The Innovator's Way is hosted by Tamara Christensen, founder of the Idea Farm Co-op, and business owner for 14 years.

Tamara Christensen, PhD, is the founder of Idea Farm Co-op and a transformation designer who works at the intersection of strategy, facilitation, leadership development, and human-centered design. Her work focuses on helping leaders, facilitators, teams, and institutions navigate complexity with clarity, courage, and practical imagination.

Tamara has spent more than two decades designing and leading project-based leadership development and innovation initiatives across higher education, nonprofits, foundations, and global organizations. She is known for translating sophisticated ideas into grounded, actionable practice—supporting people not only to imagine new futures, but to build the capacity to realize them.

A core thread in Tamara’s work is learning by doing. She has designed and led project-based leadership development and innovation programs in which participants work on real challenges in real time—testing ideas, surfacing assumptions, and building the capacity to lead in ambiguity. She is the co-founder of CoCreACT® and co-author of Leading in Ambiguity, advancing practical approaches to innovation facilitation and collaborative leadership. Her work includes delivering executive education and innovation programming for the University Design Institute and Thunderbird School of Global Management, as well as facilitation, teaching, and convenings across North America, Europe, Africa, and beyond—working with diverse cultural contexts, governance structures, and systems-level challenges. Whether supporting global convenings, co-design processes, or multi-stakeholder initiatives, she brings sensitivity to context alongside strong design discipline..

Across all of her work, Tamara is guided by a simple belief: transformation happens when people are supported to think more clearly, relate more honestly, and act more intentionally—together. Clients and collaborators value her strategic insight and experience, as well as her grounded presence, generosity of spirit, and ability to meet complexity without performance or pretense.

We use innovation tools adapted for the small business owner. 

We use design thinking and innovation tools with a range of large corporate clients across diverse industries including consumer products and apparel, aerospace, power and electric, higher education, automotive, consumer package goods, consumer electronics, media, etc. These tools have helped produce successful outcomes for global Fortune 100 corporations, medium-sized businesses, government agencies, local not-for-profits and solopreneurs. We lead workshops around the globe for professionals, academics, entrepreneurs and students- leaders at all levels. We are excited to help you grow your business with creative approaches that put you and your clients at the center!