The most impactful lessons and skills we’ve gained from our podcast guests, learners, and IDEO U instructors in 2020.

Do you thrive in times of generating options, or making choices? Creative, collaborative work requires us to toggle between moments that expand the space of opportunity—diverging, and ones where we home in and choose how to move forward—converging.

Learn how to set the groundwork for honest community conversations on diversity at work from Lauren Collins, Chief of Staff, Office of the CEO at IDEO.

Tension is inevitable. IDEO Senior Director of Global Learning and Development, Heather Currier Hunt, reframes tension as a learning opportunity that can take ideas and teams to a better place and provides her favorite tips.

The more ideas you come up with, the better chance you have to reach a truly brilliant solution. For many, brainstorming is the bread and butter of ideation. It’s a great tool to help teams push past obvious solutions to get to breakthrough ideas. Across the thousands of brainstorms IDEO has run—both with internal teams and with clients—we follow seven important rules.

Regardless of role, work can suck sometimes. Laszlo Bock, CEO and Co-Founder of Humu, a company that aims to make work better by encouraging people towards better habits and unlocking their potential, is focused on changing that. He’s dedicated the last decade of his career to bridging the gap between what we wish work was and what it actually is. In this episode of the Creative Confidence Podcast, he shares insights and tips on how we can make work better by sending small behavioral nudges to cultivate more empathy, equity, and resilience in the office.

How long COVID-19 will keep many of us in a virtual work environment is unknown, but what’s more interesting to consider is what work life will be like on the other side after months of collaborating over the internet. Will this period convince more organizations and teams that virtual work is not only possible, but sustainable?

In service of inspiration, we wanted to share some of the things we think about when designing human-centered online learning experiences. At IDEO U, teaching online has always been our reality—we’ve never coexisted in a physical space with our global community. We hope that some of the things we’ve learned along the way can help you teach whatever it is you need to teach in a virtual setting, and find creative joy in a new set of constraints.

If you’re struggling to feel settled at the makeshift workspace you’ve set up in your kitchen, or you’re taking work calls from your closet in an attempt to minimize interruptions from your kids, you’re not alone. The “rapid remote” shift many of us have undergone in the last few weeks due to COVID-19 brings its own set of challenges, far beyond the normal ones remote workers deal with daily.

Now that many of us are operating at a distance, how do we continue to have impact from afar? You can’t rely on organic intersections to exchange ideas and influence. You must create a deliberate and intentional plan. Use these three strategies to overcome Distance Bias by creating your own Personal Virtual Influence Plan.

Workshops sound like a great idea...until everyone gets in a room together and the creative juices dry up faster than the desert in July. Why can it feel so hard to manifest creative ideas when the ingredients all seem to be there? Because the design of a workshop experience is just as important as the people you have in the room. 

As an IDEO Partner and a Managing Director in the Tokyo office, Mike Peng has developed an ability to collaborate with all kinds of teams across many cultures and markets. With a background in neuroscience and wide-ranging personal interests including hip-hop dance, tennis, and the occasional reality TV show, Mike sources inspiration from many places. Leading up to the launch of our Cultivating Creative Collaboration online class, which Mike teaches, we caught up with him to chat about his passion for understanding human motivations, the role of creativity in teamwork, and what’s inspiring him lately.