Duncan Wardle

For 25 years, Duncan Wardle held one of the most coveted jobs in corporate innovation: Head of Innovation and Creativity at The Walt Disney Company, the organization that invented modern storytelling and has spent a century working to stay ahead of the expectations it created. In that role, Wardle worked alongside the creative teams behind Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars — properties that collectively define what imagination at industrial scale actually looks like — and was in the room for the decisions about how those franchises would evolve.

Inside the House of Mouse
Wardle’s work at Disney spanned theme park experiences, media strategy, brand innovation, and new product development across the company’s global divisions. He was not watching creative excellence from a distance — he was responsible for helping sustain it. The experience gave him a precise understanding of what separates organizations that generate genuine creative breakthroughs from those that merely hold workshops about them.

iDesign: Creativity as a Learnable Practice
After leaving Disney, Wardle founded iDesign, a creative education company built on the premise that creativity is not a personality trait but a teachable practice. He has since worked with organizations across dozens of industries to embed design thinking, divergent problem-solving, and the specific habits of mind that allow new ideas to survive long enough to become great ones.

Duncan Wardle keynotes on innovation and creativity, design thinking, brand experience, and building the organizational culture conditions that give new ideas a fighting chance.

Think Different

Duncan’s shares insights from his time as Head of Innovation & Creativity at Disney, providing a unique set of Innovation Tools and Techniques that everyone can use to Think Different

Embedding Innovation Into Everyone’s DNA

How do you create a culture that embraces risk and entrepreneurialism, allowing everyone to innovate? Duncan shares how he infused a culture of innovation across the world’s most creative company, Disney.

Customer Experience Magic

Transforming a product centric culture into a consumer centric one. How companies can create Customer Experience Magic by deeply understanding their consumer, transforming their culture with amazing results.