

Creative Confidence Podcast
IDEO U
IDEO’s Creative Confidence Podcast shares candid conversations with creative leaders, changemakers, and innovators navigating today’s most pressing challenges. Through real-world stories and insights, we explore how to lead with creativity, build resilient teams, and drive innovation. Grounded in IDEO’s 40 years of expertise in design thinking and innovation, each episode offers inspiration and practical tools for audacious leaders at every stage of their careers. Hosted by Mina Seetharaman, Head of New Ventures at IDEO, the podcast brings a human-centered lens to the complexities of making more courageous futures.
Discover more at IDEOU.com.
Discover more at IDEOU.com.
Episodes
Mentioned books

9 snips
Sep 6, 2019 • 46min
Tackle Your Journey Map Roadblocks: Melanie Bell-Mayeda
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

6 snips
Aug 14, 2019 • 48min
Crafting Culture by Turning Insights into Actions: Didier Elzinga
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

5 snips
Aug 1, 2019 • 43min
Change Journeys: What Change Are You Working On?
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.

10 snips
Jul 3, 2019 • 46min
Bridging the Gap Between the Future and Business Reality: Joe Gerber
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

Jun 20, 2019 • 41min
Building a Mission-driven Business: Gina Bianchini
In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, IDEO U Dean Suzanne Gibbs Howard speaks with Mighty Networks CEO and Founder Gina Bianchini about how to launch and lead a business when the future of that business is yet to be defined. Gina shares the story of how she spotted the market opportunity for Mighty Networks, built the business through experimentation and co-creation with the community, and continues to lead her team to push the boundaries of innovation.
Want to learn more about matching market needs with business ideas and creating a blueprint to create, capture, and deliver value? Check out our online course Designing a Business: ideo.to/F8VPqU

Jun 14, 2019 • 6min
Jake Knapp Takeover #5: Reflect and move on
In this podcast takeover series, Jake Knapp, designer and author of Make Time and the New York Times bestseller Sprint, shares quick tips to help you optimize your energy, focus, and time. Part 5 has advice for reflecting on and learning from your efforts.
Check out our page to listen to the full interview with Jake and hear more about how he started his journey toward productivity and mindfulness and lessons from his experience designing products at Google.
Download the free Make Time poster we created with Jake to put these tips into action: ideo.to/knapp

5 snips
Jun 6, 2019 • 32min
Office Hours: Leadership Lessons with David Kelley
In this Office Hours episode of our Creative Confidence Series, David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school, chats with IDEO U Dean Suzanne Gibbs Howard and answers questions from our community on design thinking, creativity, and leadership. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to this episode on our podcast, and check out their full conversation to hear more of David’s thoughts on the core abilities of the most successful design thinking practitioners. Learn more about building the skills and abilities to deepen your design thinking practice with our Advanced Design Thinking Certificate: https://ideo.to/J3Y8ev

May 21, 2019 • 8min
Jake Knapp Takeover #4: Go distraction-free
In this podcast takeover series, Jake Knapp, designer and author of Make Time and the New York Times bestseller Sprint, shares quick tips to help you optimize your energy, focus, and time. Part 4 gives you ways to remove distractions from your phone.
Check out our page to listen to the full interview with Jake and hear more about how he started his journey toward productivity and mindfulness and lessons from his experience designing products at Google.
Download the free Make Time poster we created with Jake to put these tips into action: https://ideo.to/F7U3Uf

May 13, 2019 • 4min
Jake Knapp Takeover #3: Invent a deadline
In this podcast takeover series, Jake Knapp, designer and author of Make Time and the New York Times bestseller Sprint, shares quick tips to help you optimize your energy, focus, and time. Part 3 gives you tips for creating effective deadlines.
Check out our page to listen to the full interview with Jake and hear more about how he started his journey toward productivity and mindfulness and lessons from his experience designing products at Google.
Download the free Make Time poster we created with Jake to put these tips into action: ideo.to/knapp

15 snips
May 8, 2019 • 34min
Guiding Your Team Through Creative Collaboration: Mike Peng
In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, IDEO Partner and Managing Director Mike Peng chats with IDEO U Dean Suzanne Gibbs Howard about creative collaboration—the method IDEO teams use to come up with innovative new ideas. Mike gives insight into our new course, Cultivating Creative Collaboration, that teaches you how to guide others through the creative collaboration process. He also shares tips for overcoming common challenges, why this way of working is necessary in today’s world, and how tension can be harnessed to unleash creative ideas.
Get more tips and techniques from Mike on guiding collaboration in our new 5-week online course, Cultivating Creative Collaboration, starting May 23rd: https://ideo.to/JzmBTe