How Does IDEO Do It?

IDEO is one of the most successful innovators of our time. And many of my students would love to work there. Read article in Business Week, cover story May 17, 2004, that explains much about how they operate.

Their method is far more than just sitting and thinking of ideas. Note their 5 Steps for innovation and "Rules". They start by spending much time trying to understand the user and his/her needs. Emphasis is on gathering facts, analysis, visualization with sketches and quick models, and generating MANY ideas. Lots of energy, hard work, mostly done individually by the designers. They each go off and ASK, Look, Learn and TRY. Then they each bring back something to "put on the table, " so that the team can make it even better.

You can obtain your own set of IDEO Method Cards.