The Ideo Company Exercice

The Ideo Company Exercise.

A . Culture

1. Norms : people are not allowed to criticize an idea. People are allowed to play. Workers design their own workdesk. Work with and not for a client.

2. Values : they value ideas, teamwork, brainstorming, creativity and innovation

3. Beliefs : people need to be in a fun environment to be creative. Good innovation happens when you are in user’s shoes and not in consumer’s shoes. Pictures are better than words and prototypes are better than pictures. They don’t invent, they make better something that already exists.

B . Formal structure

1. Roles : the CEO, the team leader who is selected not on his experience within the company but for his skills, the other members of the time who do not have a defined role name, and the manufacturing department who have fixed roles.

2. Policies and procedures : the only policies and procedures existing in the company are concerning brainstorming. Some rules like « number your ideas » are made to encourage creativity by setting up goals. All the rules are made to make the brainstorming really efficient.

C . Management innovation process

Ideo’s slogan « fail often to succeed sooner ». the boss wants good ideas to be « routinely produced ». everyone in the group has to come up with new ideas and then everyones votes for the best ones.

2. what tye of people work at the Ideo company ? specifically what are the requisite employee cognitive and experiential characteristics ? are the employees at Ideo easily replaceable ; in other words could someone transfer from another company and easily fit into a « predetermined role » at Ideo ? why or why not ?

People in Ideo are eclectic. They come from different majors (biology, marketing, psychology…), have different backgrounds… They were hire because they can add value to the company because of what they are and how they think. They are not easily replaceable because they were hire for their intrinsic qualities so they would...