Cultivating Creative Collaboration
Cultivating Creative Collaboration
Go Deeper with Certificate Programs
Cultivating Creative Collaboration is part of two certificate programs:
What You'll Get
Week 1: Introduction
Week 1: Introduction
Watch a sneak peek
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What is Creative Collaboration?—the power of creativity and diversity
2 Video Lessons
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Essential Collaborative Behaviors—Be open, be curious, be vulnerable
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Pass it on—Activate others to guide creative collaboration
1 Assignment
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Take Stock of Current Conditions: In this assignment, you will use reflection and observation to assess the behaviors that are encouraging or undermining psychological safety on your team.
2 Discussions
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What surprised you about the three key behaviors that help build psychological safety?
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How do you, or leaders you know, try to set the right conditions for your team?
Week 2: Build a Foundation
Week 2: Build a Foundation
5 Video Lessons
- Align the Team—Three steps for crafting team agreements
- Mentor Moment with Heather Currier Hunt—Three ways to align teams at kick-off
- Culture and Creative Work—Design for diverse teams
- Mentor Moment with Chris—Three tips for designing rituals for belonging
- It Starts with You—Model the behaviors you want to see
1 Assignment
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Craft Team Agreements: In this assignment, you will design and run a session to craft a set of team agreements.
5 Discussions
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What are some team agreements that you currently have, and are they explicit or implicit?
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Are there any other tools or rituals you like to use when you kick off with a new team or project to help get everyone on the same page?
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What are the ways that you have felt encouraged or discouraged to be more of yourself in a professional setting?
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What opportunities do you have for designing rituals on your team?
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What are your authentic leadership qualities and how might you leverage them as you encourage your team(s) to try working in a new way?
Week 3: Choreograph the Work
Week 3: Choreograph the Work
3 Video Lessons
- The Creative Process—An overview
- Design for Divergence—Expand ideas and multiply options
- Design for Convergence—Narrow and focus
1 Assignment
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Choreograph a Meeting: In this assignment, you will design and run a moment of convergence or divergence for your team.
3 Discussions
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Would you consider yourself more of a diverger or a converger? Why?
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Think of the last meeting you had with a team that was supposed to be divergent in nature. What did it feel like?
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When your team gets together to evaluate ideas does it feel creative, like convergence should feel? Why or why not?
Week 4: Tackle the Hard Stuff
Week 4: Tackle the Hard Stuff
4 Video Lessons
- Diverse Perspectives and Tension—Use tension to evolve ideas
- The Power of Conflict—Three steps for using tension to improve team dynamics
- Mentor Moment with Annette—Designing spaces for tough conversations
- Navigate Tough Conversations—Give direct, caring feedback that serves others’ growth
1 Assignment
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Harness Tensions: In this assignment you will identify an opportunity around tension by reflecting on past experiences to gain insight, making a plan for how you will manage or provoke tension with your team, and holding a session to address it directly.
4 Discussions
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What was the last tension around ideas that you experienced on your team? How was it handled?
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Think of a time when your team went through a period of tension that you didn’t process or you waited too long to process. What was the result?
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How might you design spaces for your team to process tension together?
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Describe a time you gave or received difficult feedback that led to a stronger bond between you and the other person.
Week 5: Conclusion
Week 5: Conclusion
1 Video Lesson
- Pass It On—Activate others to guide creative collaboration
1 Assignment
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Final Reflection: In this assignment, you will reflect back across all the work you’ve done, reflect on any impact you have started to see, and set yourself up for a future of continued practice.
1 Discussion
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How might you begin to pass on some of the skills associated with guiding creative collaboration?
Meet Your Instructors
Mike Peng
CEO of IDEO
Mike Peng is the CEO of IDEO and a founding leader of IDEO Tokyo. Before becoming CEO in 2025, he led IDEO’s work across Japan and greater Asia, guiding key client relationships, mentoring design teams, and driving innovative design strategies. As a global design leader, Mike continues to champion the power of creative collaboration—principles at the heart of this course.
Mike Peng
CEO of IDEO
Mike Peng is the CEO of IDEO and a founding leader of IDEO Tokyo. Before becoming CEO in 2025, he led IDEO’s work across Japan and greater Asia, guiding key client relationships, mentoring design teams, and driving innovative design strategies. As a global design leader, Mike continues to champion the power of creative collaboration—principles at the heart of this course.
He has taught design thinking and collaboration as a visiting lecturer at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID), Tokyo University, Keio University, and Kyushu University, and previously served as an adjunct professor at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. Before joining IDEO, Mike worked as a senior lab informatics analyst at Johnson & Johnson. He holds a degree in cognitive science with a neuroscience focus from the University of California, Berkeley. In his free time, he’s a competitive tennis player (his high school court is named after him!), an amateur hip-hop dancer, and a fan of reality TV and celebrity gossip.
Heather Currier Hunt
Former Senior Global Director of Learning & Development At IDEO
Heather led IDEO's Global Learning & Development Team and the strategy, design, and implementation of a promise—to ensure IDEO is an organization that offers everyone, regardless of role or tenure, the opportunity to become a world-changing creative leader. Heather has an MFA from The New School and a bachelor’s degree in English from Barnard College.
Heather Currier Hunt
Former Senior Global Director of Learning & Development At IDEO
Heather led IDEO's Global Learning & Development Team and the strategy, design, and implementation of a promise—to ensure IDEO is an organization that offers everyone, regardless of role or level, the opportunity to become a world-changing creative leader. She believed that there is a present, emerging, or future leader inside every one of us. She made it her mission to ensure everyone finds their authentic expression, expanding the definition of what goods looks like, and inspiring the world to grow a little more every day.
Heather has an MFA from The New School and a bachelor’s degree in English from Barnard College. She led the creation of IDEO’s first global leadership development programs—beacon events that target moments of career transition. What catapults her out of bed every morning is the chance to help others to find their strengths, seize agency, see opportunities that were previously unimagined, and make a plan to achieve it.
FAQs
We offer three types of courses: self-paced courses, cohort courses, and certificate programs. Cohort courses run on a set calendar, with fixed start and end dates. Course learning is self-paced within those dates and requires approximately 4-5 hours per week over 5 weeks. Courses consist of videos, activities, assignments, access to course teaching teams, and feedback from a global community of learners. There are also optional 1-hour video Community Conversations, held weekly by the teaching team.
All of our cohort courses are fully online, so you can take them from any time zone, anywhere in the world. With our cohort course experience, while you'll be learning alongside other learners, you'll still have the flexibility to work at the pace that fits your own schedule. There aren't mandatory live components, so you don't have to worry about having to log in at a specific time. At the same time, you'll have access to a teaching team who will answer your questions and give feedback on your assignments throughout the course.
Cohort courses run on a set calendar with fixed start and end dates. You will be learning alongside other learners, but still have the flexibility to work at a pace that fits your own schedule—there aren't mandatory live components. In cohort courses, you'll have access to a teaching team who will answer your questions and give feedback on your assignments throughout the course. Self-paced courses allow you to start, learn, and finish a course completely on your own schedule. Since courses are on-demand, there's no community experience of going through the material with other learners. In on-demand courses, there is no teaching team providing feedback on your submissions.
Upon completing a course, the certificate and digital badge for the course will automatically become available to you on your profile page within 24 hours. There, you can view your certificate, download it, and access your Credly badge. We've partnered with Credly, a leading digital credentialing platform, to provide learners with a digital badge that they can share on social media, email signatures, or add to their LinkedIn profiles or resumes.
IDEO U courses are not currently eligible for university credit.
You'll need a stable internet connection and a device (computer, tablet, or phone) with a modern web browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge. Some course activities may work better on a computer than a mobile device. You'll also need to be able to view videos, which requires a browser that supports HTML5 video.
Once you enroll in a course, you can access it by logging into your IDEO U account at ideou.com and clicking on your profile icon in the upper right corner. Then click on "My Courses" to see all of your enrolled courses. Click on the course you want to access to go to the course page. Your courses are always available in your account, even after the course end date.
We offer a 10-day satisfaction guarantee for our cohort courses (starting from the course start date). If you're unhappy with the course for any reason, reach out to us within 10 days of the course start date and we'll give you a full refund. To process a refund, contact us.
Yes, we do! We offer group pricing when you purchase 5 or more seats for the same course. Contact us at learner-success@ideou.com to get a quote.
Collaborate with a Global Community
Work with Expert Coaches
Our teaching team has extensive applied industry knowledge. They'll help deepen your understanding and application of the course content by facilitating written discussions, live video moments, and assignment feedback.
Expand Your Network
Join virtual live discussion groups for deeper conversation, reflection, and connection led by teaching team members and available multiple times a week across time zones.
Receive Feedback
Gain tips, techniques, and a downloadable feedback guide; and share and receive feedback on assignments from peers.
Loved by Learners Across the Globe
Cultivating Creative Collaboration
“This course provided the framework and tools to dig in and engage in deeply meaningful conversations. I feel like my practices have improved and my team is working much more efficiently. People feel valued and seen within our team now.”
Cultivating Creative Collaboration
"In a world full of wicked problems, we need more people who can help teams be more collaborative and creative. This course gives you a set of very practical tools that you can easily practice and pass on to others.”
Cultivating Creative Collaboration
“This course covered information that I've never found before. It's changed my perspective on what leadership looks like and provided me with great tools to help foster innovation and collaboration!”
Cultivating Creative Collaboration
“The course is very actionable. It strikes the right balance between theory and practice and teaches the new skills in a very systematic and comprehensive way.”
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Enroll As a Team
The practice and application of design thinking, innovation, and creativity is highly collaborative and team based—which is why we believe that learning is better together. Take a course as a team and develop new skills and mindsets, have deeper discussion during course kickoff and debrief sessions, and build a shared understanding.
