The Interview
Tom Kelley
By John Koch, Boston Globe
Is product design about pretty exteriors?
That's the easiest part for people to see and understand. But we may spend five person-years doing a project, and a lot of that is detailed engineering and software development to make the product work. Take the Palm V [handheld organizer]: More hours are spent on such things as shaving down the wall thickness and cutting holes in the circuit board so the battery would fit and going to Japan to find manufacturers who do anodized aluminum consistently at the price we needed. It's the gamut of those things, but beauty is in there somewhere.
What are some other IDEO designs?
Very visible is the Polaroid
I-Zone camera. It's the best-selling camera in the world.
Any famous failures?
Sure. One of the great things about IDEO is failure is not career-damaging; our environment acknowledges that it happens. One is the Enorme phone, a joint venture. We did the engineering, manufacturing, distribution. We thought, piece of cake, but there were all kinds of quality problems. From a business standpoint, it was a colossal failure, but there were happy elements. One is that it ended up in the Museum of Modern Art.
How much of what IDEO does is strictly product design?
The majority of our work is product design. We have a little division called IDEO U. that does teaching unconnected to products. Most of our work blends the two. For example, we worked for three years side by side with employees from Samsung. We designed 27 products in all, but I think they would say the greater value was from the cultural influence, the methodologies we taught them.
What are the earmarks of an innovative workplace?
What's the physical space like? Is it more conducive to group work or to locking yourself away from other employees? How are people treated? Is any idea welcome, or is there fear? Is there anyone in the office that everybody's afraid of? That's a barrier to new ideas. Does an idea have to be perfect before it's shown to the big boss? If so, the big boss is exposed to fewer ideas and has less chance to influence things in their embryonic stage. What about the overall energy people have about their jobs? Is the passion for great work as opposed to the passion to retire? Do people talk more about their 401(k) plans than about their current hot project?
You oppose top-down corporate culture.
At IDEO, this is very genuine. I am general manager, ostensibly responsible for everything that goes on in the firm [which has an office in Lexington and a total of 380 employees]. The office heads - kind of, sort of - report to me. Many of the reporting relationships in the firm are vague. It's so nonhierarchical that our head of marketing, she might report to me, but I don't really know. It's very hard to draw an org chart. We have a performance review process, but neither I nor the group of people that report to my brother [David, IDEO's founder and chairman] has had a performance review in the last decade. It's more like soccer than football. You have a group of people flying in formation as opposed to the quarterback and the people supporting that person. And you should be able to joke with your boss and make fun of him or her in front of other people.
Making fun of the boss is good?
At IDEO, it's done every day. That speaks to some underlying comfort or trust level that may be a prerequisite to this kind of culture. Rigid hierarchies can kill ideas.
Can your values be applied to most companies?
They won't work in the military, and there are businesses in which there is some overwhelming issue of precision or safety. I used to be a consultant to the airline industry, and there are departments where this would work, but engineering and maintenance is not one of them. I don't think there are many organizations in America that couldn't benefit from more of this culture of innovation. If you get it right, everything reinforces everything: The physical space says innovation, and that affects recruiting, and that affects retention, and that affects the way people feel and the way they'll do brainstorming. Fun doesn't cost extra or take more time, and if you can get good at this process, you can actually be more productive, because everybody's on the team trying harder.
How egalitarian is IDEO's salary structure?
I'm privy to all the compensation in the company, and people at one level aren't making a lot more than people at another.
Have you created the model for the new corporation?
It's not that this is the best story in the world, but the other stuff - quality programs and cost cutting - is played out. Innovation looks like the next big thing. We took an existing product and turned it into the Palm V, maybe the most popular consumer electronics product in American business history. The process was based on these silly little principles - structured brainstorming, intense teamwork, enlightened trial and error. We're having fun, but the result is a very significant economic return that speaks to the banker's heart.
|
