Tessa Forshaw and Rich Braden on Innovation, Mindsets, and AI as Co-Creators

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On this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Tom Vander Ark sits down with Dr. Tessa Forshaw and Rich Braden, authors of Innovation-ish: How Anyone Can Create Breakthrough Solutions to Real Problems in the Real World. They explore how innovation mindsets, creative problem-solving, and AI as a co-intelligence tool can empower anyone to tackle complex challenges. Drawing from their experiences at Stanford’s d.school and Harvard, Tessa and Rich break down the frameworks, mindset shifts, and practical moves that make innovation accessible to everyone. Whether you’re a leader, educator, or simply curious about the future of work and learning, this conversation will inspire you to embrace your inner innovator.

Outline

• (00:00) Introduction: The Age of Innovation
• (04:32) The AI Inflection Point
• (08:19) Understanding Innovation Mindsets
• (12:14) Applying Mindsets in Teams
• (15:37) Innovation Moves: Beyond Rigid Frameworks
• (20:09) Activating Through Metacognition

Introduction: The Age of Innovation

Tom Vander Ark: Improvement is good. It means doing things a little better, hoping for incremental improvement. Innovation, on the other hand, is doing things differently, aiming for breakthrough performance. We’re living through an age where we’re all called to be innovators, entrepreneurs, and value creators, both in the civic space and in the enterprise space.

I’m Tom Vander Ark. You’re listening to the Getting Smart Podcast, and today we’re talking about innovation with Dr. Tessa Forshaw and Rich Braden. They’re the authors of a great new book called Innovation-ish: How Anyone Can Create Breakthrough Solutions to Real Problems in the Real World. Tessa and Rich, welcome.

Tessa Forshaw: Thanks so much for having us.

Rich Braden: Great to be here.

Tom Vander Ark: What a crazy, cool new book. I love the name. Well, we’re going to dive into the outline, but it’s a handbook, a manifesto—it’s very exciting. It’s the right book at the right time. So, where did the name come from, Tessa?

Tessa Forshaw: Oh yeah, great question. Rich and I noticed that we were teaching creativity, design thinking, and innovation a lot, and that our students, every time we brought up the topic of innovation, would sort of freeze and get a little bit overwhelmed by the idea of innovation. It seemed to be this big, mythological idea and not something they necessarily felt they could take on.

The bar felt really high, but we also noticed that the students themselves were amazing. We always thought they were so creative and so innovative. So, we decided that the problem wasn’t the students—the problem was the word and the big, monstrous idea behind it of innovation.

We decided to change it and make it a little bit more “innovation-ish,” a little bit more approachable, relaxed, and fun. To quote one of the people who’s been through the program with us: “Kind of, sorta innovative? Yeah, I can do that.”

Tom Vander Ark: I love that. Rich, you and Tessa have led such interesting lives, and they’ve intersected with being entrepreneurs. You both have this amazing commitment to teaching and to education. You both hung out at the d.school at Stanford. You both made contributions at Harvard. It feels like innovation really is a through line for you. Isn’t that right?

Rich Braden: Absolutely. I would say my lineage goes back before I knew about innovation and teaching. I spent about a dozen years teaching and performing improv, which is very close to a lot of the ideas in here—using collaboration and empathy as a way of creating in a very pure, creative act.

When I discovered design thinking through some colleagues at the d.school, I just took to it like water. Ever since then, it has changed how I approach the world and how I approach my teaching.

Tom Vander Ark: Let’s spend a couple of minutes reflecting on this amazing threshold that we’re passing through as a species. It’s just so interesting that in the last 24 months, most of the connected people on Earth have been equipped with these amazing tools. There’s suddenly global access to expertise and, increasingly, a set of capabilities that we’ve never had.

I think that has big implications for how we think about innovation. One is that we’re all, in some respects, called to be innovators and creators now. We have this new teammate—this new co-intelligence—right on our team. I guess I’m thinking this is a big deal and a kind of a supercharger for innovation and entrepreneurship.

The AI Inflection Point

Tom Vander Ark: Do you feel that, as somebody who’s been in this innovation space for 20 years? Is this a big deal? Are we at an inflection point? Is that part of why you thought it was time for this book?

Tessa Forshaw: I think a big part of why Rich felt like the book needed to be written now was, one, our students kept telling us that. But two, we noticed that as AI was accelerating and becoming a more accessible tool to folks, they were using it as a co-intelligence and a co-creator.

But they needed to be reminded and grounded in the unique cognitive aspects of being human that help with the act of innovation and the act of creation. Part of the approach to innovation is really talking about how, from the time we are very small through to being grown adults, our minds work and how we can be empowered users of our minds to be creators.

I’m actually going to steal your punchline, Rich. I’m sorry—you’ll probably yell at me later for this. But to quote Rich, he often says, “Ask not what AI can do for you, but what you can do with AI.” I think you can ask that question in a very meaningful and impactful way if you are an empowered user of your own mind and you are able to incorporate this kind of co-intelligence into your practice.

Tom Vander Ark: When I bought the book, I was excited. But when I saw the punchline, I stood up and cheered because the subtitle—How Anyone Can Create Breakthrough Solutions to Real Problems in the Real World—is so powerful.

I’ve sort of taken that on as my personal mission, and I actually think it’s the new mission for education, particularly secondary and post-secondary education. I think they are now about the business of inviting young people to create breakthrough solutions to real problems, working in diverse teams, using smart tools.

So, it’s an exciting premise. It just feels super timely.

Rich Braden: Oh, thank you. I’d say welcome to the movement, I suppose, because I think that’s a lot of what we hope happens with this—that this opens the door for anyone who is interested and wants to pursue a more creative way of solving problems. We’ve seen it in such a wide range of applications.

In fact, if I could take it down to the “anyone,” I have worked with K-6 students on a design project before. We paired up the kindergartners and the second graders and the fourth graders, and then the first, third, and fifth into teams so they could work together and help each other. They came up with incredible creative solutions.

In one case, they interviewed the teacher to talk about their morning routine between when they wake up and getting to school. One of the creative ideas that came out of that was they heard the teacher was rushed in the morning and needed a little bit more time. So, they invented a 13-hour clock so the teacher had more time in the morning. It gave them a little extra time in their day. I love the unboundedness of that kind of creativity. There’s a grain of truth in it—if we all just agreed to split the day into slightly shorter minutes, we could fit 13 into our standard day. We’d all have shorter meetings, and there might be some real wisdom coming from those kindergartners.

Understanding Innovation Mindsets

Tom Vander Ark: I love that. In a lot of ways, Tessa, I want to come back to something that you talked about—inviting people to think about how they use their minds, their mindset. That’s a big part of your book. Section two of the book dives into this idea of innovation mindset. I guess I was surprised to see that’s really the biggest section of the book, and it’s outlined with alliteration—I love that. Interactions, insight, idea, iteration, inspiration, implications. But talk about why a mindset is so important for innovation.

Tessa Forshaw: Yeah, so mindsets have been an area of psychology that’s been around for a long time. The most famous that I think a lot of people have heard of, especially in education, would be growth mindset or fixed mindset. While the most famous and incredibly fantastic, it’s certainly not the only mindset that you can have.

I like to say that, you know, when you go to Costco, if you have an “I need to get out of here in 20 minutes” mindset, what happens in your experience of exploring Costco is very different than if you enter with an “I have two hours to spend here” mindset. So, mindsets guide your attention and perception.

In the 20-minute example, you might go looking exactly for what you need in exactly the places where you know it is, in the fastest route, and making choices to go around people. But in the two-hour mindset, you have, “Oh, that looks shiny. I’m going to see this. What’s everyone looking at over there? I wonder if this tastes good.” So, mindsets guide our attention and perception mechanisms. They also influence our decision-making, our choices, and our actions. There’s been a lot of really great research on them, especially in areas like weight loss or exercise habits. Different types of mindsets result in different outcomes.

When we were looking at a way to teach creative problem-solving in a comprehensive fashion, we looked at 80 different design thinking, innovation, and creative problem-solving frameworks that were out there. After we’d read through, I want to say about two-thirds of them, we sort of got together and were like, “Hang on. These all seem to be trying to invoke a way of having you see and engage the world.” And I was like, “Yeah, like a mindset.” That really inspired Rich and me to dive deep into this concept of mindsets and their application here.

The notion is that in innovation, you need to choose the mindset that you need at the time that you need it. That will help determine what you choose to pay attention to, what decisions you make, what you notice, what choices you make, etc. Ultimately, by learning that skill of “What mindset do I need to put on at what time?” you are able to be a little bit more innovation-ish.

Tom Vander Ark: Yeah, I love that. It reminds me a little bit of, in K-12, Ted Sizer and Debbie Meyer introduced the idea of habits of mind—a set of habits that they would invite students to think about and to take on a particular habit of reflection or presentation. Later on, you talk about metacognition, but I think teams could use your mindsets in the same way—calling a community into a mindset. That could be a class, it could be a project team, it could be a company where a leader calls them into a mindset for the purpose of a particular task. Is that one way you could use these, Rich?

Applying Mindsets in Teams

Rich Braden: That’s how they work. One of the most exciting things is it’s akin to De Bono’s six thinking hats as well. You can take a mindset on to embody it, and then you can change that to a different one. In fact, I think it’s helpful to have them explicit so that when you have teammates, you’re all in the same mindset at the same time.

For instance, often going to Costco, my wife and I have different mindsets, and that causes friction because she’s trying to get out in 20 minutes, and I’m trying to take two hours. That same thing happens in a design team where I’m trying to ideate, but Tessa is still trying to pull out the insights of what we know to figure out what the problem is. That doesn’t mix well. So aligning and having that terminology is really nice. We can all take on any mindset.

Tom Vander Ark: So, Rich, I’m going to try this with my wife. Next time we go to Costco, I’m going to say, “I’d like to invite you into an idea mindset, maybe an inspiration mindset.”

Rich Braden: Oh, an iteration mindset where you prototype and test things is great for Costco because, “Why don’t we just try this this time?” You end up with a lot more in your cart.

Tom Vander Ark: This is really interesting, Tessa. That’s another sort of random connection, but I’ve come to think of the work of educational leadership as being a conversation host and an agreement crafter—calling in the question and hosting a conversation, and then being creative about how you bring a community to agreement. These are things that we don’t typically teach in graduate ed leader courses, but it strikes me that having these mindsets as a toolset and being a community conversation facilitator could be really helpful—framing certain portions of the conversation around insight and ideas and iteration. Do you buy that these could be useful in a community leadership role?

Tessa Forshaw: Absolutely. We’ve actually had some feedback from some of our students who took the class several years ago. We ran a session recently where we got together to share with them the book and what has changed and what it looks like today. One of them said to me, “You know, in my workplace right now, my team uses your mindsets all the time.” I was like, “Oh, that’s exciting. How do you use them?” He said exactly like what you just said. “We have a meeting, and then we name what mindset we need for the meeting. So this is a meeting about Project X—everybody bring your inspirations mindset. Everybody bring your implications mindset.” They use it as a way to say, “Hey, this is the posture that I need you to show up to this meeting today.” I thought that was a really fascinating, practical way that is being used in a business in the middle of the country right now.

Tom Vander Ark: I love that. The mindset section of the book is super helpful. A lot of cool examples in there. Rich, the third part of the book is on these innovation moves. What are those?

Shorts Content

Innovation Moves: Beyond Rigid Frameworks

Tom Vander Ark: So, Rich, the third part of the book is on these innovation moves. What are those?

Rich Braden: If you are in an innovation mindset, moves are the actions you take—the behaviors that the mindset is guiding. Very simply, like in chess, you make a different move, and you don’t know how the game is going to go. You make different moves each game, but you have a set of moves.

The same way, every person with any background in anything—an experience, a hobby, a degree, a class—you get a set of moves that you can do. By putting those together, by changing mindsets, you are deciding and laying out the process by which you do creative problem-solving. Many of the frameworks that we saw in those 80 start with moves and give you sequences and recipes of moves without the mindset piece.

If you happen to pick a problem that aligns with the way they solved it when they laid those moves out, that’s a great thing. It’s kind of like if you have a map, and it is the best map in the world of New York City, but you happen to be in Yosemite Valley. That map is not very useful to you, and you’re not going to get very far. So, laying out your own map—learning how to navigate and orient yourself with picking your own moves—is the way that works.

There are many great design moves that you can get in design classes or innovation classes, but they’re far from the only ones. I think the most exciting thing is everybody’s already filled with great moves they can use if they use the mindsets. That’s part of why we say anyone can create breakthrough solutions—because you can just use the tools that you already have.

Tom Vander Ark: I really appreciate this. For, I don’t know, 15 years, I’ve been arguing that every learning community should have a structured problem-solving approach. Maybe that’s design thinking, maybe it’s computational thinking. But the community ought to have a common way of attacking big problems, complex problems, and less structured problems.

I guess what this section of the book helped me appreciate is kind of the movement that we’ve seen at the d.school. Ten years ago, they had a pretty religious view of how you walk through design thinking. I think you and they have moved to a more dynamic place where there’s a set of strategies—modular components—that can be built into what you call moves that are appropriate for a dynamic context. So, this is sort of the next version of design thinking, right?

Rich Braden: I think that’s right on track. I think what happened was, as it got more popular, people tended to proceduralize and narrow what design thinking was. I think it was always there in how it was taught.

Tom Vander Ark: Maybe more brittle and less flexible, less applicable to contexts, which at the same time are becoming more dynamic and more complex.

Rich Braden: It does make it simpler to teach and to practice, but unfortunately, in that simplicity, you lose something, and it becomes rote. In the last 10 years, many articles were written about how design thinking doesn’t work. If you read those articles as a practitioner, what they’re describing—of course it doesn’t work. It doesn’t look like what we perceive design thinking to be.

I think that’s that dissonance and why we wanted to come out with something that is inclusive of design thinking and inclusive of the IDEO.org process and the name-a-consulting-company innovation practice. What we’re talking about includes them all. They all have great moves in them. It’s the more dogmatic approach to “this is the way that you must do it” that I think is where it falls down. All of the moves are a forcing function to get you into a mindset.

Tom Vander Ark: Thank you. That’s super helpful. Tessa, you can pile on that subject, but I’d love to have you just talk about activating section five. What is that? Why is it the important culmination?\

Activating Through Metacognition

Tessa Forshaw: So, what Rich just said—you have the mindsets, and then you have the moves. But the most important component to me—and I say that with bias as a cognitive scientist—is definitely the metacognition. It’s through the act of being metacognitive that you’re able to determine what you need to do, when, and why you need to do it.

You can also assess if what you just did worked or not. Did you get the result you expected? Are you bringing bias in? Are you preferencing some confirmation bias voices over others? What are you doing? How are you making sense of your thinking, feeling, actions, and behaviors?

Honestly, I think one of the challenges I have with processes—design processes—and I say this as someone who was first evangelized into design through a process myself, and actually I was…

Tessa Forshaw: Honestly, I think one of the challenges that I have with processes—design processes—and I say this as someone who was first evangelized into design through a process myself, and actually I was a huge fan of it—is that they can be very prescriptive. They can be very rigid. They can be very step-by-step, and they can be very linear.

But the reality is that innovation is messy. It’s nonlinear. It’s iterative. It’s dynamic. It requires you to be able to adapt and adjust and be flexible. And so, the metacognition piece is really about helping people develop the skills to be able to navigate that messiness, to be able to navigate that complexity, and to be able to make sense of it in a way that allows them to move forward.

So, activating is really about helping people develop the skills to be able to do that. It’s about helping them develop the skills to be able to think about their thinking, to be able to reflect on their actions, to be able to make sense of their experiences, and to be able to use that to inform their future actions. It’s about helping them develop the skills to be able to navigate the complexity and the messiness of innovation in a way that allows them to be successful.

Tom Vander Ark: I love that. It feels like this is the culmination of the book. It’s the piece that ties everything together. It’s the piece that makes everything else work. It’s the piece that allows people to take the mindsets and the moves and actually put them into practice in a way that is meaningful and impactful.

Tessa Forshaw: Exactly. It’s the piece that allows people to take the mindsets and the moves and actually put them into practice in a way that is meaningful and impactful. It’s the piece that allows people to be able to navigate the complexity and the messiness of innovation in a way that allows them to be successful. It’s the piece that allows people to be able to think about their thinking, to be able to reflect on their actions, to be able to make sense of their experiences, and to be able to use that to inform their future actions.

Tom Vander Ark: Thank you, Tessa. Rich, any final thoughts on activating and the importance of metacognition in the innovation process?

Rich Braden: I think Tessa said it beautifully. I would just add that metacognition is really about being intentional. It’s about being intentional about your thinking, about your actions, about your decisions, and about your choices. It’s about being intentional about how you approach problems, how you approach challenges, and how you approach opportunities. It’s about being intentional about how you use your mindsets and your moves to navigate the complexity and the messiness of innovation in a way that allows you to be successful.

Tom Vander Ark: Thank you, Rich. Thank you, Tessa. This has been an incredible conversation. I think your book, Innovation-ish: How Anyone Can Create Breakthrough Solutions to Real Problems in the Real World, is going to be a game-changer for so many people. It’s going to help them develop the skills and the mindsets they need to be successful in the innovation process. It’s going to help them navigate the complexity and the messiness of innovation in a way that allows them to be successful. It’s going to help them be able to think about their thinking, to be able to reflect on their actions, to be able to make sense of their experiences, and to be able to use that to inform their future actions. Thank you both for sharing your insights and your expertise with us today.

Tessa Forshaw: Thank you so much for having us. It’s been a pleasure.

Rich Braden: Thank you, Tom. It’s been great to be here.

Guest Bio

Rich Braden

Rich Braden is the founder of People Rocket LLC, a strategic innovation firm based in San Francisco. With over 15 years of academic experience, Rich is a recognized thought leader in design thinking, leadership, and innovation. He is a design educator teaching at renowned institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University, Aalto University, and London Business School, helping shape future leaders. As CEO of People Rocket, he works with clients such as Airbnb, Google, the United Nations, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and the Red Cross to drive strategic innovation and responsible AI solutions. Rich holds degrees in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dr Tessa Forshaw

As a founding scholar of the Next Level Lab at HarvardUniversity, Tessa specializes in using cognitive science to explore how people best work, learn, and innovate. She draws upon her academic research as a cognitive scientist and extensive background as a former designer at IDEO CoLAb and Accenture to turn the cognitive processes involved in design, creativity, and innovation into practical insights that can be applied in the flow of work. These insights are also the foundations of what she teaches as a design educator at Stanford University and now Harvard University. Recognized for her impactful design projects, Tessa is the recipient of multiple design awards: a Fast Company Design Award for General Excellence, two Core77 Industrial Design Magazine Design Awards, and the Australian American Chamber of Commerce Innovation Awards.

Links

• Watch the full video here
• LinkedIn | Tessa Forshaw
• LinkedIn | Rich Braden
• Innovationish