Theory and Practice of Innovation

 

Theme

How does Kelley's IDEO innovation design process inform the nature of innovation? How can you use it to solve real problems in the real world of products and processes? In particular, what is the role of the anthropologist in IDEO's innovation process, and innovation in general?

 

Overiew

Kelley has written very good books about his work at IDEO. One of your texts for this course is The Art Innovation, in which Kelley explains how innovation happens inside IDEO. An important part of what happens is anthropology: watching people (rather than running focus groups) to see how people actually interact with the things of everyday life. What IDEO innovators observe drive their innovations.

 

In another book called The Ten Faces of Innovation, Kelley defined 10 roles that innovators can play as they pursue their ideas, such as the anthropologist, the hurdler, the experimenter, and so on. He begins the book with "the anthropologist," about whom he says the following:

 

"If I could choose just one persona (of the ten he addresses in his book), it would be the Anthropologist. I have the fervor of a convert on this one, because when I joined the tiny firm that became IDEO, there were no Anthropolgist roles...No one had yet adopted the persona that has since become the cornerstone of our work." (pg. 16)

 

He describes the Anthropologist like this:

 

"The Anthropologist brings new learning and insights into the organization by observing human behavior and developing a deep understanding of how people interact physically and emotionally with products, services and spaces. When an IDEO human-factors person camps out in a hospital room for forty-eight hours with an elderly patient undergoing surgery- as described in Chapter I- she is living the life of the Anthropologist and helping to develop new health care services." (pg. 9)

 

He begins his design projects with this activity. Team members watch, observe to learn about the issues involved a product IDEO has been asked to redesign. If it is a shopping cart, his team goes to stores where people use shopping carts, and watch how people use the cart, make notes about their frustrations, and use their own imaginations for what a shopping cart could do.

 

Read/view

In both texts for this course, Kelley's anthropologist is described very well. It permeates The Art of Innovation. In The Innovator's DNA, the authors describes Kelley's anthropologist very well. If you want to read about it in Kelley's words, then by all means buy The Ten Faces of Innovation. Or, you can read most of the chapter on The Anthropologist on Google Books. Some of the pages are missing in this chapter, and if that doesn't make you crazy, then by all means read the Google Books version. You will get the gist of what he is talking about from what is there. But as I said earlier, your other two texts also do a good job of explaining this material.

 

You are required to watch the following:

• The Deep Dive. NBC news program on IDEO's redesign of the shopping car (July 13, 1991).

 

• How to Design Breakthrough Innovations   A Charlie Rose interview with David Kelley, president to IDEO.

 

The IDEO Innovation Process

IDEO is well-respected for its approach to innovation. It is team-based and generates great ideas and prototypes in record-breaking time. IDEO has articulated its process in a number of ways, including business, education, and NGOs. Those developed for education and NGOs are adaptations of the process it uses for business. All are worth looking at.

 

IDEO process for Business

Download and read (or read on screen) IDEO - A Review of the process by Ron Moen, 10/25/2001. In 10 very clearly written pages, Moen describes the step-by-step innovation process that has made IDEO famous. You might also find this helpful: Listening Lessons- Make Consumers Part of the Design Process by Tuning In, by Paul Bennet (2006). It is a short article from Advertising Age, which emphasizes the role of listening to customers in being responsive to their needs.

 

IDEO for Education

Download (or scan on screen) and scan Design Thinking for Educators.  This is a handbook that provides, in detail, IDEO's design thinking process. It is adapted for educators, and is somewhat different than the process he uses for business customers. Yet, it is still a great, free resource. The handbook uses large lettering, a great deal of white space, lists, etc. It is very easy to scan. I leaf through it now and then just to pick up a new detail to inspire me.

 

Human Centered Design (HCD) - IDEO for Community Projects, Developing Countries

"It contains the elements to human-Centered Design, a process used for decades to create new solutions for multi-national corporations. This process has created ideas such as the heartStart defibrillator, CleanWell natural antibacterial products, and the Blood Donor System for the Red Cross—innovations that have enhanced the lives of millions of people. Now Human-Centered Design can help you enhance the lives of people living on less than $2/day. This process has been specially-adapted for organizations like yours that work with communities in need in Africa, Asia, and Latin America." Download the HCD ToolKit.

 

 

 

Activity

You will conduct an IDEO anthropology experiment. You will sit and watch someone or some group of people and identify a need for innovation, and some thoughts about how you might address it. You could be observing your family, your co-workers, shoppers in a mall - it doesn't matter. You will discuss in Moodle your observations, building on each other's insights. You will present your ideas next week.

 

Moodle Discussion

What observations have you made about a product or process from a human-centered perspective? How might you improve it?