Creative Confidence Podcast

As a venture capital investor at Collaborative Fund and Kindred Ventures, Kanyi Maqubela has invested in dozens of companies—including Lyft, Kickstarter, Beyond Meat, and Blue Bottle Coffee—and evaluated hundreds more. He seeks out founders and businesses that are not only addressing a market need, but have the potential to reinvent our future. In this episode of our Creative Confidence Podcast, he shares the elements he looks for to signal a strong business idea, an impactful leader, and a collaborative team. Build your leadership abilities in our course Leading for Creativity, and learn how to design prototypes to test and iterate business ideas in Designing a Business: https://ideo.to/XX94SR

People and culture leader Margo Downs joined us for an episode of the Creative Confidence Series to share lessons learned from her years as a leader in people operations at Stitch Fix, Starbucks, and lululemon athletica—companies well known for their distinctive cultures. We dove into the building blocks of culture, her framework for operationalizing culture at scale, and how to impact culture regardless of your seniority or title.

An IDEO partner and global director of design, he’s also a lifelong musician and associate professor at the Berklee College of Music. He’s spent many years studying the shared mindsets of musicians and designers and is in the midst of writing a book on the subject to come out next year. He joined us on the Creative Confidence Series to share more about what the business world can learn from the musical one. To learn tactics for experimentation and generating new ideas, check out IDEO U's 5-week online course From Ideas to Action: https://ideo.to/fFtiIN

Suz chats with Sheryl O’Loughlin who says there’s a dark side to entrepreneurship, but it’s possible to run a startup in a healthy, joyful way. In this conversation, we dive into Sheryl’s vast experience as a CEO, founder, mentor, and advisor to pull out key lessons she’s learned at critical moments in her career. Walk away with tips for launching and growing a successful business while maintaining a fulfilled life.

Tim Brown, IDEO Chair and former CEO of IDEO for 19 years, shares his perspective on the qualities necessary for creative leaders in today’s unpredictable business and economic conditions. He discusses what we can do to find the opportunity in ambiguity and design and build better systems to meet the needs of the future.

Roger Martin is a bit of a legend in the strategy world. His book Playing to Win, written with former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley, is a favorite in business schools. And decades of work consulting with some of the world’s most recognizable companies have cemented his place as one of today’s leading business thinkers. In this conversation, get an inside look at Roger’s approach to business strategy and hear about our newest course, Designing Strategy: https://ideo.to/u3xSQA

How do you evolve a customer journey map from a tool that inspires and explains to one that creates action? In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, hear tips for this and other service design challenges, and learn how IDEO Partner and Managing Director Melanie Bell-Mayeda and her team are evolving the practice of service design with stories from the latest work at IDEO. She expands on the lessons she teaches in our Human-Centered Service Design course with tips for moving from a high-level and inspiring customer journey map toward real action, breaking a massive service design challenge into more manageable parts, and picking the right moment that matters in a customer journey. Learn more about our online course, Human-Centered Service Design: https://ideo.to/u9u072

Didier Elizinga, CEO and Founder of culture analytics platform Culture Amp, joined us on the Creative Confidence Series to talk about applying design thinking mindsets to culture and people operations, turning culture insights into actions, and making change happen from wherever you sit. Learn more about inspiring change in an organization, community, or network through movements, not mandates in our online course Designing for Change: https://ideo.to/OiXZ1q

What do you want to change? IDEO Partner Bryan Walker introduces "change journeys" and takes us through an exercise to understand what type of journey you are on. Bryan shares change examples from Ford, Marriott, the Gates Foundation and more to help illustrate how to go about change.

In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, Joe Gerber, Managing Director of IDEO’s CoLab, talks about how to connect the dots between a vision of the future and a business that can make that vision a reality. Joe shares how the team at CoLab are using design fiction and cross-organizational stakeholder collaboration to uncover meaningful innovation and launch new ventures in the world of emerging technology, the Circular Economy, and more. Whether you work in the field of innovation, you’re an entrepreneur with a startup, or you have an idea for a business that you’re ready to explore, using the principles of design fiction and cross-organizational collaboration can help. Check out our 5-week business design course to go deeper on testing and prototyping different aspects of a new business: https://ideo.to/xRZl6p