FOUNDER
TAMARA (TOM-RUH)
CHRISTENSEN, PhD
Tamara is a passionate and empathetic facilitator, trainer, researcher, speaker and author. She brings nearly 20 years of experience blending design thinking, creative problem solving, collaboration, and research to help organizations build innovation capabilities and apply them to complex business challenges. Tamara works with a range of organizations from local businesses to global Fortune 100 companies including Honeywell and 3M. She also delivers programs for the Thunderbird School of Global Management and Arizona State University. She has been described metaphorically as a glass of prosecco, a whirling dervish, and a sharpie. Tamara’s book, F-ing Innovation: Why innovation is hard and what to do about it is available on Amazon.
Our Why
COLLABORATION:
"If you want to innovate, you're going to have to collaborate." Idea Farm founder Tamara Christensen is a passionate expert in facilitating collaboration. Our key collaborators from the world help Idea Farm deliver unforgettable experiences make problem solving fun.
TRANSFORMATIONAL EMPATHY:
Our human capacity to empathize with ourselves and each other is a core strength of being human. As we allow ourselves to change and grow through human connection we build relationships and capacity to serve in a meaningful way.
COURAGEOUS CREATIVITY:
It takes courage and vulnerability to face fear- which is often the feeling of excitement for the unknown. Creative problem solving is a skill that anyone can learn and develop, especially when we are encouraged to brave our diversity and cooperate.
PLAYFUL PRODUCTIVITY:
Work shouldn't hurt. Instead, hard work can elicit feelings of joy and produce a state of "flow". We approach even the most gnarly problems with enthusiasm and an unapologetic passion for process.
Key Collaborators
KATRIN ELSTER
Head of StrategicPlay®
Hamburg, Germany
Katrin is a specialist for strategic co-creation with a strong emphasis on play. While one might be surprised that Germans are up for this, she successfully owns and runs StrategicPlay® since 2006,mainly by facilitating and training LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and CoCreACT®.Passionate about spreading creativity, especially in education, she co-founded CREA Germany e.V. with the mission to make creativity a school subject. Since she is a big supporter of learning communities, she is also co-founder and organizer of the yearly un-conferences “Play4Agile” and “Play4innovation”.
EMILY CALLAGHAN
Owner, DESIGN+
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Emily is a passionate leader who lives at the intersection of design, strategy and culture. Her experience spans brand and product development, strategy, customer experience and culture and capability building. She is a confessed lover of team and collaboration — both in building her own organizations and empowering others as they grow and evolve. Most recently a Designer in Residence at Stanford’s Institute of Design (affectionately known as the “d.school”), she worked with an incredible team to drive the future of human-centered design.She previously held senior design and innovation leadership roles in large, multi-national organizations (3M, Johnson Controls) coaching internal startups and building new-to-the-organization capabilities both in design thinking and design functions from scratch.
JENS HOFFMAN
Questioner, Thinker & Transformer
Hamburg, Germany
Being a father and serial entrepreneur, Jens finds a lot of opportunities to practice the art of constant failure, learning, and improving. He has a lot of fun experimenting with new approaches to business and life. His life is a quest to find powerful questions and surprising answers. Jens is a highly integrative thinker, combining is analytical skills and love for data with his abilities to envision and create. He co-creates with clients and their customers new products and services and is a specialist in designing and facilitating large-scale cultural change. He is a certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator, certified Creative Problem Solving Facilitator, certified Management Coach and LEAN KANBAN practitioner.
JANINE UNDERHILL
Owner, IDEA 360
Denver, Colorado
For over 16 years Janine Underhill has helped make the invisible visible. She's helped Fortune-100 clients and non-profit firms alike, create repeatable blueprints to reach important meeting outcomes, get diverse minds on-board to accomplish complex team efforts, and arrive at solidified leadership decisions based on quality discoveries.
Janine practices experiential big-picture learning modalities so meeting participants can fully engage in conversation, and tether their ideas and beliefs to the big picture of the organization.
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