Ideo Case Study

Case Study Analysis: IDEO Product Development

The business model for IDEO began as an open-minded place

to design, develop and manufacture new products. The last
20 years of proven product design driven by innovation has
translated into profit margins for their clients and continuous
refinement for IDEO’s process. IDEO pioneered “concurrent
engineering” where design and engineering work together to
produce aesthetically pleasing products that are also highly
functional. This was different from many other similar
companies that placed more emphasis on the industrial
design than the engineering. IDEO’s strengths grew out of the
ability to master this ability with high tech clients.
Corporations came to IDEO because they had a proven
system of developing the best products through using their
key ingredients for innovative strategy. 

IDEO was riding on the success of the Palm Pilot, which at the
time had become the fastest selling computer product ever.
This was a marketplace with which they were familiar, having
worked on the Newton handheld earlier fro Apple. The
Newton was an example of a disruptive technology, but the
need for a truly portable handheld computer could not
outweigh the shortcomings of the technology or the value
proposition in the marketplace. Working on these types of
projects reinforced IDEO’s stature in the industry for not only
producing award winning products but also leading
consumers in to new ways of interfacing with technology.
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Ideo Methodologies
The skill abilities of team members within IDEO reflect the
company’s doctrine of open innovation and the benefit of
assembling those diverse teams. From their clients IDEO
assimilates best practices and then integrates these practices
back into their own business and process. By this
methodology IDEO is continually evolving and refining their
process. Since the process of design cannot be bottled and
typically varies from one client to the next a model of
continuous improvement keeps IDEO on the cutting...
Ideo Case Study
IDEO Case Study

1.   IDEO has a flat organization; there are no formal titles,

dress codes, organizational charts or permanent job
assignments.   The company is made up of project teams
organized around IDEO's innovation process, which is
focused on constant brainstorming and prototyping; where
no idea is a bad idea, in the early stages of a project, and trial
and error is an expectation on the journey to getting it right.  
The organization is driven by team collaboration and
performance, built around creativity, innovation, and idea
and information sharing to develop breakthrough products
and achieve customer satisfaction by understanding
customer needs and input.   It is an adhocracy of two core
groups tied together by IDEO's innovation process 1. senior
management responsible for strategic decisions, policies,
structure, and IDEO's process and 2. groups of empowered
employees working together in teams through different

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Ideo Methodologies
phases of the IDEO process. 
2. Intrinsic
psychological rewards such as achievement, challenge,
recognition, creative expression, and fun seem to be the
dominate factors motivating employees to engage in IDEO's
innovation process.   As IDEO does not have titles and
organizational charts more extrinsic rewards such as
promotions and money are not what are drawing the
employees to work for a company like IDEO.   As said in the
case, being asked to participate in a brainstorming session is
actually the fun part of the job and it is seen as a sign of
being valued.
3. I would recommend that IDEO try to persuade
Handspring's management to go back to their original spring
2000 launch.   It took 2 years to complete the Palm V and
even with this experience Boyle would prefer 20 months for
product development instead of the current 10 months the
late 1999 launch would require.   A spring 2000 launch would
be a compromise, giving the IDEO team 16 months for
product development.   Even with the experience from
completing the Palm V, 16 months would still...

IDEO is a design consultancy firm based in California, US with

offices across the globe. Design consultancy firms are usually
associated with product design and most of their clients
included auto, electronics, and other manufacturing
industries. 

IDEO had developed an innovative business model that could

be used to design or redesign products as well as services to
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Ideo Methodologies
provide more value to the end user. It developed a design
process where they used techniques like brain storming,
body storming, prototyping, and testing to arrive at a
solution for the clients' problems.
IDEO actively involved their clients in the design process and
willingly taught them how to develop an innovative culture in
their organizations unlike other consultancy firms which did
not usually reveal their approach towards designing a
solution. IDEO had an employee friendly work culture with no
hierarchy and used the concept of hot-teams. It encouraged
teams to help each other in designing innovative solutions
and strongly recommended using techniques like cross
pollination.

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Ideo Methodologies