Ideo Case Write-Up
IDEO which is a successful example of a business model innovation is an international design and innovation consultancy founded in Palo Alto, California, United States. This case brief examines and analyzes some core competencies of IDEO so that it can give advice to Dennis Boyle, an IDEO project leader on whether or not to put aside his company’s tradition of spending substantial amount of time and effort on the product development process in order to rush the Visor PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) to market just in time for holiday gift-giving season.
IDEO’S CORE COMPETENCIES
A company’s core competencies are its resources or capabilities that serve as sources of competitive advantages over its rivals. In IDEO, it is the company’s unique culture, innovative design techniques and especially the so-called product development process phases that differentiated the firm from other competitors in the industry. * IDEO’s culture can be described as eccentric, fun, innovative and creative. The outside-the-box working style plus the “democracy of ideas” management motivated the company’s employees to work to their fullest. Most noticeably, IDEO built itself as a flat organization where all work was organized into project teams which formed and disbanded for the life of a project and no individual had a permanent assignments or job titles. * Central to IDEO’s design philosophy was the role of prototyping which followed the three “Rs”: “Rough, Rapid, and Right”. Prototyping was so important that the company operated based on the principle “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth ten thousand”. Furthermore, brainstorming played an essential role in IDEO’s design process as it sought to generate as many ideas as possible through almost daily brainstorming sessions. The two processes actually went hand in hand, with brainstorming sessions leading to rapid prototyping or vice versa. * Key to IDEO’s success was its innovation process which
IDEO’S CORE COMPETENCIES
A company’s core competencies are its resources or capabilities that serve as sources of competitive advantages over its rivals. In IDEO, it is the company’s unique culture, innovative design techniques and especially the so-called product development process phases that differentiated the firm from other competitors in the industry. * IDEO’s culture can be described as eccentric, fun, innovative and creative. The outside-the-box working style plus the “democracy of ideas” management motivated the company’s employees to work to their fullest. Most noticeably, IDEO built itself as a flat organization where all work was organized into project teams which formed and disbanded for the life of a project and no individual had a permanent assignments or job titles. * Central to IDEO’s design philosophy was the role of prototyping which followed the three “Rs”: “Rough, Rapid, and Right”. Prototyping was so important that the company operated based on the principle “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth ten thousand”. Furthermore, brainstorming played an essential role in IDEO’s design process as it sought to generate as many ideas as possible through almost daily brainstorming sessions. The two processes actually went hand in hand, with brainstorming sessions leading to rapid prototyping or vice versa. * Key to IDEO’s success was its innovation process which