Ben Swire
Author, Safe Danger
Ben Swire is the author of Safe Danger and the founder of the team-building company Make Believe Works, where he helps teams build trust, spark creativity, and connect in meaningful ways. An award-winning designer and former design lead at IDEO, Ben’s work blends play, storytelling, and behavioral science to help people take small risks that lead to big breakthroughs.
Something of a "Creative Platypus," the thread that runs through his varied background in design thinking, philosophy, marketing, quantum theory, cinema, psychology, and literature is a relentless curiosity about the hidden factors that influence our lives when we’re not looking.
Oct. 21, 2025
Safe Danger: Why Play Is Serious Business
In this episode, we dive deep into the paradoxical space where creativity thrives: the intersection of safety and danger. Drawing inspiration from IDEO’s iconic reinvention of the shopping cart, we explore how play, risk, and...