Cfa Review Information

IDEO Product Development

Kaifeng Jin

Section1

1. How would you characterize IDEO’s process, organization, culture and management?

IDEO is a design and innovation-consulting firm that was founded in 1991 when David Kelley Design merged with two companies: ID Two, led by renowned designer Bill Moggridge, and Matrix, started by Mike Nuttall. Its Palm V program was quite successful and created new expectations for what PDAs could look like and do, while maintaining a functional simplicity.

IDEO is a flat organization to an extreme. For example, an individual could work on one large project as a principal or on as many as three to four projects as a contributor. All work is organized into project teams, which formed for the life of a project and then disbanded. Therefore, there is no permanent task or job title. There is no organization chart or title attention from the quality of the work. Project leaders often emerged on the basis of personal excitement about a project.

The culture itself reflected the importance that management attached to creating a democracy of ideas. IDEO’s culture could be described as eccentric, fun, creative and innovate. The working styles and shifting of working groups help to keep thinkers fresh and constantly on their toes. For example, Kelley felt that failure is a part of the culture, they call it enlightened trial and error, and asserted a company will never be larger than 40 people, Growing IDEO to 300 employees involved keeping each unit small.

IDEO’s management is a human-based management. IDEO’s management encouraged employees to leave their desk and walk around, especially during mental blocks. Management also sought to reward high performers through more shares in its client venture capital base.

2. Should IDEO accept the Visor project as is (on a dramatically reduced schedule)? Should they...