Equitable design shows innovation and sustainability belong together

BOTH by Ring Capital Issue #29 — Interview with Mathieu Aguesse, co-CEO @ Schoolab

Dear community,

This month, we had the pleasure of speaking with Mathieu Aguesse, co-CEO of Schoolab.

We were inspired to meet him after hearing his reflections on how performance and impact can — and should, be aligned.

Following several years spent developing Schoolab’s activities in San Francisco, Mathieu has cultivated a compelling approach to innovation. He highlights how innovation can be a force for positive impact, and how the design of a product or service must take into account historical and statutory data, as well as the emotions and experiences of the end user.

His perspective strongly resonates with our own vision of impact. Above all, it reinforces the importance of encouraging the entire economic and financial world to integrate a holistic approach to impact into their strategies.

This is what Beyond Impact’s interviews are about: showcasing the faces behind vital change.

🫵 Which entrepreneur, solution, project or concept related to impact would you like us to cover in this newsletter? Feel free to send us your ideas!

Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your background?

I grew up in Africa and have always travelled a lot, which has definitely influenced my career path. I was trained as an engineer. After graduating, I started working in the construction industry… but left quickly. The work environment was highly competitive, with values that didn’t align with mine.

Then, I looked for what appeared to me as the exact opposite: the luxury sector. What attracted me was the respect for craft, for the people on the ground, for expertise and materials. But with no experience in that field, I wasn’t getting hired. So I decided to start a business, thinking: either it works, or at least I will have some experience to build on.

I joined a start-up specialising in tailor-made leather goods. We launched a product, raised some funds, but the project didn’t manage to scale. However, that was when I discovered design — creating products and services based on user needs, and it proved to be a real turning point. I decided to go back to school and was accepted into a specialist master’s programme in design. Coincidentally, on the very same day, I also received a job offer from a major luxury group. I chose the master’s. Later, I joined Schoolab to lead the development of our corporate offer.

Schoolab is described as an innovation studio. What does that mean in practice?

Yes, we refer to ourselves as an innovation studio, which is a deliberately broad terminology, because ‘innovating’ doesn’t fit neatly into predefined categories.

Our work is diverse, but at its core, our mission is to help companies make the decisions today that will keep them relevant tomorrow. We do this across three main areas: impact and sustainability, emerging technologies, and new behaviours and generational shifts. Our motto is ‘Innovation That Matters: Building Future-Ready Organisations’.

Sometimes this takes the form of intrapreneurial projects. Other times, we bring in students, startups, researchers or entrepreneurs to enrich the process.

The term ‘studio’ also reflects a space. A place where things are designed, tested, and built collaboratively.

How did the idea to expand Schoolab to the United States come about?

Schoolab experienced strong growth in France early on. We expanded quickly, the team grew, the model evolved. I wanted to see whether what we had built could be replicable, scale and work internationally. That’s when I launched our US branch in San Francisco. Just like Hollywood is the place to be for cinema, San Francisco is synonymous with innovation and design!

Very quickly, we realised we weren’t going to teach the US ecosystem how to do design or innovation. We needed a distinctive angle. So we took the approach we called ‘ethical innovation’ at the time — innovation grounded in values and shaped by social and ethical issues. We built a team, worked with companies and universities, including the University of California, Berkeley. Over six years, we led around 250 projects and trained more than 700 students.

I returned to France last January to take over as CEO of Schoolab Group. Today, we’re about 80 people and currently refocusing our activities — geographically on France, and strategically with a more targeted portfolio of offers.

“In the US, impact and economic performance aren’t seen as opposites. They support each other. A sustainable business model is one where your product lasts and is financially viable. […] It’s not about compromise — it’s about alignment.”

What did you take away from your time in the US, particularly regarding innovation and impact?

During my years in San Francisco, I launched several programmes, including Deplastify the Planet, which applies design to reduce plastic pollution, as well as foresight programmes to explore how companies can build strategy in an increasingly uncertain world. I also created Equitable Design, which is now the topic of a book I’m publishing. The aim is to show how we can design inclusive products and services, contributing to a more equitable society by considering what and how we consume every day.

What I’ve taken away is that the private and corporate world is the best playing field for impact and addressing important and pressing causes. The working place is where we spend most of our time awake, and we all consume products and services daily: these are powerful levers for systemic change. Probably more than relying exclusively on regulations, political orientations, and citizen initiatives. In the US, impact and economic performance aren’t seen as opposites. They support each other. A sustainable business model is one where your product lasts and is financially viable. A good example is the brand Allbirds, which set out to make the most comfortable shoes on the market, which also happen to be eco-friendly. Their success is driven by the quality of the product, not by betting on the guilt of their customers.

Language also reflects these differences. For instance, the concept of ‘sobriety’ in sustainability discourse is quite specific to France. It unconsciously implies effort or sacrifice. That framing doesn’t really exist in the US, where the focus is on finding what’s both best for the planet and best for business. It’s not about compromise — it’s about alignment.

Another striking difference is the cultural approach to risk. In the US, I was able to teach at Berkeley without a PhD, simply based on the strength of a project. This test-and-learn culture encourages innovation. In France, the framework is more regulated, which sometimes leads to less agility.

With that in mind, I have also constantly praised the values of the European model while being in the US, and I believe we need the best of both systems to solve the major challenges we have in front of us.

Your book Inclusive by Design explores how diversity and inclusion can be embedded in corporate strategies. How can design contribute in practice?

I often use the example of US banks. A third of African Americans are underbanked. While no bank claims to be discriminatory, their services are inaccessible: branches are often located in upmarket areas, products are complex to understand without financial literacy, and you need to be digital savvy to navigate services, credit scores and more.

This kind of poor design leads to systemic exclusion. Without access to banking, it’s harder to get student loans, buy a home, or launch a business. It reinforces social inequality. Redesigning banking services could significantly reduce this gap.

In my book, I also highlight the need to reintroduce emotion into design to move beyond pure functionality. At Berkeley, I encouraged students to not just think about what a product does, but how it makes users feel and what invisible forces are at stake (status, historical or cultural context, social pressure…). For instance, creating distinctive credit card designs for people with less financial resources makes it humiliating for them to take out the card in public, creating a deep stigmatisation. This kind of emotional experience matters. So, working on this seems to me far more important than making it possible to order something online in two clicks rather than four. Yet, when designing products or services, we don't take it enough into account.

And inclusive design isn’t just ethical, but also smart business. For example, when Patagonia discovered that 40% of women in the US fell outside the standard XS–XL size range, they reworked their design to expand their range and we supported them to create adaptive clothing. This is both socially inclusive and commercially sound.

At Schoolab, you often use the term “ecosystem”. How do you define it, and what does yours look like?

For us, an ecosystem is a living, interconnected whole. The word itself comes from the Greek word ‘oikos’ which means ‘house’ or ‘extended family’, and system refers to something that makes up an organisation, a group. An ecosystem is not just a network, but a coherent structure that responds dynamically.

We believe no product should be designed in isolation. Especially when it comes to sustainability, we’re talking about systems thinking: any change in one part of the system affects the rest. So we need to look at the overall impact of a product when designing it.

Our ecosystem includes our team, clients, startups we incubate, students, freelancers, experts, and partners. They’re all resources that fuel innovation. One of Schoolab’s key strengths is our ability to bring this systemic thinking to our clients — who are often very specialised in their field but may lack that broader perspective.

What does the term “vitality” evoke for you?

I immediately think of the Vitality Index, which measures how much of a company’s revenue comes from recent innovations. A company with a low index is relying on legacy. One with a high index is constantly renewing itself. So for me, vitality means renewal. Like a living organism, a business needs cycles of regeneration.

It also makes me think of two indexes I introduced in my book. The first one is ‘distributivity’: How widely is the value created by a product shared across stakeholders? It’s the opposite of concentration. The second one is ‘additionality’: Does the innovation create something truly new, or just extract value from existing systems? It’s a common impact metric, but I push it further to explore whether innovation adds value or displaces it.

These tools help assess the real impact of innovation. They challenge conventional performance measures like revenue alone, and offer a more systemic lens on success.