Ideo Case Study

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY IDEO, one of the world’s largest and most successful product design firms. IDEO is responsible for the development of 3Com's Palm V hand-held computer. The Palm V’s market success has ingnited mass competition in the hand-held computer industry. This increase in competition has a major 3Com competitor, HandSpring to approach IDEO to now design the competing VISOR product. Handspring's management wants the VISOR prototype to be designed and manufactured in less than half the time it took to design the Palm V. IDEO must now decide if it should suggest to Handspring's management to increase the development schedule as it is concerned with having to sacrifice innovation and design in order to meet the client's goal. A highly competitive environment exists in hand-held computing. Companies similar to Handspring and 3Com are rushing devices to the market to catch first time buyers with this new technology and to gain brand recognition as well as customer loyalty. Because of this pressure, Handspring is attempting to push IDEO’s design team to speed up the innovation process to meet market demands. Limitations on using IDEO staff to gather ideas for the VISOR’s design, capabilities, and features. Handspring is requiring confidentiality on this project in a company that gets ideas by sharing all information with the entire staff. In order to meet the short timeline demanded by Handspring, IDEO designers will have to work longer extended hours and must sacrifice certain parts of their innovation process to meet these requests. These limitations and requirements may lead to the Visor product not benefiting from the IDEO full innovation process. IDEO must re-think the manner in which the VISOR will be produced and the schedule in which project leaders and contributors will handle innovation and creativity specifically for this project. All of Handspring’s anxieties have now become IDEO’s anxieties, as the same innovated