Chris Flink is a partner at IDEO, a Lecturer at the Graduate School of Business, and a Consulting Associate Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) which he helped establish at Stanford. He has served on the d.school's Strategy Board since inception and has taught courses within the engineering department such as “Advanced Product Design” and “Human Values in Design” since 1999. He has also guest lectured on the strategic application of design thinking at Wharton and Columbia Business School. In 2011, he co-taught the popular "Brands, Experience, & Social Technology (BEST)" course, followed by "Social Brands" in 2012 -- both with Professor Jennifer Aaker. Chris' teaching leverages nearly twenty years of experience helping companies of all kinds innovate and grow.

Chris Flink, a partner at IDEO and consulting associate professor at Stanford University, considers innovation a team sport and dives into interdisciplinary challenges with generative optimism and a balanced, strategic perspective.

In his 15 years with IDEO, Chris has played a variety of roles, from heading the firm’s Consumer Experience Design practice to co-founding its New York office. He’s led diverse programs in collaboration with such clients as Target, Apple, PepsiCo, Handspring and P&G.

Today, he continues to thrive at the intersection of great design, business, and people. He leads a series of key client relationships, guiding portfolios of innovation projects in retail, education and consumer products. Chris also oversees global recruiting for IDEO, promoting a strategic focus on top talent and ensuring that the firm continues to attract truly extraordinary people. Additionally, he leads internal efforts aimed at stoking IDEO’s dynamic creative culture.

Chris teaches at Stanford University with adjunct appointments from both the Graduate School of Business and the School of Engineering -- the same institutions that granted him degrees and helped inform his ever-expanding view of what it means to be a designer. Since 1999, he’s taught a range of courses on human-centered innovation and most recently co-created what students called the “BEST” class (Brands, Experience & Social Technology). He helped establish and is now part of the leadership team for the d.school, a renowned institute for design at Stanford. He’s also delivered guest lectures at Wharton and Columbia business schools, and presented at TEDx as well as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Prior to IDEO, Chris designed and patented products as an independent inventor and sought activities for which excessive creativity or physical height offered some kind of notable advantage.