#36: Unlock Creativity and Drive Innovation (with Duncan Wardle, Former Head of Innovation at Disney)

What if innovation wasn't about having more resources, but about unleashing the creativity you already possess?

In this episode of World’s Greatest Business Thinkers, host Nick Hague sits down with Duncan Wardle, former Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney, to share actionable strategies for fostering innovation in any organization. From sending Buzz Lightyear to space to transforming slum lighting with water bottles, Duncan reveals practical tools, playful mindsets, and techniques like “Yes And” and “What If” to break conventional thinking. Leaders at any level will gain insights to unlock creativity, drive collaboration, and generate breakthrough ideas.

What You Will Learn:

• How to overcome the "river of thinking" that limits creativity 

• The "Yes And" framework for building collaborative ideas instead of shutting them down with "No, Because"

• Encouraging playfulness and nurturing a creative thinking environment 

• The "What If" tool for breaking rules and generating breakthrough ideas

• How to use the "Stargazer" framework to select the most promising innovative ideas

• Why intuition and empathy will become increasingly valuable skills in an AI-dominated future

• The power of asking "Why" five times to uncover true consumer insights and innovation opportunities

• How to create effective innovation processes without massive resources or budgets

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Duncan Wardle Bio:

Duncan Wardle is the former Head of Innovation & Creativity at Disney, where he led groundbreaking initiatives across Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Disney Parks. Today, he serves as an independent innovation consultant, helping organisations embed creativity and strategic innovation, and regularly contributes to Fast Company and Harvard Business Review. He teaches innovation masterclasses at Notre Dame, Stanford, and Yale, delivers inspirational keynotes worldwide, and runs workshops that combine creative ideation with actionable strategies, empowering teams to generate breakthrough ideas and measurable results.

 

Quotes:

1. "Here's the problem - when you ask a room full of adults, 'hands up who's creative,' less than 3% of them put their hands up. I wanted to create a toolkit that had three principles: take the intimidation out of innovation and make it accessible to normal, hardworking, busy people, and make creativity tangible for people uncomfortable with ambiguity. Far more important, make it fun, give people tools they choose to use when you and I are not around."

2. "When that door is shut, you're only working with your conscious brain. Do you know what percentage of your brain is conscious - 13% conscious, 87% subconscious. But when the door is shut, you don't have access to it."

3. "Stop being scared. Stop chasing quarterly results - you could iterate up to 2020, but you don't get to iterate in the post-pandemic world, you innovate or you die. The challenge is this: innovation is hard, and nobody's made it tangible, easy, and fun."

4. "Two very simple words from the world of improv that have the power to turn a small idea into a big one really quickly. You can always take a big idea and value engineer it down, but it's very hard to take a small one and turn it around the other way. Far more importantly, it transfers the power of my idea, which never goes anywhere inside an organization, to our idea and accelerates its opportunity to get done."

 

Episode Resources:

• Duncan Wardle on LinkedIn

• Ideate with Duncan Wardle Website 

• Nick Hague on LinkedIn

• World’s Greatest Business Thinkers on Apple Podcasts

• World’s Greatest Business Thinkers on Spotify

• World’s Greatest Business Thinkers on YouTube