The Creative Person Within with Jeanne Liedtka & Natalie Foley

Creativity through the lens of authors, teachers, innovators, builders and creators

"Creativity is about synthesizing and translating"

Jeanne Liedtka is the UTC Professor of Business at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business. With interests at the intersection of strategy and design, Jeanne has written eight books and multiple articles on the subject of strategy, innovation, and design thinking, and consulted with a diverse set of organizations including IBM, Samsung, NASA, The United Nations, and the government of Singapore. Her most recent book, The Experimentation Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide, co-authored with Natalie Foley, David Kester and Elziabeth Chen, was published in February 2024.

Natalie Foley is a builder, innovator, teacher and author of The Experimentation Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide. She is passionate about getting a new product, program or team from 0 to 1 and then on the path to scale. Having worked across all sectors and industries, the diversity and connectivity of her experience is brought to bear throughout the testing and building processes, enabling strong exploratory and divergent thinking while maintaining a grasp on the ins and outs of execution, alignment and story-telling. Recently, she led a team that designs, test & launch new products & services at Opportunity@Work, a startup social enterprise that is rewiring the labor market for the 71M workers in America who are STARs* (Skilled Through Alternative Routes, instead of a four-year degree). Previously, she was the CEO of Peer Insight, a venture studio and innovation consulting firm. She has contributed to dozens of new business ventures with clients like Kimberly-Clark, AARP, Canon, the Good Samaritan Society and ArcBest, several of which have become multi-million dollar revenue streams. Before Peer Insight, Natalie worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers & IBM, where she led strategy and tech projects in various countries, and across all organizational functions, and both private & federal clients. She holds an MBA from UVA’s Darden School of Business and a BA in Psychology from The College of William & Mary.

• LinkedIn pages: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-foley-5149292/ & https://www.linkedin.com/in/liedtkaj/
• book: https://a.co/d/ggFCHdM
• download a book preview & sign up to get teacher/facilitator materials: https://www.darden.virginia.edu/batten-institute/research/faculty-publications/experimentation

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