Creativity is not just about the arts – it drives world evolution. Everything we see around us is designed by a creative with an idea. Fro the clothes we wear to the car we drive, to the homes we live in, the process of inspiration, development, and producing world-changing products that make our lives easier, more efficient, and safer for our environment is a process very few people have opportunity to witness. Get a peek into the backstage of some of the world’s most innovative thinkers, and how what they are doing affect your daily living.

Vaughan Judge - Moderator

Vaughan Judge

Vaughan Judge’s work has been included in numerous international exhibitions and publications, with recent solo exhibitions in New York, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

His recent exhibitions include:

• ‘Scotland Calls’ (Boston, MA, USA)
• ‘Ritual Space’ (New York, USA)
• ‘Architecture’ (511 Gallery USA)
• ‘…Of Paradise’, (Glasgow, UK)

In 2007 his photographic work was included in Scotland’s first comprehensive history of Scottish Photography book, called ‘Scottish Photography: A History’, by Dr Tom Normand.

His work is included in the Dow Jones Corporate Collection NY, The Navigator Foundation, Boston and the Scottish Arts council Collection.

He was formally the Head of the Fine Art Photography course at the Glasgow School before taking up the position of Director of the School of Art at Montana State University. His work is represented by 511 Gallery, New York.

Vaughan Judge has a wealth of international teaching experience. He has been a visiting lecture to Art Schools such as the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, Germany, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, Holland, The Kunsthoch Schule Weissensee, Berlin, Germany, Helsinki School of Art, Helsinki, Finland, Tampera School of Art, Tampera, Finland, Edinburgh School of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Dundee School of Art, Dundee, Scotland, UK

Brendan Boyle of IDEO

Brendan Boyle

Brendan Boyle is a partner and co-Chief Creative Officer at IDEO, a leading design and innovation firm ranked independently as one of the most innovative companies in the world. Brendan’s role also has a special emphasis on entrepreneurship, both inside and outside of the company. His focus is on creating intellectual property that IDEO develops, along with promoting entrepreneurial thinking and practices throughout IDEO’s eight global offices. He is also one of IDEO’s spokesmen: he is a highly requested public speaker, and has published articles on brainstorming and innovation in the workplace on ABCnews.com.

A passion for invention drives Brendan’s additional responsibilities at IDEO; he co-founded an invention company called Skyline, which was acquired by IDEO. Under his leadership, IDEO has since licensed over 125 toy, game and consumer product concepts with leading manufacturers. In 2007, Cranium’s “Sounds By the Seashore”, designed by IDEO, was nominated for a Toy of the Year Award by the Toy Industry Foundation. In addition to his duties at IDEO, Brendan sits on the board of the non-profit National Institute for Play, where he focuses on bringing play-based techniques to innovation. He has also taught various classes in creativity and design at Stanford University as a Consulting Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Design Divsion. Currently, he teaches a class that he created in Stanford’s new d.School, called From Play to Innovation.

Joe Wilcox

Joe Wilcox

Joe joined the IDEO ToyLab in April 2007 as a Toy Inventor/Model-maker, with a focus on proprietary mechanism development.

A kinetic artist at heart, Joe attended high school at North Carolina School of the Arts and college at Rhode Island School of Design. Prior to IDEO, Joe was an Industrial Designer at NASA Johnson Space Center, designing spacecraft interiors and microgravity storage solutions for the Crew Exploration Vehicle. At the MIT Manned Vehicle Lab, Joe designed and fabricated a mockup of a new kind of spacesuit called the Biosuit, a skin-tight suit that uses mechanical counter-pressure to mimic the atmospheric pressure of Earth.

For his RISD Thesis project, Joe developed a three-wheeled vehicle that leans into turns like a motorcycle but does not require a computer or complex mechanisms to operate. His evolving design is aimed at the emerging light electric vehicle market for in-city commuting.

Prior to his formal Industrial Design training at RISD, Joe spent six seasons with the Culpepper and Merriweather Great Combined Circus as a Roustabout, stage hand, prop builder and show drummer. The C+M Circus was an old style, one-ring, Big-Top tent show that played across 27 states, in a different town each day, for 250 days in a row! If you come from some far flung corner of the west, chances are Joe has been to your town!

So far, in his time with the IDEO ToyLab, Joe has worked on several successful projects that are coming to market. Stay tuned to see more of Joe’s work coming to public light!

Jody Turner

Jody Turner

Jody Turner is an innovation advocate, creative culture researcher, connector, and lecturer. Her presentations provide strategic pictures of today’s changing world injecting compelling solution driven content and anecdotes of success through individual, community and company effort. She founded the trend strategy company CultureofFuture.com in 2003 and has started a new cultural creative V-log venture called MakeREAL.tv this year.

Evolutions in the creative culture address pivotal solution-driven concepts in compelling and engaging ways. The economic downturn has forced us to pay attention and leverage broad, inventive solutions that allow us to re-address the directions we are heading in. Jody works with company, community and country to optimize this opening, to make sure we lean in toward a creative, solutions based future.

Jody’s ‘08 and ‘09 lectures included Istanbul, Mumbai, Hong Kong, South Korea, Brazil and multiple U.S. stops.

Russ Stoddard

Russ Stoddard

Russ founded Oliver Russell, one of the country’s leading business-to-business advertising agencies. He also recently started Brand Smack, a brand strategy and design consultancy. Both companies are located in Boise, Idaho.

Russ is also a writer. His stage play, Head, was produced by Alley Repertory this past summer as a staged reading. He has also published poetry and short fiction in a number of literary journals, and his non-fiction writing has appeared in publications ranging from the Philadelphia Inquirer to Outside magazine.

Russ was born in Missoula, Montana. He has two children, one of whom, Kate, is a senior at Montana State University.