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Table of Contents
IDEO - An Introduction ................................................................................................................... 3
Origins ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Awards and Accolades ..................................................................................................................................................................... 4 People ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Business Strategy ............................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Strategic HR .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Talent Management ........................................................................................................................ 7

Defining Role Behaviour ................................................................................................................................................................. 7 Discover .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 Develop ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Deploy................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 What it means to be a Designer at IDEO: ......................................................................................................................... 11 Performance Appraisal ............................................................................................................................................................ 12 Compensation .............................................................................................................................................................................. 12 Employee Separation ................................................................................................................................................................ 13 Employee Evaluation ................................................................................................................................................................ 13 Motivating Employees .............................................................................................................................................................. 13

Success Secret at Ideo ................................................................................................................... 14

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IDEO - AN INTRODUCTION
"We are a global design consultancy firm. We create impact through design." - IDEO

IDEO is a global design and innovation consultancy firm founded in Palo Alto, California, United States that takes a human-centred, design-based approach to helping organizations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow. They identify new ways to serve and support people by uncovering latent needs, behaviours, and desires. They envision new companies and brands, and we design the products, services, spaces, and interactive experiences that bring them to life. They also help organizations build creative culture and the internal systems required to sustain innovation, and launch new ventures. They have become increasingly involved in management consulting and organizational design. They also provide services such as executive training and education on innovation and strategic consulting. IDEO does not manufacture or distribute its creations.

"We help companies innovate. We design products, services, environments, and digital experiences." - IDEO

ORIGINS
IDEO was formed in 1991 from the merger of four firms, David Kelley Design, Matrix Product Design, ID Two and Moggridge Associates of London. David Kelley Design (DKD) was the business outlet of Stanford mechanical engineering professor David Kelley. IDEO bears the imprint of Kelley, its founder, and embodies his own unconventional character. IDEO is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and has offices in Chicago, Boston, London and Munich. While the company is privately owned, Steelcase has a controlling interest but allows IDEO to run independently.

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AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

Ranked as one of the most innovative companies in the world by business leaders in a global survey by Boston Consulting Group Ranked #10 on Fast Companys list of the Top 25 Most Innovative Companies Winner of 38 Red Dot awards, 28 iF Hannover awards, and more IDEA awards than any other design firm Ranked #16 on Fortunes list of 100 most-favoured employers by MBA students Awarded the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museums National Design Award for Product Design

PEOPLE
Mr. Tim Brown
Chief Executive Officer and President

Mr. David Kelley

Co-Founder and Chairman

Mr. David Strong

Managing Partner

Mr. Bill Moggridge

Co-Founder

Mr. Paul Bennett

Managing Partner and Chief Creative Officer

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It has approximately 550 employees, and while more than half of its employees are from fields like mechanical, electrical and software engineering, industrial design, interaction design, and communication design, IDEO prides itself in employing a number of people from wide variety of eclectic backgrounds, including anthropologists, medical school dropouts, and psychologists.

BUSINESS STRATEGY
The IDEO way, is the centrepiece method to IDEOs madness. Three values infuse the learning and evaluation process throughout: user desirability, business viability, and technical and manufacturing feasibility. IDEO strongly builds on these values in its design process and accepts projects from a variety of industries, not restricting itself to a particular industry or market. IDEOs emphasis on hands-on learning about the customer through a partnership between IDEO staffers and members of the client organization, active, immediate and fun process of engagement gives IDEO a distinctive selling proposition and niche presence in the traditional management consulting marketplace.

STRATEGIC HR
IDEO is a high-commitment management organization in that it consists of project teams, flat hierarchy, individual autonomy, creativity, socialization of recruits and engineer buy-in. As each component functions together as a system, this management style is critical to the success of IDEO. IDEO is a very flat organization that essentially functions around many teams. IDEO is set up as a collection of studios consisting of about 10-20 people each to manage its growing size. Each studio operates independently and usually seeks business locally. However, studios are highly communicative and share its members as needed.

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A studio head is appointed at each site and is responsible for managing a number of hot teams. He or she is essentially responsible for administrative duties, such as overseeing the profits and losses of the group. Hot teams consist of people from multiple disciplines who are passionate about a clients project and choose to work together temporarily on that project. Each team elects a project leader based on his/her skills related to the project. The real innovative work at IDEO is done through project teams ("hot teams"). Founder Kelley believes strongly in the value of multidisciplinary teams. In this capacity, IDEO has something similar to a matrix like structure. Projects operate across studios, drawing people from different studios. In conjunction with studios, people are organized into disciplines and there are discipline leads. Discipline leads have strong reputations in their industries and serve as mentors to members of the organization in their related fields. Project teams can have as few as three or four, or as many as a dozen members. Once projects are finished, the teams disband and employees move to other projects. The result of this structure is a continual circulation of personnel and more importantly, what they have learned on prior projects over time. Projects are assigned to teams based on the teams desire or excitement for the project. Just as the teams are temporary, the project leaders position ends with the completion of the project. This also means that there are no fixed titles or positions in the company. Through a democratic process, only members of a particular studio make decisions for that studio. Studio heads, in a collaborative effort, make corporate decisions. With this structure, anyone is one step away from input by simply informing his/her studio head. The flat hierarchy and projects teams are key components of IDEO and more generally to high commitment organizations.

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THE LINKAGE

TALENT MANAGEMENT
"We'll only grow as quickly as we can find people who are great at what they do and are a good cultural fit at IDEO" -IDEO

DEFINING ROLE BEHAVIOUR

They have to be able to think outside of the box and learn extremely quickly with a high degree of creative behaviour They don't look for specialists. They look for people who can work across industries and think on their feet - what IDEO calls, T Shaped People They also have to be really good at working with people in other disciplines or in other words, team coordination and communication are very critical for the success of the projects They need to have a greater degree of risk taking ability, with a high tolerance of ambiguity and unpredictability

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DISCOVER
External - IDEO has small recruiting teams that manage job listings, read incoming applications and co-ordinate interview and offer process. About 60% of recruiting happens externally. And among these, most of the candidates approach the company. IDEO does not do much recruiting. The actual process works as follows. Candidates must bring examples of previous work done as well as things they want to work on Interviews range from pointed questions about work examples to casual conversations

People are hired by their peers at IDEO. A candidate who comes for
an interview may meet 12 to 15 IDEO employees. Internal - Promotions within the company are based on experience. About 40% of the recruitment happens through employee referrals. After the interview the team works together to asks questions such as "Can we see ourselves working with this candidate? ", "What will they bring to this team?" etc. If a candidate meets these requirements it is possible that they will receive a position in IDEO. If there is an immediate match between needs and talents the candidate is contacted within four weeks.

When cultural fit is so important, if you have people within the organization who love it, they know the kind of people who will also thrive. - Beth Strong, IDEO's director for recruiting

DEVELOP
IDEO uses a technique called Design Thinking to train its employees. Design thinking is a human process that relies on people's ability to be intuitive recognize patterns
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 to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as functional to express ourselves through means beyond words and symbols In other words, Design thinking is a discipline that uses a designer's sensibilities and methods to match the customer's needs and check for its technological and economic viability while also making sure that it can be turned into a sound business strategy and market opportunity. Design process can be thought of consisting three overlapping stepsnamely inspiration, ideation and implementation, where inspiration serves as the problem that requires a solution, ideation as the process of searching, developing and testing those ideas, and finally implementation where these ideas move out of labs and take a concrete shape. These three steps need not be sequential as projects may loop back from one stage to another as new ideas are devised and newer options are explored. This is where Design Thinking differs from the conventional way of going about designing solutions. While the seemingly haphazard way of looping back to various steps may look chaotic, IDEO's success in its various assignments has proved the efficacy of the method. The five steps that are emphasized in Design thinking are as follows: Discovery: Refers to the stage where the challenge is first encountered and the required research is done for the same. Also the inspiration for going ahead with the project is also delved upon. Interpretation: This is where the true nature of challenge is learnt. There can be many interpretations for the same and there might exist previous work on the same. The designer goes through everything relevant to the challenge, from the meaning of the challenge to the opportunities it provides. Ideation: The opportunity to create something is discussed here, based on the needs and motivations of the end-users. At IDEO, designers generate as many ideas as possible through brainstorming, debates and focussed discussions Experimentation: Ideas generated are now refined and drafted. Prototypes of the ideas are designed and reviewed for performance. The most effective prototype is chosen. Subsequently, feedback for the prototype is gathered.
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 Evolution: A lot might go into designing the prototype, but scope for improvement still exists. This calls for tracking the learnings from the idea and moving forward with further refinement of the idea. IDEO being a creative organisation has a lot to do with design thinking. It just cannot follow a sequential milestone based processes that organisations usually take. That would only limit its ability to explore the unexplored and think what no one else has thought before. People at IDEO are, for this very reason, made to practice Design thinking. So they can think, think out of the box, think new and think big and better. Thus, it becomes imperative for an IDEO employee to train oneself in Design thinking, in order to better channelize his skills and intuition towards creating that great product the client demands.

DEPLOY
As IDEO puts it: IDEO promises an extraordinary and sustainable workplace for world-class professionals. IDEO has applied the people centered design process to our own organizational structure and processes, and effectively addresses employee growth and wellness. IDEO examines all the factors that are valuable to a relationship between the employee and IDEO, not just the obvious ones like pay and benefits. While money is an important component of offering a great place to work, its not the single most important aspect. Here are four aspects of why IDEO is a great place to work for the creative ones: Unique work opportunities: IDEO attracts the most interesting, diverse, and difficult set of design challenges in the world, in both the private and public sectors. It offer opportunities to work across a variety of products, services, industries, clients, technologies, and experiences, in a volume and scale that is hard to match anywhere else (their competitors are way smaller than them). It gives teams the power to build relationships with influential clients and organizations and provides a high degree of
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autonomy to guide the work and generate excellent, appropriate, and delightful design solutions. Talented and diverse people: IDEO hires talented design thinkers who represent many perspectives, disciplines, nationalities, and points of view. IDEO provides ways to share knowledge and projects among our people, believing that people work better and learn more when they freely interact and collaborate with other talented people. Supportive and inspiring spaces: People thrive when they work in stimulating, comfortable, and well-located places. IDEO tries to be in cities where people like to be and that offer facilities and workspaces that promote collaboration and inspire great designs. It provides resources and leaders who craft community as a primary element of their jobs. IDEO believes this is far better than working out of your basement or in a corporate cubicle!

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A DESIGNER AT IDEO:

Become more intentional about your design process. Be confident in your creative abilities. Be strategic about what needs attention first. Listen to your stakeholders and be inspired to design for them. Embrace your beginner's mind: Approach problems as a novice even if you already know a lot about them. Let yourself learn. Be willing to experiment. Be ok with not having the right answer. Trust that youll find one. Stepping out of your zone of comfort = learning. Get unstuck. Break your routine. Use the world outside to invigorate your work. Analogous inspiration is your best friend. Leave your cubicle. Collaborate with others Problems are just opportunities for design in disguise. Have an abundance mentality.
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 Be optimistic. Believe the future will be better. Start with, What if? instead of Whats wrong?

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL
Performance Appraisal at IDEO is done once a year. There is no standard procedure that IDEO has adopted for a performance appraisal. Most employees ask for input from three or four colleagues who they've worked with over the past year. There is also input from the studio head. And then the employees review themselves. A lot of employees choose to have their review done by a group of people they have picked.

IDEO thrives to show their employee appreciation through benefits such as: Sponsored healthcare Dental Vision and disability insurance 401k matching Transportation benefits Fitness programs Free food

COMPENSATION
IDEO uses competitive based compensation and Discretionary Profit Sharing. Their compensation is very competitive. They have a profitsharing bonus, which is based on company profitability as well as the employee's specific studio's profitability. There is also IDEO Ventures. Since they work on innovative things which if succeed in the marketplace, it makes sense for them sometimes to invest in their clients. They put money in if it is a start-up or they negotiate a royalty agreement with a more established company on that product. An employee of IDEO receives certain number of points in any venture fund that opens after his or her start date.
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EMPLOYEE SEPARATION
How IDEO deals with employee separation Provides 401k matching Internships Try and prevent turnover by providing benefits

EMPLOYEE EVALUATION
IDEO uses its social platform to facilitate internal staffing. The company develops rich profiles describing the capabilities and performance of employees, which are then shared across the organization. The profiles, which can be searched and tagged electronically, provide an effective mechanism for uncovering talent that might otherwise go unnoticed and underused. Managers can learn about an employees collaboration on a specific project and how it contributed to the shared knowledge. They can use that information when selecting people for projects or roles. Because employee capabilities are linked to detailed information about projects and jobs, the platform becomes a two-way street: Development opportunities can target employees, and employees can seek out opportunities.

MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES
The following table indicates six categories that IDEO utilized to increase employees intrinsic motivation.

SIX CATEGORIES Challenge Freedom

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HOW IDEO DOES IT? Successful individuals were assigned challenging projects Employees themselves designed their office No dressing code

more

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Resources Work features groups

Supervisory encouragement Organizational support

No title Employees were given much autonomy in processing the project Sufficient time and budget Getting clients involved in budgeting Diversity in members Young members Expertise Shared interest, excitement and team goal Recognition of innovative effort and achievements Flat organizational structure Project-oriented work groups Information sharing and collaboration between different offices; Not fostering office politics Less firing while more promotion and helping employees grow

SUCCESS SECRET AT IDEO

1. Rapid prototyping Three Rs : rough, rapid, and right Enlightened trial and error 2. Effective brainstorming Stay focused on the topic Encourage wide ideas Defer judgment to avoid interrupting the flow of ideas Build on the ideas of others Go for quantity and be visual Practice brainstorming with frequency, intensity, and sincerity

3. Well-honed product development process

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 Get clients actively involved 4. Emphasis on consumer observation The art of innovation is not the business of innovation. 5. A collection of high-energy and creative human capital 6. Well performed managerial practice to affect creativity. 7. All the above create a IDEO innovation culture that has kept it innovative over the years

CONCLUSION
"We look for people who are so inquisitive about the world that they're willing to try to do what you do." -Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO

IDEO believes that regardless of whether your goal is to innovate around a product, service, or business opportunity, you get good insights by having an observant and empathetic view of the world. You can't just stand in your own shoes; you've got to be able to stand in the shoes of others. Empathy allows you to have original insights about the world. It also enables you to build better teams. IDEO look for people they call "T-shaped people." They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T - they're mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behaviour that point to a universal human need. They basically look for patterns that yield ideas. The entire SHRM process at IDEO from recruiting to employee separation is geared towards this belief. Their unconventional SHRM systems reflect the innovativeness and the flexibility IDEO embodies in itself. Their SHRM has
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been highly successful and it is no wonder that IDEO has been consistently one of the most sought after employers in the United States.

REFERENCES
Strategy by Design | FastCompany | TIM BROWN, JUNE 1, 2005 Bold and Outrageous HR Practices That May Indicate Your Approach Is Too Conservative | ERE.net | Dr. John Sullivan, Aug 20, 2012 RECRUITING Q&A: IDEO | BLOOMBERGBUSINESSWEEK | JANUARY 10, 2001 THE TEN FACES OF INNOVATION | HR.COM | June 7 2006 IDEO The Innovation Factory | WORKforce.com IDEO | Company website ABC nightline| IDEO Episode | Youtube.com David Kelly | IDEO | Tedtalks |Ted.com Interview with IDEO's CEO | McKinsey Quarterly - Strategy - Innovation | NOVEMBER 2008 IDEOs Human Centred Design Toolkit | The Living Principles | June 2008 IDEO's Tim Brown: How to Build a Culture of Innovation | CBSNews.com | September 23, 2009

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