Ideo

Executive Summary:

IDEO is a company which develops designs and manufactures products for different types of companies and organizations wishing to sell their products and position themselves in markets to attract high clients’ base and revenues. IDEO was born in 1991 and according to previous statistics now employs over 300 staff members throughout several locations including Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, London, Palo Alto, Grand Rapids, New York, Milan, Tel Aviv and Tokyo. Some of the company’s most famous clients include Apple, AT&T, Samsung, Phillips, Steelcase, Amtrak, Baxter International and NEC Corp. Company has implemented and developed hundreds of projects thus far. Within these hundreds of developed project was the Palm V project requested from the company 3Com in 1996. 3Com’s managers had an idea and vision to create a handheld product which would provide users with all the tools and applications for everyday business and personal operations in one place. IDEO was identified as the suitable project development company and was given a mandate to develop Palm V in line with the 3 Com’s demands. As expected IDEO developed a top of the line Palm V product and distributed it to 3Com for further distribution to customers. Soon after Palm V’s popularity spread, another company called Handspring approached IDEO to develop a device called Visor which would eliminate the problems Palm V presented to users and provide them with a device that is more in line with their financial capabilities. The idea and concept of Visor was presented to IDEO along with deadlines and demands. It was the deadlines that automatically signaled a red flag to IDEO. Handspring wanted to distribute the Visor to the stores by the end of the year which left very little time for the product’s development, testing and validation. IDEO was left to decide to either accept or decline the development of Visor. The time factor bothered IDEO since in this very short period of...