Creative Confidence Podcast

We have more information than any generation in history. And we're more anxious about the future than ever. So what's going wrong?
In this episode, Mina Seetharaman talks with Simone Stolzoff, journalist, author, TED speaker, and former IDEO Design Lead, about why certainty is so seductive, how our hunger for it quietly gets us into trouble, and what it actually looks like to build uncertainty tolerance as a skill.
Simone's new book, How to Not Know, draws on years of reporting to examine the three certainty traps that hold leaders back—comfort, hubris, and control—and offers practical tools for anyone navigating hard decisions, unclear direction, or rapid change. Together, Mina and Simone explore why the most resilient leaders are the ones willing to say "I don't know," how to make decisions when the path isn't clear, and a concept called ghost ships that reframes what it means to choose.
This is one of several conversations on uncertainty coming to the Creative Confidence Podcast this year. Subscribe to catch them all.
Related Resources:
How to Not Know, by Simone Stolzoff — https://simonestolzoff.com/how-to-not-know
Simone Stolzoff on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-stolzoff-5a16b648/
Simone’s Harvard Business Review article: Leaders, It’s Time to Build Your Tolerance for Uncertainty — https://hbr.org/2026/01/leaders-its-time-to-build-your-tolerance-for-uncertainty
Read the blog recap — key ideas from this episode, plus five things to put into practice. ideou.com/blogs/inspiration
IDEO U All-Access Pass — unlimited access to IDEO U’s on-demand courses. https://www.ideou.com/products/human-ai-leadership-self-paced-course
Subscribe to the Creative Confidence Podcast — new episodes on creativity, leadership, and innovation every other week. ideou.com/pages/creative-confidence-podcast
In This Episode:
(Timestamps are approximate due to ad breaks)
(00:00) Welcome and introducing Simone Stolzoff
(03:21) From The Good Enough Job to How to Not Know — the thread between his two books
(05:48) Why uncertainty feels like a threat — the biology behind it
(09:37) Rowing through the fog — what Simone learned at IDEO
(12:17) Why certainty has a narrowing effect on creativity
(15:12) Commitment in spite of doubt — the Rollo May quote
(16:19) The Slack origin story — how Stuart Butterfield trusted his uncertainty
(18:20) Standing on a mountain peak — why you have to descend before you can go higher
(18:42) The three certainty traps: comfort, hubris, and control
(22:38) The AI prediction that aged poorly — Geoffrey Hinton and the radiologists
(25:05) More information, more anxiety — why our phones aren't helping
(30:17) The loss of friction — what we give up when we reach for our phones
(34:09) How to actually build uncertainty tolerance
(37:27) Microdosing the unknown — why small experiments rewire the brain
(42:13) Busting the algorithm — the explore-exploit tradeoff explained
(44:51) How to say "I don't know" without losing the room
(45:40) What Brian Chesky did when Airbnb's entire business shut down overnight
(49:11) Ghost ships and how to let go of the lives you didn't choose
(54:03) The difference between one-way and two-way door decisions
(56:32) What to do when you're in the middle of something genuinely hard
(57:17) Lightning round
(57:38) High Maintenance on HBO
(58:30) Brian Eno on originality
(59:02) Learning salsa dancing
(59:32) The skill of asking questions
(59:52) Leaving the Atlantic for IDEO — the mistake that wasn't
(01:00:38) Always eat the cookie
(01:01:40) Advice for a younger self
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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.

Angela Kochoska, Design Researcher and Data Scientist at IDEO and co-instructor in IDEO U's new course, Human-Centered Research with AI, joins Mina to answer your questions on how to responsibly and effectively use AI in the research process.
After her co-instructor Hannah Rosenfeld’s episode on using AI in human-centered research, our audience had so many great questions. We dedicated an entire episode to answering them.
How do you stop AI from flattening nuance? How do you know when you've outsourced your thinking instead of augmenting it? When does AI-assisted synthesis become a real insight, and when doesn't it? What does good prompting actually look like in a research context?
Angela brings a perspective that's rare: she came to design research from a PhD in astrophysics and years building machine learning models for NASA and the European Space Agency. She knows how LLMs actually work, and she also knows why the conversation you have with your team in a coffee shop after a field interview still produces insights no model can replicate.
If you haven't heard Hannah's episode yet, it's a great place to start. If you have, this is the conversation that goes deeper into the questions it raised.
Angela teaches Human-Centered Research with AI alongside Hannah Rosenfeld at IDEO U. Find details and enroll at ideou.com.
Related Resources:
Angela Kochoska on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-kochoska/
Hannah Rosenfeld's episode: https://shows.acast.com/creative-confidence-podcast/episodes/how-to-use-ai-for-more-human-centered-research-hannah-rosenf
Human-Centered Research with AI — IDEO U Course: https://www.ideou.com/products/human-centered-research-ai
Read the episode recap on the IDEO U blog: https://www.ideou.com/blog
In This Episode:
(Timestamps are approximate due to ad breaks)
(02:07) From NASA sky surveys to design research — Angela's unlikely path to IDEO
(06:57) What building the course with Hannah unlocked, including a new way to think about AI bias
(13:18) Q&A: How do you tell a real insight apart from an AI-generated pattern?
(16:11) Q&A: How do you stop AI from flattening nuance and overstating confidence?
(22:37) Q&A: Is it self-serving to say AI makes humans more important? How to address the skepticism
(26:09) Q&A: How do you know when you've crossed into outsourcing your thinking to AI?
(32:12) Q&A: What does good prompting actually look like in a research context?
(34:35) Q&A: How do you move from AI-generated insights to meaningful human-centered decisions?
(44:51) Q&A: What AI tools do you actually use? (Claude, Perplexity, NotebookLM, SciSpace)
(51:41) Q&A: How do you protect the depth and specificity that makes your research valuable?
(57:07) Q&A: My organization is skeptical of AI — how do I show its value?
(1:03:30) Lightning round: Angela recommends Always Coming Home, James Bridle, crochet, "Don't forget to look up,” and more.
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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.

AI is changing what it means to be a researcher. But most teams are only using it one way—to go faster. In this episode, Hannah Rosenfeld, Executive Design Researcher at IDEO, shares a framework for using AI intentionally across your research process: not just to move faster, but to see more, ask bigger questions, and do things you couldn't do before.
Hannah teaches these ideas and more in IDEO U's new course, Human-Centered Research with AI. If this conversation resonates, the course is where you can go deeper and apply the framework to your own work. The first cohort starts May 21 at ideou.com.
Related Resources:
Hannah Rosenfeld on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-rosenfeld-86805940/
Human-Centered Research with AI — IDEO U Course: https://www.ideou.com/products/human-centered-research-ai
Read the episode recap on the IDEO U blog: https://www.ideou.com/blog
In This Episode:
(Timestamps are approximate due to ad breaks)
(02:16) AI Doesn't Change the Principles of Good Research — It Expands the Definition
(05:04) A Framework for Using AI in Research: The Intersection of Speed and Scale
(09:28) Mode 1: Widen Your Aperture — Use AI to Take In More
(13:01) Mode 2: Notice Nuance — Use AI to See Deeper, Not Just Wider
(19:49) Why Bias Isn't the Problem — Unexamined Bias Is
(21:23) Mode 3: Challenge Your Assumptions — Use AI to Interrogate Your Thinking
(27:50) The Case for Productive Friction — Why Speed Can Work Against You
(29:54) Mode 4: Immerse Yourself in Data — Use AI to Bring Your Thinking to Life
(32:41) Building a Living Research Brain Your Team Can Query for Months
(38:00) How to Sum Up the Framework: Strategic Use Cases, Not Just Efficient Ones
(40:53) The Skills AI Can't Replace: Why Human Judgment Matters More, Not Less
(43:10) Q&A: Moving from AI-Generated Patterns to Human-Centered Decisions
(43:50) Q&A: Can AI Turn a Non-Researcher into a Serious Researcher?
(45:14) Lightning Round: Hannah on Asking Better Questions, Fewer Things, and Perpetual Stew
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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 organizations don’t fail because their ideas are wrong. They fail because the systems underneath those ideas aren’t designed to support them. In this episode, Mina Seetharaman speaks with Clay Parker Jones, Director of Organizational Design at Airbnb and author of Hidden Patterns, about six things you can do to build a more agile, adaptable, and human-centered organization.
Related Resources:
Hidden Patterns, by Clay Parker Jones: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Hidden-Patterns/Clay-Parker-Jones/9781637748589
Clay’s website and pattern library: https://www.cpj.fyi/
Designing for Change online course with IDEO U: https://www.ideou.com/products/designing-for-change
Read the episode recap on the IDEO U blog: https://www.ideou.com/blog
__________

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.

Tension on your team isn’t always a problem to solve. In fact, it’s often a signal you’re doing meaningful work.
In this replay episode, bestselling author Daniel Coyle (The Culture Code) shares how the most successful teams channel friction into forward motion, instead of avoiding it. Drawing on research and real-world examples from places like Pixar, the Navy SEALs, and professional sports, Daniel breaks down how tension can become a powerful source of energy, learning, and innovation.
In this conversation, you’ll learn:
Why conflict and disagreement are essential for high-performing teams
The key moments that shape team culture early on
How vulnerability builds trust (and why leaders need to go first)
A simple framework for turning tension into productive experimentation
How storytelling helps reinforce and scale strong team behaviors
This episode offers practical ways to rethink how your team approaches friction. If this topic resonates, explore more episodes on healthy friction and creative tension with guests like Ben Swire, Mike Peng, Heather Currier Hunt, Takashi Wickes, and Bob Sutton.

Related resources:
The Culture Code, by Daniel Coyle: https://danielcoyle.com/the-culture-code/
Cultivating Creative Collaboration online course with IDEO U, taught by IDEO CEO Mike Peng: https://www.ideou.com/products/cultivating-creative-collaboration
Read the episode recap on the IDEO U blog: https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/how-great-teams-leverage-tension-as-a-source-for-innovation
__________

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.