We talked with Dabney Hailey, founder and principal of Hailey Group, about the Visual Thinking Strategies (or VTS) method, why it works, how to bring elements of it into your daily practice, and why leaders should shift to the facilitative leadership style this method teaches. Here are six takeaways from our conversation.

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.

Systems design challenges are the focus of Melanie Bell-Mayeda’s work at IDEO. As a partner and managing director, she has worked in systems design for 20+ years. In this conversation, she shares her approach to mapping complex systems, how to identify the layers of a system in order to spot opportunities for change, and ways to manage bias in systems design.

Experience design is the crafting of distinct, memorable and transformative moments in time. Experience designers aren’t just designing what people might do, but also what people might feel. Well-designed experiences change your audience in some way—a shift in feelings, beliefs or actions.

Innovation expert and author Warren Berger has spent years studying how questions can transform our business and personal lives and tap into our creative potential. In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, he shares insights from his new book, The Book of Beautiful Questions, featuring hundreds of big and small questions that harness the magic of inquiry to tackle challenges we all face—at work, in our relationships, and beyond.

Learn the core mindsets of systems thinking to tackle complex problems. Our beginner's guide helps you zoom in and out, shift perspectives, and reframe challenges for lasting solutions.

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.

As Tim Brown says, old school models of leadership are not enough anymore. Top-down mandates and telling people what to do doesn’t lead to the creativity and innovation that allows modern companies to make an impact. Instead, leadership is about generating, embracing, and executing bold ideas—”even when the path is not clear.” And that all starts with asking questions.

In our Creative Confidence series chat with IDEO CoLab Co-Managing Director Joe Gerber, we explored the world of business prototyping. In his early days as a Business Designer at IDEO, Joe noticed that experimenting and prototyping were an essential part of IDEO’s process and became curious about prototyping something complicated and abstract like a business.

Design thinking has a human-centered core. It encourages organizations to focus on the people they're creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes. When you sit down to create a solution for a business need, the first question should always be what's the human need behind it?

Discover the importance of human-centered leadership and AI. Learn how to balance technological advancements with empathy and ethics to drive sustainable success.

Strategy advisor Roger Martin shares common mistakes people make in the early stages of strategic planning and how to avoid them.