Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm

IDEO, the world's leading design firm, is the brain trust that's
behind some of the more brilliant innovations of the past 20 years--
from the Apple mouse, the Polaroid i-Zone instant camera, and the
Palm V to the "fat" toothbrush for kids and a self-sealing water
bottle for dirt bikers. Not surprisingly, companies all over the
world have long wondered what they could learn from IDEO, to come
up with better ideas for their own products, services, and operations.
In this terrific book from IDEO general manager Tom Kelley (brother
of founder David Kelley), IDEO finally delivers--but thankfully not
in the step-by-step, flow-chart-filled "process speak" of most how-
you-can-do-what-we-do business books. Sure, there are some good
bulleted lists to be found here--such as the secrets of successful
brainstorming, the qualities of "hot teams," and, toward the end,
10 key ingredients for "How to Create Great Products and Services,"
including "One Click Is Better Than Two" (the simpler, the better)
and "Goof Proof" (no bugs).

But The Art of Innovation really teaches indirectly (not to mention
enlightens and entertains) by telling great stories--mainly, of how
the best ideas for creating or improving products or processes come
not from laboriously organized focus groups, but from keen
observations of how regular people work and play on a daily basis.

On nearly every page, we learn the backstories of some now-well-
established consumer goods, from recent inventions like the Palm
Pilot and the in-car beverage holder to things we nearly take for
granted--like Ivory soap (created when a P&G worker went to lunch
without turning off his soap mixer, and returned to discover his
batch overwhipped into 99.44 percent buoyancy) and Kleenex, which
transcended its original purpose as a cosmetics remover when people
started using the soft paper to wipe and blow their noses.

Best of all, Kelley opens wide the doors to IDEO's vibrant,
sometimes wacky office environment, and takes us on a vivid tour
of how staffers tackle a design challenge: they start not with
their ideas of what a new product should offer, but with the
existing gaps of need, convenience, and pleasure with which people
live on a daily basis, and that IDEO should fill. (Hence, a one-
piece children's fishing rod that spares fathers the embarrassment
of not knowing how to teach their kids to fish, or Crest toothpaste
tubes that don't "gunk up" at the mouth.)

Granted, some of their ideas--like the crucial process of
"prototyping," or incorporating dummy drafts of the actual product
into the planning, to work out bugs as you go--lend themselves more
easily to the making of actual things than to the more common
organizational challenge of streamlining services or operations.

But, if this big book of bright ideas doesn't get you thinking of
how to build a better mousetrap for everything from your whole
business process to your personal filing system, you probably
deserve to be stuck with the mousetrap you already have. --Timothy
Murphy

Download File Size:617.69 MB

---