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

Written by Tom Kelley, Tom Peters and Jonathan Littman

Narrated by Nick Podehl

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Feb 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781511361125

Tom Kelley

Retired Air Force colonel Alan Dugard, a former 305th B-58 Hustler pilot and SAC wing commander, is the author of When the Wolf Rises, a personal account of the 1972 Linebacker bombing raids over North Vietnam. Tom Kelley, a veteran of the 305th Air Refueling Wing, is the author of Guardmount, a thriller set at 1970s Grissom Air Force Base, and Images of America: Howard County Law Enforcement.

Reviews for The Art of Innovation

[Ha New · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book informative, interesting and i'd even go to say inspiring.

[espadana_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A good introduction to design thinking and its application in a business innovation context, but very focussed on IDEO's experiences and case studies (not surprisingly, but it does limit the scope of the book).

[ldmarquet_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Deep Dive
How do great innovations come about? How is it that some groups seem to have a lot of good ideas while others move incrementally along? If you are curious about this – then watch this video: The Deep Dive.
The Deep Dive is a 30 min profile of the design firm IDEO by Dan Rather in 1999. You may not know it, but the firm is behind the designs of many of the products you use in your everyday life, like the computer mouse, and fat-handled toothbrush. Since the filming of the video, IDEO has grown to a company of over 500 people on 3 continents, continuing a string of success.

In the video, we follow a team as they redesign the standard shopping cart in a week. Although the activity is portrayed by Dan Rather as “chaotic,” there is actually a very coherent structure behind the group. It’s this structure, along with the intellectual playfulness of the participants that really makes the process not only creative but powerfully relevant and productive.

There are a couple key behaviors that stand out. First, they exhibit a keen awareness of the difference between divergent and convergent mental activity. This was first pointed out to me by Bill Casey of ELG. The group goes through a series of expanding and contracting activities that are matched with their physical activity. For example, research is a divergent activity (harvesting ideas) and is conducted away from the office individually or pairs. Integrating competing ideas is a convergent activity and is conducted in a group back at the office. As Bill Casey points out, the most effective brainstorming sessions are extremely expansive when divergent and extremely focused when convergent.

Another key behavior is the approach to prototyping competing solutions. Rather than attempting to develop some single optimal and integrated solution that met all the customer needs, they elected to build 4 prototypes each optimized along a single customer need. By doing so they freed each team from the constraints of the other customer needs (while still building an actual cart, that could be pushed through the aisles) resulting in a single minded focus on a single area. It is this focus and freedom that enables innovation. Ultimately, these 4 prototypes were merged, but after they’d been encouraged to push the art of the possible along their particular vector.

I recently asked IDEO how their process has evolved. “Even more customer involvement” was the immediate answer.

For more about IDEO, you can order their video from the ABC store, or buy the book: The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley.

[scott_morris_382299 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved it. I think innovation is the coolest thing, and in my next life want to work at ideo. In this life, I want to build a church like ideo. Creatively challenging and inspiring. Breathed life into my tired soul at a time when I was longing to see new, different, fresh.