HISTORY
OUR backSTORY
From Ideas to Flourishing
ID8 was founded in Hawaiʻi in 2012 around a simple belief: good ideas can change what’s possible.
Our first big experiment was Lemonade Alley, an entrepreneurship challenge that transformed the classic childhood lemonade stand into a hands-on experience in business, creativity, teamwork and giving back.
That idea grew into ID8, a Hawaiʻi-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit specializing in entrepreneurship, project-based learning, design thinking, technology and digital media. Over the years, we created programs like Project Lemon Tree, Brand Aide and others that encouraged people—especially young people—to move beyond simply learning about ideas and start putting them into action.
In 2021, the State of Hawaiʻi tapped ID8 to develop a professional television and film production facility at the Entrepreneurs Sandbox in Kakaʻako.
We designed, built and operated ID8 Studios, creating new production capabilities for Hawaiʻi’s growing creative community. After three years of operation, ID8 transitioned the studio back to the State as our own work moved increasingly toward filmmaking and community impact.
By then, another ID8 idea had taken on a life of its own.
What began as an effort to understand the origins and meanings of a familiar Hawaiʻi hand gesture became the feature documentary SHAKA, A Story of Aloha.
But the idea didn’t stop when the cameras did.
The film inspired Project Shaka, which became a proving ground for putting the values behind the Shaka into action. That work helped inspire Hawaiʻi’s Shaka license plate, establishment of the Shaka as the state’s official gesture, educational programs, monuments, community experiences and other initiatives.
One idea had become a film. The film helped inspire a program. The program helped create real-world change.
That experience fundamentally shaped how ID8 began to see itself.
Project Shaka demonstrated that storytelling could do more than entertain or educate. Stories could inspire people to participate.
That realization led to Global Aloha, a broader movement using films, education, experiences and community programs to put positive values into action.
It also inspired a trilogy of Aloha Spirit films: SHAKA, A Story of Aloha; THE 100TH, Seeds of Aloha; and ʻONO, Foods of Aloha—each exploring different dimensions of connection, culture, service and the values that help people and communities thrive.
Global Aloha doesn’t seek to export Hawaiʻi’s culture. Instead, Hawaiʻi provides an example of what can happen when people recognize and activate the positive values rooted in a place. We encourage communities everywhere to discover and strengthen those values within their own cultures and languages.
At the same time, ID8 continued exploring ideas beyond cultural storytelling.
SumoSum Workshops grew from our work in entrepreneurship into a technology-driven business decision platform designed to help entrepreneurs and organizations explore possibilities, test assumptions and make better decisions.
The form was completely different from Global Aloha. The underlying idea was the same:
Give people something that empowers them to create better outcomes.
More than a decade after Lemonade Alley, we can see the common thread running through ID8’s work.
We’ve created educational programs, studios, films, community movements, public initiatives and technologies. Some ideas lasted for a season. Others grew beyond anything we originally imagined.
Along the way, we realized that ID8 should not be defined by any particular activity.
We are an incubator of ideas for flourishing.
Today, ID8 imagines, develops and launches ideas that can help people, organizations, communities, cultures and our planet flourish.
Some become programs. Some become stories, experiences, tools, technologies or movements. Some may become things we haven’t imagined yet.
That’s the point.
Ideas are where flourishing begins.
2012 — LEMONADE ALLEY
An entrepreneurship experiment becomes the seed for ID8.
2012 — ID8
A Hawaiʻi nonprofit is created around education, entrepreneurship and ideation.
2021 — ID8 STUDIOS
ID8 develops a professional production studio at the Entrepreneurs Sandbox.
2024 — SHAKA FILM
An investigation into a hand gesture becomes a feature documentary about aloha.
2025 — PROJECT SHAKA
A film inspires a Hawaiʻi community movement.
2025 — SHAKA LICENSE PLATE
An idea becomes something thousands of people carry on the road.
2025 — OFFICIAL STATE GESTURE
The Shaka becomes Hawaiʻi’s official state gesture.
2026 — THE 100TH / ʻONO
The exploration of aloha expands into a trilogy of films.
2026 — GLOBAL ALOHA
A Hawaiʻi experiment expands into a broader movement.
2026— SUMOSUM
ID8 applies its ideation philosophy to technology and business decision-making.
TODAY — FLOURISH.
ID8 emerges as an incubator of ideas designed to help people, organizations, communities, cultures and our planet flourish.
STEVE SUE
Founder & Storyteller
Steve Sue is a filmmaker, storyteller, designer and social entrepreneur whose curiosity about how ideas become reality ultimately led to the founding of ID8.
Over the years, his work has taken many forms—from entrepreneurship and design to education, technology, community-building and filmmaking. The common thread has always been ideas: where they come from, how they grow and what becomes possible when people put them into action.
That curiosity eventually led Steve on a different kind of journey.
While making SHAKA, A Story of Aloha, he set out to understand the origins and meanings of Hawaiʻi’s most recognizable gesture. Instead, the project began changing his understanding of Hawaiʻi itself.
Over the next decade, Steve traveled thousands of miles, interviewed hundreds of people, walked battlefields, shared meals with families and listened to kūpuna, veterans, historians and communities while pursuing an increasingly larger question:
What does aloha really mean?
That exploration grew into a series of Aloha Spirit films—SHAKA, A Story of Aloha; THE 100TH, Seeds of Aloha; and ʻONO, Foods of Aloha.
Beneath the subjects of the individual films, another journey was taking place.
The question “What does aloha mean?” gradually became “What can aloha do?”
Could positive values strengthen relationships? Build communities? Preserve cultures? Inspire service? Help people overcome division? And if Hawaiʻi has developed its own regional expression of these ideals, what equivalent values might already exist within other cultures around the world?
Those questions helped give rise to Global Aloha and ultimately contributed to a broader realization about ID8 itself.
The goal was never simply to make films.
Films are vehicles for ideas. Education is a vehicle for ideas. Technology, design and community programs can be vehicles for ideas too.
What matters is what those ideas make possible.
That realization led ID8 to its larger purpose:
Empower the world to flourish.
Today, Steve continues to develop stories, programs and ideas through ID8 with the belief that the most meaningful measure of an idea isn’t simply what its creator accomplishes with it—but what others are empowered to do next.
Learn more at SteveSue.com »