Natalie Nixon

Speaker Natalie Nixon, PhD is a design strategist and a hybrid thinker. At Figure 8 Thinking, LLC she helps organizations accelerate innovation and growth by developing meaningful strategy through design thinking and ethnographic research.  She applies her diverse background in service design, anthropology and fashion, to help clients with culture transformation, leadership development, ideation sessions and envisioning labs.

Speaker Natalie Nixon is a Fellow at the Paris d.School and a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in social innovation and design for social impact and a Senior Advisor at Econsult Solutions. She is the Founding Director of the Strategic Design MBA program at Philadelphia University where she was a professor in design strategy and fashion management.

Natalie is a published author: the editor of Strategic Design Thinking: Innovation in Products, Services, Experiences and Beyond and a regular contributor to INC.com online magazine on creativity and design thinking.  Her public speaking invitations have included the Business Innovation Factory, 360 Possibles (Saint Malo, France), Creative Mornings, TEDx Philadelphia, The Copenhagen Institute for Interactive Design, The European Innovation Academy (Nice, France), SEB Bank (Tallinn,Estonia), FUSE and the Mayo Clinic’s Transform conference.

She serves on the boards of the Alumni Association of Vassar College, the Philadelphia Art Commission and Leadership+Design.

Natalie earned her BA (Honors: Cum Laude) from Vassar College with a double major in Anthropology and Africana Studies; an MS in Global Textile Marketing from Philadelphia University (USA), Shenkar College (Israel) & Reutlingen University (Germany); and a PhD in Design Management from the University of Westminster, London.

Making Innovation Stick in A Hybrid Work World: Activate the 3i’s

“Creativity is the engine for innovation.” -Natalie Nixon

What exactly does “working in the office” mean in our post-pandemic world? There are lots of opportunities to reframe collaboration, teaming and leadership to yield the best innovation and meaningful work. The place to start is by applying Natalie Nixon’s 3i Creativity™ framework: inquiry, improvisation and intuition. In this talk, Natalie shares examples and tactical methods to boost critical skills in our new working world of blurred boundaries.

Creativity & Leadership: Getting Buy-In Through Empathy & Curiosity

“Curiosity is the new currency.” — Natalie Nixon

The businesses and organizations that lead with inquiry and empathy are ultimately the most innovative. Integrating design thinking, lean and agile methods are a few ways to do this. That’s because curiosity and empathic leadership are rooted in open, growth mindsets. They also generate collaborative work environments and lead to building customer-centered products and services. In this session, Natalie Nixon shares the major and practical business outcomes that are directly tied to inquiry-based leadership.

The Future of Work: The 4 Shifts Your Organization Must Make…Now!

“The best algorithms will still depend on humans asking a better question.” — Natalie Nixon

The future of work will require more than a familiarity with virtual reality, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics. It will require people with a heightened creative capacity.

In the 4th industrial revolution where cloud technology, automation and cryptocurrency are realities, boundaries between technology and humans have completely blurred. Now more than ever, the human quotient and the creativity are critical business assets. In this session, Natalie Nixon offers provocative ways to embrace the future of work and outlines 4 shifts every organization must make to be nimble and adaptive.

Adapt & Disrupt: Getting Excellent at Change

“Plans are fiction. They haven’t happened yet. Learn to improvise.” — Natalie Nixon

We all know that the only constant in life is change; yet we don’t design adaptive organizations. Most companies are disrupted because they do not know what business they are actually in and what their customers really need. This session will lead you through principles of improvisation and the key questions your leadership should be able to answer and then use to assist teams and employees.

Innovation IQ: How to Master the 3 Drivers to Stay Out Front & Lead

“The more diverse the inputs, the more innovative the output.” — Natalie Nixon

Business management guru, Peter Drucker, was famous for having written that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” He was right. Unfortunately, most companies only pay attention to organization culture when it’s too late in the game. In this session, Natalie Nixon will leave you with tips for developing the 3 tenets of culture—people, process and place—to design an organizational culture that is primed for innovation and a prosperous future state.