Creative Confidence Podcast

Ed White has a rule he's tested on his own writing: hold yourself as the writer, and let AI be your editor. Ed is a Senior Design Director at IDEO's London studio, where he co-leads the firm's AI portfolio across Europe. Before IDEO, he spent 12 years as a writer and editor at the Financial Times, Wired, and Contagious. So when he talks about when to use AI for storytelling and when not to, it comes from two decades of crafting his storytelling skills.
In this episode, Mina Seetharaman talks with Ed about two specific tools he uses to keep AI in an editor's seat: a "roasting agent" prompted to critique his drafts without any sugarcoating, and a simulated audience he rehearses pitches on before the real thing. They also get into what Ed is hearing from design leaders at Anthropic, Lovable, Shopify, and Google Creative Lab about how creative work is changing, and why he thinks the friction of writing something yourself is worth protecting rather than automating away.
Related Resources:
Ed is one of three instructors behind IDEO U's new course, Creative Storytelling with AI. Learn more here: https://www.ideou.com/products/creative-storytelling-with-ai
Ed’s interviews with design leaders on the changing nature of creativity include this one with Lovable’s Nad Chishtie: https://www.ideo.com/journal/building-the-last-piece-of-software
Follow Ed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-white-59b9a63/
In This Episode:
Timestamps are approximate due to edits and ad breaks
(00:00) What a good editor does for your story
(01:00) Mina introduces Ed White, Senior Design Director at IDEO's London studio
(03:13) Why storytelling with AI isn't about outsourcing your thinking
(03:44) Ed's founding rule: "Don't think of it as a writer. Hold yourself as a writer."
(04:40) Mina's teenage son on friction: "It doesn't make me faster. It makes me better."
(05:26) William Zinsser, writing as thinking on paper, and why frictionless isn't the goal
(07:31) What design leaders at Anthropic, Lovable, Shopify, and Google Creative Lab are seeing collapse
(11:48) The IDEO IQ report: which parts Mina wrote herself, and which she didn't
(13:29) "What makes you competitive is your people.” The case for protecting thinking time
(16:01) Introducing the roasting agent
(16:18) Why a savage AI critique beats a sycophantic one
(19:22) The discipline of being edited: what separates a professional writer from an amateur
(20:32) Ed’s friend who texted: "This is hard"
(22:43) The simulator: rehearsing a pitch on a board member
(25:15) Maintaining taste, and why it isn’t always the right word
(26:10) Getting to a "seven out of ten" and the return of the generalist
(28:17) Angela Kochoska's healthcare experiment: five ideas, then twenty
(30:22) "I don't think you can skip it" — Ed on the one thing AI can't shortcut
(32:00) Rick Rubin, Diplo, and the case for lived experience
(33:00) Adam Moss's three phases of making and the one that's very human
(35:06) "The shortest distance between two people is a story"
(35:33) Zoe Scaman on somatic intelligence, and the writer Ed says to follow
(36:22) Audience Q&A: raising kids in an AI-dominated world
(39:31) Audience Q&A: what AI is actually good at
(41:32) Audience Q&A: what should clients expect from agencies using AI?
(43:11) Lightning round: Arco, Donna Tartt, and letting go of what you can't control
__________

Get episode recaps and register for free live podcast events at ideou.com/podcast.
Build your creative problem-solving skills with IDEO U's online courses in human-centered design, AI, leadership, and more at ideou.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Storytelling isn't a nice-to-have for entrepreneurs. It's often the only asset you have before you have a brand, a product, or proof.
In this episode, we talk with Tom Kelley, IDEO partner and co-author with his brother David Kelley of the bestseller Creative Confidence, about the four stories every entrepreneur needs ready to go: the elevator pitch, the origin story, the pitch deck, and the internal story that keeps a team believing when things get hard. Tom also shares tactical storytelling tips pulled from two decades of working with his own speaking coach.
This is a replay episode. With 10 years of podcast episodes, we’ve got an extensive back catalogue of conversations to inspire you, no matter what challenge you’re facing.
If you’d like to improve your storytelling skills, check out IDEO U’s newest course Creative Storytelling with AI. The course starts August 13, and for a limited time, you can bundle it with Storytelling for Influence, our foundational storytelling course, and save $200.

Related Resources:
Tom Kelley on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-kelley-867b685/
D4V (Design for Ventures) — https://d4v.com/
Blog recap: Storytelling Techniques for Entrepreneurs — https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/storytelling-techniques-for-entrepreneurs
Creative Storytelling with AI course — https://www.ideou.com/products/creative-storytelling-with-ai
Storytelling for Influence course — https://www.ideou.com/products/storytelling-for-influence
In This Episode:
Timestamps are approximate due to edits and ad breaks
(00:00) “The data does not speak for itself"
(02:01) Mina introduces this replay and why we're revisiting it
(02:55) Coe Leta Stafford introduces Tom Kelley, co-author of Creative Confidence and IDEO partner
(03:29) Tom's decades-long connection to Japan
(05:10) How storytelling built IDEO's brand in Tokyo before it had one
(06:17) D4V and Yubi: the "karaoke interface" fix for a healthcare app older users couldn't use
(09:54) Barbara Beskin, IDEO's 90-year-old designer, on lived experience as expertise
(11:06) The 15-second elevator pitch challenge
(12:13) Why the same pitch should change depending on who's listening
(13:14) Why IDEO used to think the work should speak for itself — and why that was wrong
(16:56) The four stories every entrepreneur needs
(17:42) Elevator pitch tips: Made to Stick and the power of a shortcut
(20:25) The origin story: why authenticity beats a good hook
(22:04) The pitch deck: team, market size, and the one soundbite people will repeat
(25:40) The internal story: motivating a team around purpose, not just a paycheck
(27:13) Lessons from 20 years with a speaking coach
(28:49) Why nobody remembers the data, but everyone remembers Rebecca
(30:26) Tom's advice to his younger self, and the two words that changed how he saw himself
(31:11) Brené Brown's The Gift of Imperfection
__________

Get episode recaps and register for free live podcast events at ideou.com/podcast.
Build your creative problem-solving skills with IDEO U's online courses in human-centered design, AI, leadership, and more at ideou.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most AI products today are built for work—a space with clear problems and established systems. One founder noticed a gap: personal life is messier, harder to systematize, and mostly left behind by the AI boom. So she built Cue, a personal AI that lives inside iMessage and group chats, to go where the other tools haven't.
In this episode, Becca Carroll, IDEO's Chief Strategy Officer, talks with Sida Li, co-founder and CEO of Shared Context Lab, about staying anchored to a human need while the technology around her keeps changing shape, why she treats her business model with the same rigor she'd bring to a product, and what it feels like to build a company at this particular, disorienting moment in AI.
The conversation also gets into how Sida makes design decisions: the language Cue uses to describe itself, the tradeoffs behind building inside iMessage instead of a new app, and a real story about a business idea that didn’t pan out.
This is the second in a two-part series profiling founders from IDEO's Startups-in-Residence program. The first conversation is with Johannes Seemann, founder of Sooner, on designing GenAI for the emotional side of money.
Related Resources:
Join the Cue waitlist — https://sharedcontextlab.com
Sida Li on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sida-li-35729698/
IDEO U's AI x Design Thinking Certificate — https://www.ideou.com/products/ai-design-thinking-certificate
IDEO U's Designing a Business course — https://www.ideou.com/products/designing-a-business
Listen to our episode with Johannes Seemann: Designing GenAI for the Emotional Side of Money — https://shows.acast.com/creative-confidence-podcast/episodes/designing-genai-for-the-emotional-side-of-money-johannes-see

In This Episode:
Timestamps are approximate due to edits and ad breaks
(00:00) Mina introduces the Startups in Residence series
(02:32) Becca Carroll returns as guest host
(03:11) From consulting's rulebook to IDEO's blank page
(03:43) Sida's zero-to-one path: IDEO, a venture studio, and a Series A with Arcade.ai
(07:14) AI has democratized building — and that's not entirely good news
(08:52) The long tail of personal life: "death by a thousand cuts"
(12:43) What Cue actually is: part assistant, part advocate
(14:37) Why she built for personal life instead of work
(16:01) The deliberate choice to live inside iMessage, not a new app
(17:57) Proactive, not reactive: the line between helpful and creepy
(20:38) The word Sida refuses to use, and the conversation with Tim Brown that confirmed it
(22:21) AI is less trusted than ICE right now — designing for that
(23:28) Total transparency: why users can see, edit, and delete everything Cue remembers
(25:40) Bringing Cue into a group chat changes everything
(27:44) The founder's journey isn't linear — it's a squiggle
(29:01) "Wandering in the dark": IDEO's desirability, viability, feasibility framework in practice
(32:17) Finding investors who can see through the pitch
(34:08) The business model is a prototype too
(35:01) A B2B idea everyone loved — until the budget didn't exist
(37:19) Why she's keeping pricing simple for now
(38:26) Building a company while the tools underneath her keep changing
(39:10) From not knowing how to code to building the front end
(42:02) The sci-fi problem: building something that knows everything about you
(42:47) The open question nobody's answered yet: what is this relationship, exactly?
(46:22) The bank-app test: designing trust into a world with no fixed screen
(47:06) What she got from building inside IDEO that she couldn't get alone
(48:57) Inside Sida's toolbox: the stack behind Cue
(50:10) The five-to-ten-year vision: software defined by the people who use it
(52:45) Lightning round: Mitch Albom, pull-ups, and doing the thing before you're ready
__________

Get episode recaps and register for free live podcast events at ideou.com/podcast.
Build your creative problem-solving skills with IDEO U's online courses in human-centered design, AI, leadership, and more at ideou.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most personal financial tools are built to run the numbers and optimize towards a budget. While that works for some, most people experience money as a lived relationship that doesn’t neatly fit into a spreadsheet. Johannes Seemann spent years interviewing people about their personal finances and came away with a different premise: Money is inherently emotional before it is mathematical. Accounting for people’s psychology and context first creates, he argues, creates the foundations to make smarter, more confident financial decisions.
In this episode, Becca Carroll, IDEO's Chief Strategy Officer, talks with Johannes Seemann, founder of Sooner, about the problem space he knows so well, why he sees generative AI as a unique opportunity to design a solution for it, and what a genuinely human-centered approach to building an AI product looks like in practice.
The conversation also gets technical. Becca and Johannes dig into the engineering and design challenges of building an AI moderator, from models that try to resolve human ambiguity rather than embrace it, to the normative assumptions they carry that can lead to biased interpretations.
This is the first in a two-part series profiling founders from IDEO's Startups-in-Residence program. The second conversation is with Sida Li, co-founder and CEO of Shared Context Lab, on building Cue, a personal AI that lives inside your text messages and group chats.
Related Resources:
Take the Sooner Money Mindset quiz — https://mysooner.com
Sign up as a beta tester — https://hellosooner.com
Follow Sooner on Instagram — https://instagram.com/hellosooner
IDEO U's AI x Design Thinking Certificate — https://www.ideou.com/products/ai-design-thinking-certificate
IDEO U's Designing a Business course — https://www.ideou.com/products/designing-a-business
In This Episode:
(Timestamps are approximate due to edits and ad breaks)
(00:00) Mina introduces the IDEO startups-in-residence series
(01:34) Becca Carroll kicks things off as guest host
(04:03) From IDEO's first data hire to two years inside Wells Fargo
(05:51) The blind spot: why people assume financial advisors aren't for them
(07:36) The loneliness of money, and what happened when Johannes's own team opened up about it
(09:33) Where the name "Sooner" comes from
(12:08) Trust over expertise: why finding a financial advisor is like finding a therapist
(13:41) Rose's story: she paid off her house, then lost $25,000 trusting the wrong person at the gym
(15:55) The light bulb moment: why people confide in chatbots when they won't confide in a person
(17:12) Money as an identity issue: Homo economicus, Kahneman, and the trouble with "rational vs. irrational"
(19:13) Turning the equation on its head: budget as output, not input
(20:54) Getting laid off, a no-code AI course, and a rough first prototype in Python
(22:57) Testing the psychographic profile on real people
(24:43) What people won't tell an advisor, they'll tell AI
(25:48) The data engine behind the future Sooner AI partner
(28:52) Identity-driven spending: a real example of the pattern
(31:56) From goals to intentions: what the product actually does today
(34:28) The vet bill: why an intention can flex where a goal would break
(35:33) Finding the right amount of control vs. ease
(37:06) Designing for how it should feel, not what AI can do: why push-to-talk beat free-flowing conversation
(39:57) Human-centered design as Sooner's competitive advantage
(43:37) How to keep applying human-centered design after the research phase is over
(46:13) What it takes to build with AI as a two-person team
(47:32) The three architectures: AI brain, interface, and retrieval layer
(51:32) The technical challenges: normative contamination, false coherence, and context rot
(56:56) Testing an example: helping someone buy a car without spiraling
(59:17) What success looks like for Sooner
(1:02:03) Lightning round: Mossy Earth, dog training, and symmetry as a philosophy
__________

Get episode recaps and register for free live podcast events at ideou.com/podcast.
Build your creative problem-solving skills with IDEO U's online courses in human-centered design, AI, leadership, and more at ideou.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We talk a lot about curiosity as a mindset. Scott Shigeoka lives it as a practice. Right now he’s driving a 25-foot purple van across the country, finding and documenting the stories of ordinary people making their communities better. He's not just curious about what's possible. He's out there finding out.
In this episode, Mina Seetharaman talks with Scott Shigeoka, author of Seek and Head of Curiosity Cultivation at the Eames Institute, about what distinguishes a genuinely curious leader from a performative one, how power dynamics play into curiosity, how the Curious 100 project reveals the many forms curious leadership takes, and why curiosity, when practiced well, can restore your energy rather than drain it.
Scott was previously on the Creative Confidence Podcast to explore why curiosity is a business imperative. That episode is linked below.
This episode is part of an ongoing series on navigating uncertainty. We're exploring this topic from multiple angles with several guests this year. Also in this series: How to Not Know with Simone Stolzoff and The Decisiveness Crisis in Senior Leadership Teams with Sam Conniff.
Related Resources:
Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World, by Scott Shigeoka — https://scottshigeoka.com
The Curious 100 — https://thecurious100.org
Curiosity Club (free newsletter) — https://scottshigeoka.com
Scott Shigeoka on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottshigeoka
Scott's Curiosity Toolkit (free guide for building curiosity at work) — https://curiosity-toolkit.netlify.app/
Scott's first Creative Confidence interview: Why Curiosity Is a Business Imperative — https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/why-curiosity-is-a-business-imperative
IDEO U's Foundations in Creative Leadership Certificate — https://www.ideou.com/products/creative-leadership-certificate
More episodes on navigating uncertainty:
How to Not Know: Simone Stolzoff — https://shows.acast.com/creative-confidence-podcast/episodes/how-to-not-know-simone-stolzoff
The Decisiveness Crisis in Senior Leadership Teams: Sam Conniff — https://shows.acast.com/creative-confidence-podcast/episodes/the-decisiveness-crisis-senior-leadership-teams-sam-conniff
In This Episode:
Timestamps are approximate due to ad breaks.
(00:00) Cold open — the grace curious leaders earn when they make mistakes
(02:47) The Curiosity Mobile — six months on the road, the belief gap, and why stories close it
(07:36) Stories from the road — a florist, a group of librarians, and rafting across political lines
(12:11) How getting curious refilled Scott's own hope and energy before the trip
(14:57) Busting the echo chamber — curiosity as "what else are we missing"
(15:58) The Curious 100 — what the project is and what separates real curiosity from the performative kind
(20:50) Curiosity looks like many things — storytellers, editors, and activists on the list
(23:10) Being an "admitter" — why owning your mistakes makes leaders more trusted, not less
(28:11) Power and directionality — why the most powerful person in the room needs to be the most curious
(33:28) Inclusion vs. belonging, and why curiosity is the difference
(34:44) The question of the day — a research-backed practice for any meeting
(39:34) Why the curious leadership framework matters — a menu of options, not a personality test
(43:42) The four curious leader archetypes: Explorer, Provocateur, Reflector, Imaginator
(48:11) Your dominant archetype — and why leaders can shift between all four depending on the moment
(48:42) Curiosity vs. conviction — why staying open doesn't mean abandoning your values
(51:28) Predatory curiosity — what it looks like, why it backfires, and deep canvassing as its antidote
(59:16) Lightning round: Queer Eye, Lady Gaga, learning to surf, and curiosity as an act of love
__________

Get episode recaps and register for free live podcast events at ideou.com/podcast.
Build your creative problem-solving skills with IDEO U's online courses in human-centered design, AI, leadership, and more at ideou.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.