest blog post Work Through Any Problem With The Innovators’ Compass for Mural.ly, April, 2016