In conversation with Dr. Natalie Nixon

About our guest

NATALIE NIXON, PhD

President & Creativity StrategistFigure 8 Thinking, LLC

• Global Speaker
• Author
• Consultant
• Qualitative Researcher

NATALIE NIXON, PhD changes lives through ideas. She is a creativity strategist who happily integrates wonder and rigor into her life and work. She converted a 16-year career as a professor into a successful consulting practice.

At Figure 8 Thinking, LLC she advises leaders on achieving transformative business results and accelerating value by applying creativity and foresight.

She’s the author of The Creativity Leap: Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation and Intuition at Work; the editor of Strategic Design Thinking: Innovation in Products, Services, Experiences, and Beyond; and a regular contributor to Inc. magazine on creativity, design thinking and the future of work.

Natalie earned a BA (honors) in Anthropology and Africana Studies from Vassar College; an MS in Global Textile Marketing from Jefferson University; and a PhD in Design Management from the University of Westminster in London. She is also certified as a Foresight Practitioner by the Institute for theFuture and is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts. She lives in Philadelphia, PA with her husband, John Nixon.

Discussion Summary

• According to Dr Nixon, creativity is the ability to toggle between wonder and rigour.
• 3 I’s: Creativity requires Inquiry, improvisation, and intuition.
• Design thinking is a problem-solving process. It is 50% ethnography and quality of research and 50% is application of design principles like visualizing ideas and data.
• Creativity will be an essential skill in the future of work. World Economic Forum has outlined creativity as a top 3 job skills, so it will be important for people to develop their creativity competence.
• Invention converted into value is innovation (financial value, social value, and cultural value). Creativity is the engine for Innovation.
• Best businesses are people focused and whichever field you study, you learn more about people. And business is all about solving problems for people.
• The pandemic has taught us that businesses always need to continually have innovation as an integral part of their culture and imbibe creativity.
• Dr Nixon’s Motto in life “Work hard, follow your heart, be yourself and keep going”.
• Favourite movie: The Old Guard
• Favourite Food: Vegetable Biryani.

Lighter Moments