Amazon Fmr Product Director on Building Creative Confidence and Propelling Breakthrough Ideas

How is creative confidence important in product leadership? Product leaders often underestimate their creativity, leaving the design responsibility to others they deem more artistic. However, this lack of confidence in their creative abilities can limit their ability to approach challenges or leverage technology in new and innovative ways. With the rise of Generative AI, fostering human creativity in the workplace is more important than ever. Collaborating with Generative AI tools, whether crafting a prompt or deciding what is relevant and valuable in the output, requires imagination, forethought, and creativity. In this webinar, Amazon Fmr Product Director Leslie Grandy will share insights on how to disrupt linear thinking, bust biases, and enhance customer, business, and personal outcomes.

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Show Notes:

1. Creativity is a critical skill for product leaders, especially with the rise of generative AI.
2. The speaker, Leslie Grandi, is an experienced product leader who has worked at top brands like Amazon, Apple, and T-Mobile.
3. The webinar focuses on boosting creative confidence and leveraging it to challenge biases and unlock new opportunities.
4. Creativity is often overlooked as a skill for product leaders, but it’s more important than ever.
5. Leslie struggled to find her creative medium as a child, which crushed her creative confidence.
6. Problem-solving and the ability to figure things out became Leslie’s superpower in her career.
7. Generative AI can provide inspiration, but humans need to bring meaning, emotion, and discernment to make the ideas valuable.
8. Key elements for building creative muscle include motivation, self-awareness, flexibility, and regular practice.
9. Techniques like the alternative use test, combinational/combinatorial thinking, and analogical thinking can boost creativity.
10. Inversion thinking (premeditation of evils) can help design solutions to avoid the worst-case scenarios.
11. Finding flow states through activities like showering or walking in nature can spark creative insights.
12. Practical exercises like the New York Times Connections puzzle and six-word stories can develop creative skills.
13. Habit stacking and managing emotional reactions are important for preserving creative capacity.
14. Failure should be analyzed, not feared, as it provides valuable learning opportunities.
15. As a leader, Leslie’s unconscious creative behaviors had a bigger impact than her conscious ones.
16. Leslie’s book-writing journey proved the value of a collaborative, iterative creative process.
17. Generative AI can be a useful tool, but requires human discernment and oversight to ensure meaningful output.
18. Developing creative confidence and velocity is crucial for product leaders in today’s rapidly evolving landscape.
19. Leslie will be launching a Maven course and publishing a book to further explore these topics.