The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm | Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman, ... | Kudos to Ideos

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The Art of Innovat...

	The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman, ... Doubleday Business, 2001 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 72 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.

There isn't a business in America that doesn't want to be more creative in its thinking, products, and processes. At many companies, being first with a concept and first to market are critical just to survive. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, general manager of the Silicon Valley based design firm IDEO, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative and energized company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit.

IDEO doesn't buy into the myth of the lone genius working away in isolation, waiting for great ideas to strike. Kelley believes everyone can be creative, and the goal at his firm is to tap into that wellspring of creativity in order to make innovation a way of life. How does it do that? IDEO fosters an atmosphere conducive to freely expressing ideas, breaking the rules, and freeing people to design their own work environments. IDEO's focus on teamwork generates countless breakthroughs, fueled by the constant give-and-take among people ready to share ideas and reap the benefits of the group process. IDEO has created an intense, quick-turnaround, brainstorm-and-build process dubbed "the Deep Dive."

In entertaining anecdotes, Kelley illustrates some of his firm's own successes (and joyful failures), as well as pioneering efforts at other leading companies. The book reveals how teams research and immerse themselves in every possible aspect of a new product or service, examining it from the perspective of clients, consumers, and other critical audiences.

Kelley takes the reader through the IDEO problem-solving method:

> Carefully observing the behavior or "anthropology" of the people who will be using a product or service

> Brainstorming with high-energy sessions focused on tangible results

> Quickly prototyping ideas and designs at every step of the way

> Cross-pollinating to find solutions from other fields

> Taking risks, and failing your way to success

> Building a "Greenhouse" for innovation

IDEO has won more awards in the last ten years than any other firm of its kind, and a full half-hour Nightline presentation of its creative process received one of the show's highest ratings. The Art of Innovation will provide business leaders with the insights and tools they need to make their companies the leading-edge, top-rated stars of their industries.

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Innovation for All

Through anecdotes, Kelley demonstrates how stumbling blocks to innovation can be overcome. He shows an appreciation for experimentation, momentum, and embraces failure as a true path to knowing. Failed prototypes are wonderful learning tools. Kelley's perspective keeps spirits high. He leaves much of the innovative process open ended - nearly encouraging innovation on innovating.

Interestingly, Kelley notes how medicine is becoming personalized and that the future can not be perfectly predicted. Still, he says we must aim at it. This was an important nugget of wisdom for me, a research coordinator at a think-tank-like public health research group, the Healthcare Innovation and Technology lab at Columbia University. On a daily basis we deal with innovation to improve healthcare and need to effectively innovate. Given that we tread a very specific territory - health and technology - and that Kelley's book could be so useful to us, it is obvious that he really has something to offer to everyone.

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Kudos to Ideos

Excellent book with good insights. If you are in the business of innovation, this is one book that you shouldn't miss. I also recommend EIGHTSTORM: 8-Step Brainstorming for Innovative Managers.

Watching 'The Medici Effect' at work in IDEO!

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm
by Tom Kelley

The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization
by Thomas Kelley

Much had already been written - the good & the bad - about these two books after they were published. I do not wish to travel on the beaten path.

I just want to share some of my own thoughts from a different perspective.

I have recently reread these two books following my return from holidaying in Italy. I had in fact read both of them for the first time when they were respectively published several years ago.

This time, I have in fact reread them syntopically with Frans Johansson's 'The Medici Effect', which in many ways, has influenced my own thoughts about the abovementioned two books.

Following my recent holiday trip to Italy, particularly my revisit to the Vatican Museums in Rome & the Uffizi Museum in Florence, I became fascinated by the great work of the Medici family.

The title of 'The Medici Effect' actually refers to an explosion of creativity and imagination that occurred in Florence during the Renaissance era, stretching from the late 14th century where it started right up to the early 17th Century, where it had spread to the rest of Europe, when the powerful & influential Medici banking family funded artists, artisans, painters, sculptors, and even thinkers and scientists from many different cultures and disciplines to come together to debate, discuss, and discover new ideas.

[Out of 1,000 European artists, painters & sculptors during that period, about 350 of them had lived &/or worked in Florence, Italy.]

Through their generous patronage, we are able to speak of and admire the wonderful masterpieces & elegant work of Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Botticelli, Donatello, Raphael, Ghiberti and countless others.

Tom Kelley's two books as mentioned above essentially drives home the point about 'The Medici Effect.'

I see IDEO's successful problem solving approach with clients as a true application of the deliberate 'blending' of brainstorming methodologies, work practices, human resource cultures & physical infrastructures. As Tom Kelley had steadfastly asserted: 'Methodology alone is not enough."

The adoption of the ten different high-touch personnas as defined by the author in his later book truely reflects the 'Medici Effect.'

In my personal view, this innovative 'blending' is the strategic heartbeat of IDEO's success in the marketplace.

The other stuff, like observing carefully the anthropology of endusers, high-energy brainstorming with time pressures, quick prototyping, & taking risks are actually peripheral to the deliberate 'blending' process. These stuff had been covered in great detail in the first book.

In fact, as part of IDEO's problem solving repertoire, the cross-pollinating of inputs from their internal teams, clients' teams, knowledgeable people not directly involved with projects, & from people who make up target markets, further accentuates the Medici Effect.

Come to think of it, & in terms of personnas from the creativity standpoint, I reckon what Tom Kelley had talked about so passionately in his latter book, builds, in some subtle ways, on the earlier thoughtware of Roger von oech (as illustrated in his two books on his four creative personnas: Explorer, Artist, Judge, Warrior) & Edward de bono (as illustrated in his 'Six Thinking Hats' book, which I believed had been somewhat influenced by Ned Herrmann's 'The Creative Brain'.)

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comments on Art of Innovation

Although it is becoming a bit dated, the basic tenants that are discussed are relevant today as much as they were 10 years ago. Of interest to me is the strong attention to the team dynamics that under pin high performance development teams. Very much still worth the reading time.

Reinforces the Culture of Innovation

Although published in 2001, thus making some of the innovations referenced seem really old, this is a great read for anyone interested in innovation and how to create an innovative culture in any organization.
Kelley is GM of IDEO, one of the world's leading design and innovation consultancies. In a highly readable book he shows us how IDEO has played key roles in developments related to mobile computing to minimally invasive surgery and cardiovascular monitoring.

Innovation lessons covered include Innovation begins with an Eye which mirrors what Yogi Berra reputedly said, "You can observe a lot by watching," Secrets for Better Brainstorming, (no secrets but good commonsense tips), A Cool Company needs Hot Groups where he debunks the myth of the lone genius and quotes Francis Jehl, the long time assistant to Thomas Edison as saying, "Edison is in reality a collective noun and means the work of many men."

I'm not sure you will find anything dramatically new in this book, but what it does provide is a framework to create better innovation by reinforcing the need to better understand your customer base before designing to solve a problem. The bottom line is that IDEO has been very successful over a long period of time. It developed the first production mouse for the Apple Macintosh and the Palm V. A visit to their website provides a veritable cornucopia of major clients the design company has worked with. The more I study innovation, the more convinced I am that it is primarily a cultural thing. If you really want to drive innovation in your world, read this book and numerous others to reinforce key messages and key behaviors.

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