The World’s Most Creative People With Debbie Millman – #337 Named as “one of the most creative people in business” by Fast Company, Debbie Millman is a designer, author, educator, curator and host of the podcast “Design Matters,” one of the world’s first and longest running podcasts. In the 16 years since its inception, “Design Matters” has garnered a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, six Webby nominations, and an Apple Podcasts “best overall podcast” designation. In 2009 Debbie co-founded with Steven Heller the world’s first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her writing and illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Print Magazine, Design Observer and Fast Company. She is the author of seven books, including her latest, Why Design Matters, a book she describes as ‘a love letter to creativity, a testament to the power of curiosity. It features nearly 60 interviews curated from her podcast show with guests including Brené Brown, Tim Ferriss, Anne Lamott, Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, David Byrne and Maria Popova. These conversations explore what it means to design a creative life, the creative process, dealing with rejection, and the relationship between humanity and creativity. Welcome to the SuperCreativity Podcast Debbie Millman.

The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley With Jimmy Soni – #336 Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir and LinkedIn. What do all of these companies have in common? They were all formed, funded, or advised by a small group of men who founded or worked at one company, PayPal. Members of the PayPal Mafia as it’s sometimes called, and who include Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Reid Hoffman, have gone on to drive innovation and entrepreneurship in the 21st Century. Yet for all their influence, the story of where they first started has gone largely untold. In The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, award-winning author and biographer Jimmy Soni explores PayPal’s turbulent early days. He also reveals the stories of countless individuals and hidden figures who were left out of the front-page features and banner headlines but who were central to PayPal’s success. Jimmy Soni’s previous book, A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, won the 2017 Neumann Prize, awarded by the British Society for the History of Mathematics for the best book on the history of mathematics for a general audience. Welcome to the SuperCreativity Podcast, Jimmy Soni.

The New Leadership Playbook with Andrew Bryant – #335   Being an effective leader in a post-pandemic world goes beyond being good at what you do; it requires balancing empathy with accountability. In The New Leadership Playbook, self-leadership coach Andrew Bryant provides a practical guide to being human and understanding people, whilst simultaneously driving for accelerated results. For nearly 25 years Andrew Bryant has been transforming individuals and organizations with his Self-Leadership Methodology and has delivered training, coaching and keynotes on five continents in 20+ Countries to 200,000+ Executives.

The Creative Brain With Dr Iain McGilchrist – #334 My guest today says that in order to understand ourselves and the world we need science and intuition, reason and imagination. Dr. Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher, and literary scholar. He is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and a former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He is the author of a number of books but is best known for The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. In his latest book The Matter With Things he argues that we have become enslaved to an account of things dominated by the brain’s left hemisphere, one that blinds us to an awe-inspiring reality that is all around us.

How Emotions Shape Our Thinking With Leonard Mlodinow – #333 How can you make better decisions? How can you improve your relationship with others? What can you do to live a happier life? My guest today argues that the answers to all these questions and more lie in understanding our emotions. Leonard Mlodinow is a theoretical physicist and author of five best-selling books including Subliminal, The Drunkard’s Walk, and the #1 New York Times bestseller ‘The Grand Design’, co-authored with the late Professor Stephen Hawking. His latest book Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking explores the new science of feelings and offers us an essential guide to making the most of one of nature’s greatest gifts.

Lean Innovation Problem Solving With Peter Newell – #332 Peter Newell is a nationally recognized innovation expert whose work is transforming how the government and other large organizations compete and drive growth.  He is the CEO of BMNT, a Palo Alto-based innovation consultancy and early-stage technology incubator that helps solve some of the hardest real-world problems in national security, state and local governments, and beyond. He is also a founder and co-author, with Lean Startup founder Steve Blank, of Hacking for Defense (H4D)®, an academic program that engages students to solve critical national security problems and gain crucial problem-solving experience while performing a national service. Pete is a retired US Army colonel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. From 2010 through 2013 he was the Director of the US Army’s Rapid Equipping Force (REF) charged with rapidly finding, integrating and employing solutions to emerging problems faced in the battlefield. This experience gave him a unique perspective on how to anticipate competitive challenges and head them off quickly, whether on the battlefield or in the board room.

Innovation Is All About People With Alison Hawks – #331 Dr. Alison Hawks is the CEO of BMNT, Ltd and Executive Director of the Common Mission Project in the UK, and a recognized expert in military strategy and sociology.  Ali was previously the Director of Research of the Section 809 Panel, a US congressionally mandated commission tasked with streamlining and codifying defense acquisition.  She was a Lecturer at King’s College London, Defence Studies Department, Assistant Professor at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Security Studies, King’s College London. She has also taught at Brunel University and the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her doctorate thesis was in military sociology and Ali received her Ph.D. from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and her MA in Strategic Studies from the University of Leeds. She holds a BA in Political Sciences from the University of California, San Diego. Welcome to the SuperCreativity podcast Alison Hawks…

Overcoming Resistance To Innovation with Jim Euchner – #330 Many large companies today have begun to adopt the principles of Lean Startup, a methodology first adopted among Silicon Valley tech startups in order to become more innovative and agile in implementing new products, services and business models. However large corporations are not just bigger versions of startups. My guest today, Jim Euchner has studied how the Lean Startup concept can be applied to innovation within established businesses and has shared his findings in a new book called 'Lean Startup In Large Organisations'. Jim was Vice President of Global Innovation at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, where he led the development of new businesses and incubated and launched five businesses on three continents. Prior to his work at Goodyear, Jim held positions as Vice President of Growth Strategy and Innovation at Pitney Bowes, Inc. and Vice President, Network Systems Advanced Technology at Bell Atlantic (now Verizon). Today his is Editor in Chief at the Research-Technology Management journal, Honorary Professor at Aston University in the UK, a member of the Scientific Advisory Council for the Nissan autonomous vehicle program and a co-founder of the MIT Innovation Laboratory, a consortium of companies interested in user and community innovation.

Human Creativity in the Age of Analytics With Chris Jones #328 Chris Jones is a long-time journalist and short-time screenwriter. He has written extensively for Esquire, The Atlantic, WIRED, the New York Times Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, and has won two National Magazine Awards for his feature writing. He was also a producer on Away, the Netflix series starring Hilary Swank. His latest book The Eye Test makes the case for human creativity in the age of analytics. The book seeks to serve as a reminder that if beauty is less of virtue in the age of analytics, a good eye still is. Welcome to the show Chris Jones.

The Lean Startup Approach With Steve Blank #327 To say that Steve Blank has led an interesting life would be an understatement. He’s had three careers: First, in the U.S. Air Force for four years during the Vietnam War. Next, as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur in 8 startups in two decades (with four IPOs). Currently as an academic teacher at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, and NYU. Steve Blank has changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught worldwide; how science is commercialized in the U.S., and how companies and the government innovate. He is the author of “The Four Steps to the Epiphany,” credited with launching the Lean Startup movement, and the bestselling Startup Owner’s Manual. Welcome to the SuperCreativity podcast, Steve Blank…

Project Management And Leadership With Anh Dao Pham – #326 How many books have you read on project management? What about leadership? The problem is these topics don’t exist in silos. My guest today says we need to combine the practice of project management and leadership into one balanced approach – project leadership. Because as we emerge from the pandemic, organizations need leaders who can unlock creativity, get projects done, and engage their teams by building strong, personal emotional connections. In Glue: How Project Leaders Create Cohesive, Engaged, High-Performing Teams, Anh Dao Pham vividly brings compassionate, positive, nimble leadership to life, demonstrating with actionable guidance, the power of caring and connection to inspire outstanding results.

How to Find What You Love With Marcus Buckingham Did you know that less than 16 percent of us are fully engaged at work, with the rest of us just selling our time and talent and getting compensated for our troubles? Meanwhile, many leaders' energy levels are depleted; employees are burning out at an alarming rate, and parents met their breaking point long ago. When it comes to work my guest today argues that we are getting something terribly wrong. He believes we've designed the love out of our workplaces so that they fail utterly to provide for or capitalize on, one of our most basic human needs: our need for love. Marcus Buckingham is a global researcher and the world’s authority on what the most effective leaders and highest-performing people do differently. He is the New York Times best-selling author of two of the most popular business books of all time, First, Break All the Rules, and Now, Discover Your Strengths. Marcus is the creator of the StandOut strengths assessment and the co-creator of StrengthsFinder - his strengths assessments have been completed by over 25 million people worldwide. Building on two decades of experience as a Senior Researcher at The Gallup Organization, he leveraged his data-based discoveries to build a $100 million tech company focused on helping people find and contribute their strengths at work. Beginning with First, Break All the Rules, and continuing through his latest book Love and Work he is known for using reliable psychometric data to get to the core of what drives engagement, resilience, and productivity. Welcome to the SuperCreativity Podcast Marcus Buckingham.

Sebastian Mallaby: Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption Innovations rarely come from “experts". When it comes to improbable innovations, one legendary tech Venture capitalist told my guest today that the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul Volcker Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Washington Post columnist. In his new book The Power Law - Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption, he has parlayed unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time—the key figures at Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Benchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Chinese partnerships such as Qiming and Capital Today—into a riveting blend of storytelling and analysis that unfurls the history of tech incubation, in Silicon Valley and ultimately worldwide.

Elaine Pofeldt: Strategies for Creating a High-Revenue Business Whether you’ve launched your own e-commerce endeavor, built your own professional services firm, sold online courses or membership programs, or are just itching to flex your entrepreneurial muscles, starting a small business – a company with 20 employees or fewer – is a rewarding way to earn a living and get creative. In Elaine Pofeldt’s new book ‘Tiny Business, Big Money’ she reveals the strategies for creating a high-revenue microbusiness. In it, she reveals insightful profiles of nearly 60 micro-businesses that hit $1 million in annual revenue including 49 that hit seven figures with either no payroll or very small teams. Elaine is a journalist specializing in entrepreneurship and is also the author of The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Her work has appeared in CNBC, Fortune, Forbes, Money, and the Tim Ferriss Show

The Art And Business of Turning Your Ideas into Gold – #321 There has never been a more crucial time than now to develop your creativity and your ability to innovate. In her new book ‘How Creativity Rules The World‘, New York-based contemporary art advisor and curator Maria Brito illustrates how creativity is merely a series of habits, actions, and attitudes that anyone can develop—regardless of who you are or what you do. Maria Brito has helped build the art collections of hip-hop moguls, Oscar-winning actors, and Fortune 500 CEOs and in this new book shares stories of the art and business of turning your ideas into gold.

David Schonthal: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on new venture creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation, and creativity. Along with his colleague Loran Nordgren, David is one of the originators of Friction Theory – a ground-breaking methodology that explains why even the most promising innovations and change initiatives often struggle to gain traction with their intended audiences – and what to do about it.  This work is popularized in David’s bestselling new book, The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas.

How to achieve your worthy goals – #319 Perhaps you’ve already achieved things in your career, but now feel it’s time to “climb that second mountain” and think about your legacy. Or maybe you’re unhappy with how the world is working out right now, and you want to change your part of it for the better. You want to start doing something that matters. My guest today would like to help you find that ‘something’. That Worthy Goal, that big project, that next chapter of your life. Michael Bungay Stanier has a gift for distilling big, complex ideas into practical, accessible knowledge that helps anyone become a force for good. As well as writing the million-selling bestselling book The Coaching Habit he also founded Box of Crayons, a learning and development company whose clients include Microsoft, Salesforce, TELUS, and Gucci. Welcome to the SuperCreativity Podcast, Michael Bungay Stanier…

The Future Of Office Work With Julia Hobsbawm – #318 As remote working becomes the norm rather than the exception for many office workers around the globe, my guest today proposes a radical new way of thinking about work both now and in the future. Julia Hobsbawm is an entrepreneur, writer, and consultant who addresses the challenges of the hyper-connected age, in particular remedies of what she has called Social Health for organizations. She is Chair of The Workshift Commission and is Founder and Chair of the content and connection business Editorial Intelligence. Her bestselling book The Simplicity Principle: Six Steps Towards Clarity in a Complex World won two US Awards for Best Business Book and Best Self-Help Book of 2020.    Her latest book ‘The Nowhere Office’ offers a strategic and practical guide to negotiating this pivotal moment in the history of work, including the challenges of remote working, repurposing offices for more creative interaction, managing WFH teams, and satisfying the demand for more purposeful work with greater work/life balance.

Daniel Lamarre: Cirque du Soleil Executive Vice-Chairman - #317 Without creativity, there is no business. That is an idea that has guided Cirque du Soleil Executive Vice-Chairman Daniel Lamarre as he helped grow and pilot a billion-dollar business through stormy waters. In his new book ‘Balancing Acts‘, Daniel shares what it takes for anyone, regardless of position or industry, to embrace the value of creative leadership. Because Cirque du Soleil is an unusual business. It has no physical products, no factories or inventory, no pricey real estate. Instead, they have something far more valuable: the limitless creativity that springs from the minds, hearts, and bodies of their artists. Welcome to SuperCreativity Podcast, Daniel Lamarre.

Fredrik Haren Dream-Inspired Creativity – #316 Fredrik Haren is The Creativity Explorer. He has spent the last 25 years traveling the world to learn as much as he can about human creativity. He is the author of ten books – including “the idea book” which was included in “the 100 best business books of all time” and Fredrik has been invited to speak more than 2000 times in 70 countries on 5 continents. As The Creativity Explorer, he aims to discover more about human creativity, be it from innovators in Silicon Valley or nomads in the desert of Mongolia. His latest project is a novel, published on Penguin, called “The Unvisible” about an invisible human race living next to us. – Where did the idea for the book come from? (a dream) – How did you approach writing fiction after many years and success writing non-fiction? Where did the ideas in the book come from (subconscious)? – What is the difference between writing fiction and non-fiction – The ability to listen to your subconscious for ideas – Taking time off to focus on your most valuable ideas The creative process – The value of doing something very different from what you know