# Shuya Gong > Collaborative ecosystems, innovation fellow and lecturer at Harvard Engineering, looking for interesting questions. Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/shuya Collaborative advantage is the new competitive edge. Exploring how emerging tech (this season, spatial computing) and societal trends (this decade, climate) change systems at IDEO CoLab. Experimenting with regenerative design practices at Maybe Ventures, LLC. Building the supply chain data exchange standard with Open Supply Hub. Shuya Gong uses her background in mechanical engineering and venture design from Harvard to prototype the future by exploring how emerging technologies catalyze systemic change. She has collaborated with Target, H&M, Nasdaq, Fidelity and more on projects spanning the future of food, insurance, fashion, finance, fertility, and beyond. Shuya has built proof of concepts with AR, VR, XR, IoT, DLTs, AI, ML, and most recently, a GPT-3 generated NFT—and would be happy to unpack the alphabet soup of technology acronyms with you and how they translate between cyberspace and meatspace. She is also an instructor and Design Innovation Fellow at Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Talk to her about living life without plastic, rapid prototyping, and the dystopian (and utopian, and better yet, mundane!) ways technology might change our daily lives. ## Work Experience ### Preceptor @ Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Jan 2025 – Present Harvard SEAS x GSD Master's in Design Engineering Core Studio ### Co-Founder @ Maybe Ventures Jan 2019 – Present For ideas that may be ventures. Applying experiential (and experimental) design methods for regenerative ventures. Exploring technology as a cultural practice, eastern philosophy as a grounding basis for design, and new models of value exchange. Workshop facilitation and speaking engagements include "Designing for Users that Don't Yet Exist", "User Interfaces, Experiences...and Exploits", "Downloading Feelings", "Zoom into the Future" and more. Past participants have included EY Innovation, Brown University, Harvard University, -ing Creative Festival, and BU Forge. ### Expert-in-Residence @ Harvard Innovation Labs Jan 2019 – Present Advising pre-seed and seed stage start ups within the Harvard ecosystem on brand, user research, rapid prototyping, collaborative landscape analysis, storytelling, and strategy through futuring. Topical focus on circular, web3, and emerging technologies. ### Creative Director @ IDEO CoLab Ventures Jan 2023 – Jan 2025 ### Open Data Standard Partnerships & Community Manager @ Open Supply Hub Jan 2024 – Jan 2025 Partnerships and community engagement to build a global data standard at Open Supply Hub—an accessible, collaborative, supply chain mapping platform, used and populated by stakeholders across sectors and supply chains. ### Senior Design Fellow @ IDEO Jan 2023 – Jan 2023 ### Design Director, Systems Change @ IDEO Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 ### Senior Lead Designer, Systems Change @ IDEO Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 Designing with new incentives across stakeholders to catalyze systemic shifts. Defining IDEO's approach to systems change through futuring and experiential prototyping. Building kiosks that utilize touchless and tracking technologies for a reverse logistics supply chain. Live pilot design and execution across multi-retailer environments. Exploring web3 as a coordination stack for joint venture creation. Topically focused on circular and regenerative ventures, and the future of creative work(ers). Pursuing three big shifts in design: 1. From "how might we" to "how might nature" 2. From "product prototyping" to "systems prototyping" 3. From "competitive edge" to "collaborative advantage" ### Senior Venture Designer @ IDEO Jan 2017 – Jan 2020 Building ecosystems to find collaborative advantage. Rapid prototyping with emerging technologies to test potential venture viability, design sprint facilitation for problem identification and implementation across multi-stakeholder (and competitive) networks, codifying collaborative design methodology through toolkits and workshops, creative talent scouting, recruiting, vetting, mentoring and hiring through makeathons and fellowships. At IDEO CoLab, we've worked with the innovation leads and teams of Blue Cross Blue Shield, Fidelity, Citi, Exelon, Target, H&M, USAA, MIT Media Lab, Ford, LVMH, Gehl and more—not all at the same time, but never just one on one. By gathering vulnerabilities across multiple industries we align multi-stakeholder ecosystems towards building out shared infrastructure needed by all. Throughout this time, we created proof of concept applications for blockchain, AI, IoT, AR/VR, and quantum computing, and architected ventures that could drive systemic shifts in the circular economy, adolescent reproductive health, rural banking systems, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the future of the workforce. ### Venture Designer @ IDEO Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 Bits + Blocks CoLab: created proof of concept blockchain ventures with a focus on on-chain identity management with innovation leads at Fidelity, Nasdaq, Citi, and Intercorp. Food Future CoLab: prototyped the future of food systems in collaboration with Target and the MIT Media Lab through technology led design by exploring conversational bot interfaces, distributed ledger technologies, spectroscopy, and programmable environments. Designed and ran in store pilots at Target for dynamic pricing of produce. Conducted customer research, concepting, and initial brand strategy for Good & Gather, which now carries 2000+ items and generated over $1 billion in sales in its first year on shelves at Target. ### Design Innovation Fellow @ Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 ### SHIFT (Shaping Holistic Innovative Frameworks of Thought) Fellowship @ Somewhere Good Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 SHIFT (Shaping Holistic Innovative Frameworks of Thought) is a one-year fellowship program designed to create an ongoing feedback loop of innovation and exploration between the Somewhere Good team and their global audience at large. The five fellows were chosen out of more than 300 applicants and are well-known for their work centering artificial intelligence, cultural theory, modernist art, identity and activism. Somewhere Good is a social platform reshaping the digital experience by prioritizing identity and co-creation. “As we build online experiences that will fundamentally change how Black people and people of color connect online, it is integral that we bring in outside voices who are building towards the same goal. As a team, we are conscious of our own internal biases and assumptions in our work. We’re excited to create a space where we can put everything on the table and look at it as a collective,” said Somewhere Good, Founder and CEO, Naj Austin. Throughout the 12 months, the fellows will create, converse and write about digital ethical dilemmas while aiding Somewhere Good’s journey in co-generating better frameworks for building safer, more thoughtful digital social platforms. To maintain an online space that prioritizes transparency and collaboration, all quarterly works created during this fellowship will be publicly available on the Somewhere Good website. ### Technical Co-Founder @ Unsize Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 Inclusive fashion technology platform to make it easier for to people find clothing that fits outside of sizes, labels, and gender binaries. Selected out of 2,000 applications as one of the 128 Finalists for 2018's Mass Challenge cohort. Acquired by Seddi, a CAD platform for textiles with a mission to help bring digital fashion to life and reduce waste in the fashion supply chain. ### Teaching Fellow @ Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Jan 2015 – Jan 2017 | Cambridge, MA Courses: Applied Physics Innovation in Science and Engineering Introduction to Computer Aided Design and Machining ### Fusion 360 Product Experiments @ Autodesk Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 Created design curriculum and experimental workshops to onboard students onto Autodesk's Fusion 360. Introduced collaborative platform to classes within Harvard's School of Engineering. Provided stress testing and UI/UX feedback to the design team through conducting research projects on emergency pop up shelters and informal robotics. ### Creative Director @ Harvard Student Agencies Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Cambridge, MA ### Intern @ site design group, ltd. Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | Chicago, IL ## Education ### Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Mechanical Engineering Harvard University Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/shuyagong - Portfolio: https://www.maybeventures.com - Portfolio: https://www.ideocolab.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/shuya JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/shuya/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-25