Type Private Number of employees 600+ (2015) Founded 1991 Parent organization Steelcase | Industry Design firm Website www.ideo.com CEO Tim Brown (Aug 2000–) | |
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Key people Tim Brown, CEO
Tom Kelley
David Kelley
Bill Moggridge
Mike Nuttall
Dave Strong CFO/COO Headquarters Palo Alto, California, United States Founders David M. Kelley, Bill Moggridge, Mike Nuttall Profiles | ||
IDEO (pronounced "eye-dee-oh") is an international design and consulting firm founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company has locations in Cambridge (Massachusetts), Chicago, London, Munich, New York City, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Shanghai and Tokyo. The company uses the design thinking methodology to design products, services, environments, and digital experiences. Additionally, the company has become increasingly involved in management consulting and organizational design.
Contents
The firm employs over 600 people in a number of disciplines including: Behavioral Science, Branding, Business Design, Communication Design, Design Research, Digital Design, Education, Electrical Engineering, Environments Design, Food Science, Healthcare Services, Industrial Design, Interaction Design, Mechanical Engineering, Organizational Design, and Software Engineering.
IDEO has worked on projects in the consumer food and beverage, retail, computer, medical, educational, furniture, toy, office, and automotive industries. Some examples include Apple's first mouse, the Palm V PDA, and Steelcase's Leap chair. Clients include Air New Zealand, Coca-Cola, ConAgra Foods, Eli Lilly, Ford, Medtronic, Sealy, and Steelcase among many others.
Abc nightline ideo shopping cart
History
IDEO was formed in 1991 by a merger of David Kelley Design (founded by Stanford University professor David Kelley), London-based Moggridge Associates and San Francisco's ID Two (both founded by British-born Bill Moggridge), and Matrix Product Design (founded by Mike Nuttall). Office-furniture maker Steelcase owned a majority stake in the firm, but began divesting its shares through a five-year management buy-back program in 2007. The founders of the predecessor companies are still involved in the firm. The current CEO is Tim Brown. Brown is the author of Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation (2009) in which he argues that design can transform problems into opportunities – emphasizing design thinking as a human-centered activity, he specifically prizes the feeling of empathy, where designers are capable of understanding the perspectives and problems the end users face.
Bill Moggridge died on September 8, 2012. While the company started with a focus on designing consumer products (e.g., toothbrush, personal assistant, computers), by 2001, IDEO began to increase focus on consumer experiences (e.g., non-traditional classrooms). Kelley applied the term "design thinking" to business in order to encompass the approach to work of IDEO across industries and challenges.
In 2011, IDEO incubated IDEO.org — a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to applying human-centered design to alleviate poverty.
The Deep Dive
On February 9, 1999, the ABC show Nightline featured IDEO in a segment called The Deep Dive: One Company's Secret Weapon for Innovation. The segment featured Jack Smith of ABC touring the IDEO office and challenging the company to redesign the shopping cart in five days to demonstrate IDEO's process for innovation. The end result was a shopping cart with a nestable steel frame which holds removable plastic baskets to help deter theft and increase shopper flexibilty. A dual child seat with a swing-up tray was also included in the design, as well as a cupholder, a scanner to skip the checkout line and steerable back wheels for maneuverability. The demonstration of IDEO's innovation process has led to the segment becoming part of numerous curricula, including Project Lead the Way and multiple universities.
Organizational culture
IDEO's organizational culture consists of project teams, flat hierarchy, individual autonomy, creativity, socialization of recruits and engineer buy-in.