Jeanne Liedtka is the Professor of Business at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business,  where she teaches both MBAs and executives, as well as consulting on innovation, organic growth and design thinking. Jeanne, has served as Associate Dean of the MBA Program at Darden, Executive Director of the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Corporate Innovation, and Chief Learning Officer at United Technologies Corporation, and consulted with a diverse set of organizations including IBM, Samsung, NASA, The United Nations, and the government of Singapore.  

Jeanne’s interests lie at the intersection of strategy and design. She has written eight books, including her most recent book published this year, 2024: The Experimentation Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide, and many articles on the subject of strategy, innovation, and design thinking.

In this thought-provoking conversation, we discuss why this topic is particularly important, as our research shows that companies truly thriving in today's digital, fast-paced world, discuss strategic experimentation, rather than strategic design, more frequently than their competitors.

In this episode, she shares:

• The concept of design thinking—Jeanne's expertise—which provides the structure, tools, and processes needed to unlock creativity—regardless of one’s background.
• How design thinking is a perfect complement to strategic thinking—and the nuanced differences between the two
• How to strike a balance between risk aversion and meticulous planning with innovation
• The interesting paradox of needing data to make decisions, but not over-relying on data to the point where innovation is stifled

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Episode Timeline:

00:00—Highlight from today's episode
1:01—Introducing Jeanne Liedtka + the topic of today’s episode
3:04—If you really know me, you know that...
4:41—What's your definition of strategy?
6:50—What is design thinking?
11:30— Why do constraints enable creativity?
14:40— How do you foster experimentation in a risk-averse organizational culture?
18:52—When thinking about innovative ideas, why is historical data insufficient?
24:50—From product ideas to testable value proposition
29:19—How can people follow you and continue learning from you?
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Additional Resources:
Personal site: https://jeanneliedtka.com/
Book site: The Experimentation Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liedtkaj/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeanneliedtka

Thank you to our guest, our executive producer Zach Ness, our editor James Pearce, and the Outthinker team. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

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