Production & Operation

Management Presentation
IDEO PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Shruti Sarkar (15810052)
Shubham Shukla (15810053)
Sumitava Roy (15810054)
Suresh Chandran V (15810055)
Sushumna (15810056)
Trishik Das (15810057)
Varun Kaniyamattam (15810058)
Vinay Singh (15810059)
CONTENTS
Introduction

History of IDEO

Design, Philosophy and Culture

IDEO’s innovation Process

The PALM V Project

The Handspring Project

The Product Development Phase

Current Industry Scenario

• Type- Private

• Industry - Design firm

• Founder - David Kelley, Bill Moggridge, Mike Nuttall

• Number of employees – 600

• CEO – Tim Brown

• CFO – Dave Strong

• Locations - Boston, Chicago, London, Munich, New York
City, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo

• Disciplines - Behavioral Science, Branding, Business Design,

Communication Design and Software Engineering, Digital Design,
Education, Electrical Engineering, Environments Design, Food
Science.

• Clients -  Air New Zealand, Coca-Cola, ConAgra Foods, Eli

Lilly, Ford, Medtronic, Sealy, and Steelcase 
HISTORY OF
IDEO IS AN AWARD-WINNING GLOBAL DESIGN
FIRM THAT TAKES A HUMAN-CENTERED,
DESIGN-BASED APPROACH TO HELPING
ORGANIZATIONS IN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
SECTORS INNOVATE AND GROW .
David M. Kelley after graduating from Carnegie-Mellon worked as an engineer for
National Cash Register (NCR) and Boeing. Kelley then entered a graduate program in
design at the Stanford University School of Engineering.

After earning a master's degree, Kelley formed his own design firm in 1978, partnering
with fellow student Dean Hovey. Their first four employees were all friends from
Stanford.

Kelley had met Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs at Stanford, and by 1983, the
group had designed the first commercially available computer mouse for Apple's Lisa
computer, later used on the first Macintosh.

In 1990, offices opened in Boston and Chicago. Within a few years, the headquarters
was spread across several buildings in Palo Alto, and IDEO had offices in San Francisco,
Chicago, Boston, Tokyo, and London, as well as an affiliate in Tel Aviv.
General Manager Tom Kelley, brother of the company's founder,
described Innovation as the next big wave for corporations to embrace
after Quality control and Cost cutting.

Principal Divisions: 

Health; Consumer Experience Design; Technology Enabled Experiences; Service

Design and Innovation; Transformation Services; Zero20 (design for youth); Smart
Space.

Principal Competitors: 
Design Continuum Inc.; frog design inc.; Lunar Design Incorporated; Ziba Design,
Inc., McKinsey & Co.
Design, Philosophy & Culture
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth ten thousand.
—IDEO innovation principle

• “You learn just as much from a model

that’s wrong as you do from one
that’s right”

• Designers and engineers themselves

created early prototypes from readily
available material such as cardboard,
foamcore, Legos, and Erector sets.
• Rapid prototyping at IDEO followed the three “R’s”: “Rough, Rapid, and Right!”
• The final R, “Right,” referred to building several models focused on getting specific aspects of a
product right.

• Discarded ideas were archived and sometimes kept for possible future products.
• At the beginning of a new project, IDEO would submit cost and time estimates to potential clients. As
a project unfolded and designers came up with innovative ideas and concepts, project managers had
to ensure that those concepts were within agreed upon budgets and timelines. However, designers
often aimed for perfection which could
• In keeping with its playroom atmosphere,
on Mondays all company branches held
“show-and-tells” where designers and
engineers could showcase their latest
insights and products.

• IDEO’s “Tech Box,” the company’s giant

“shoebox” for curiosities and interesting
gadgets meant to inspire innovators.

• Growing IDEO to 300 employees involved

keeping each unit small. Thus, growth was
achieved by budding out smaller design
studios
• An individual could work on one large project as a principal or on as
many as three to four projects as a contributor.
IDEO Innovation Process
“It is inconceivable that the head guy in any organization
will know all the answers.”
— David Kelley, IDEO founder

• If PROTOTYPING was central to IDEO’s design process,

BRAINSTORMING was central to its methodology.
• The goal was to quickly create a whirlwind of activity
and ideas, with the most promising ideas developed into
prototypes in just days.
IDEO Innovation Process

Principles of BRAINSTORMING

DEFER Go for Be VISUAL,

Hold only one
Stay FOCUSED JUDGMENT to QUANTITY (150 Sketch the ideas
CONVERSATION
on topic. not interrupt ideas in 30 – 45 for better
at a time.
flow of ideas. minutes). understanding.
IDEO Innovation Process
• Throughout a single project, the project leader might hold brainstorming
sessions, or “brainstormers.”
• No more than 8 invitees attended these sessions, which ran under the
above rules.
• IDEO personnel viewed invitations to these sessions as a sign of worth
and rarely turned them down.

“brainstormers are the candy. . . . You are in the middle of a project,

handling endless details, and then you get invited to a brainstormer, where
you get to have all sorts of good ideas and leave with no responsibility for
them. It’s cathartic, to dump your ideas.”
— David Kelley, IDEO founder
IDEO Innovation Process

Phase 0 Understand/Observe

Phase I Visualize/Realize

Phase II Evaluating/Refining

Phase III Implement / Detailed

Engineering
Implement /
Phase IV Manufacturing
Liaison
IDEO Innovation Process
• IDEO had mixed feelings about a formalized innovation process.

“It’s a delicate balance between process and innovation. . . . It’s no

good if you crank the handle and you know exactly what is going to
come out the other end. You also have to be prepared to fail a lot. The
great thing about a prototype culture like ours is that we have lots of
spectacular failures. We celebrate that.”
- Tim Brown, European Director of IDEO
IDEO Innovation Process

Armed with the tools of rapid

prototyping, brainstorming, and a well-
honed product development process,
the company viewed itself as being able
to provide value to virtually any client.
The very diversity and experience of its
personnel ensured that it would rarely
encounter entirely new problems.
PALM V PROJECT
Palm Pilot introduced in March 1996 by Jeff Hawkins.
Reasons for success:
 Focus on competing with paper rather than large computers
 Failure of Apple’s Newton pad
 Development of Graffiti
 Capability to sync
Entry of competitors in the market
Palm turns to IDEO(Dennis Boyle) to tackle the market competition
Motorola Star Tac mobile phones became inspiration for the team

The team was inspired by the ‘Think Different’ campaign of Apple

Reduced thickness from 19mm to 11mm and one-third weight

Palm V’s Product Development
Timeline
(22 months)
 • Understand/Observe
Phase 0 • 3 months

• Visualize/Realize
Phase 1 • 2 months

• Evaluate/Refine
Phase 2 • 5 months

• Implement
Phase 3/4 • 12 months
THE HANDSPRING
PROJECT
The new product was introduced as a
successor of PALM V . . .
With a greater efficiency,
ease of usage and
much less price. . .
PROJECT OUTLINES
• The idea for the project started in July, 1998.
• Hawkins, along with his business partner Donna Dubinsky, set up a
shop in Palo Alto.
• The goal of the new company was to create a fully-compatible,
slightly smaller and less-expensive clone of the PALM computers.
• The company wanted to recover the PALM’s inability to easily add
functionality.
PROJECT OUTLINES (contd.)
• The team wanted the modules to be simple to use.
• The compatibility idea was generated from Hawkins’ daughter’s
Nintendo Game Boy, which uses interchangeable cartridges for new
games.
• The name was proposed by Hawkins’ 10 year old daughter –
‘VISOR’, short for ‘Advisor’.
• Along with the original engineering team of PALM V, about two
dozens of third party developers had shown interest to provide
software in the project.
SALIENT FEATURES OF THE PRODUCT
• VISOR’s cost was $150, where the PALM V was far more expensive
@$450.
• ‘SPRING-BOARD’ facility was used to insert new modules for
performing various multimedia tasks.
• Rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries replaced AAA batteries used in
the PALM V computer.
• The development of the product included a PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT CYCLE of 10 months before handing off the product
to production.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PHASES
 PHASE 0: Understand/Observe
• The team sought to understand the client’s business and immersed itself in
finding out about the feasibility of a product.
• This involved inhaling everything ever written about the planned product and
potential users.
• By the end of this process, team members tacked to the project center walls
pictures and diagrams summarizing major discoveries about the marketplace
and users.
• Product developers at most companies spent little time here for fear of
duplicating efforts of marketing or R&D.
• By the end of Phase 0, the team create a feasibility record along with
discoveries about the marketplace and users.
• Least expensive part of the entire project.
PHASE I: Visualize/Realize

• Here the team ended up choosing a product direction based on ideas,

technologies, and market perceptions.
• The team also gain an understanding of the product context through a
gallery of envisioned characters using the product in their daily lives.
• This intensive stage required close coordination of efforts with the client to
ensure constant feedback.
• The team combined ideas, technologies, and market perceptions with
observations of real world users to investigate potential needs that the
product could fill.
• By the end of Phase I, the team would have rough three-dimensional
models of a product and a general idea of the manufacturing strategy to be
utilized.
PHASE II: Evaluating/Refining

• In this phase the team enhance design prototypes through testing

functional prototypes.
• Emphasis is shifted over the course of this stage from human factors
and ergonomics to engineering.
• Concurrent engineering often occurred, through filling in previously
unspecified features using an iterative process.
• This process requires constant communications between various
subgroups to ensure that the final outcomes would mesh well
together.
• Phase II culminated with a functional model as well as a “looks like”
design model.
PHASE III: Implement (detailed engineering)

• The team complete the product design and verifies the final product
works and could be manufactured.
• Although engineering efforts predominate, continuous low-level
involvement with design team members occur.
• For designers, frequent visits to the machine shops during this phase
provided a reality check.
• By the end of this phase, the team delivers a fully functional design
model, tooling databases, and technical documentation.
• Testing might also be undertaken in this phase to meet government
regulations.
• The team also starts selecting vendors.
PHASE IV: Implement (manufacturing liaison)

• In this phase, the team resolved issues involving the final design to
ensure smooth product release to manufacturing as the product
moved from the shop floor to the client’s factory lines.
• The team still supervises production of tooling, regulatory approvals,
and construction of pilot runs of the manufacturing line.
• Testing of manufacturing feasibility is crucial: each day’s loss of a
production line’s output might cost the client company a substantial
amount in lost revenues.
• By the end of this phase, the product would be formally handed over
to the client.
2015: 10 Most innovative companies
2015 2014 R&D
Rank Rank Company Geography Industry Spend ($Bn)*

1 1 Apple United States Computing and electronics 6.0

2 2 Google United States Software and internet 9.8

3 5 Tesla Motors United States Automotive 0.5

4 4 Samsung South Korea Computing and electronics 14.1

5 3 Amazon United States Software and internet 9.3

6 6 3M United States Industrials 1.8

7 7 General Electric United States Industrials 4.2

8 8 Microsoft United States Software and internet 11.4

9 9 IBM United States Computing and electronics 5.4

10 N/A Toyota Japan Automotive 9.2

2015: Top 5 R & D spenders
1-Volkswagen Germany Automotive 15.3

2-Samsung South Korea Computing and electronics 14.1

3-Intel United States Computing and electronics 11.5

4-Microsoft United States Software and internet 11.4

5-Roche Switzerland Healthcare 10.8

Strategies by Apple Inc.
–An exceptional consumer experience

–Intuitive user interfaces

–Sleek product design

–Iconic branding
Innovation strategy models
• Need seekers These companies actively engage current and potential customers to
shape new products, services, and processes; they strive to be first to market with
those products.

• Market readers These companies watch their markets carefully, but they maintain
a more cautious approach, focusing largely on creating value through incremental
change.

• Technology drivers These companies follow the direction suggested by their

technological capabilities, leveraging their investment in research and
development to drive breakthrough innovation and incremental change, often
seeking to address the unarticulated needs of their customers.
Some facts about product development
In 2015, R&D spend by the premier companies has increased 5.1% to $680
billion.

U.S. remains largest country location for the conduct of corporate R&D,
representing the net of domestic, imported and exported R&D.

China and India lead dynamic R&D growth in Asia region, driven by imported
R&D from the U.S.

The three largest industries for R&D Spend in 2015 are computing and
electronics (C&E), healthcare and auto.