Simmons IDEO case
Frontiers of Strategy
First Name: Antonio
Last Name:
Date: 10/03/2014
Assignment:
Question 1:
What are possible reasons for the poor success of the Simmons project?
Question 2:
What lessons did IDEO possibly learn from the Simmons project? If you were a consultant what would you recommend IDEO in order not to make the same mistakes again? ( also own suggestions are welcome).
Answers:
Answer 1:
Although IDEO has been working very hard for the project assigned by Simmons, there were some problems that lead Simmons to not reach its goal.
In fact, they received no reaction from customers. This is due to the fact that the process of disclose new products to the customers was too quick and so they cannot recognize the nolveties of Simmons project. Moreover, they lose sight of the identitiy of their clients, they were too enthusiastic of themselves. In order to avoid conflicts and reach consensus decision, they also were always agree with themselves about every outcome, displaying the groupthink problem.
Finally they showed a lack of interaction and collaboration with their clients. All those things led the Simmons project turned out to be a defeat, even if the products were innovative and well segmented.
Answer 2:
As I said before, Simmons showed a lack of interaction and collaboration with their clients. So the first lesson IDEO could learn from the Simmons project is that, especially in the first stage (called “Phase 0”), IDEO can share its teamwork and offices with some key-people of Simmons, in order to let them participate in the activity of forming ideas and brainstorming. The customers of IDEO (Simmons, for example) need to feel like they are part of the project and to learn deeply the culture and the way of thinking, keeping them in mind. Thus, it’s very important to intensify and expand realtions with customers. Moreover, IDEO had introduced and integrated business factor people into the design team, with the
First Name: Antonio
Last Name:
Date: 10/03/2014
Assignment:
Question 1:
What are possible reasons for the poor success of the Simmons project?
Question 2:
What lessons did IDEO possibly learn from the Simmons project? If you were a consultant what would you recommend IDEO in order not to make the same mistakes again? ( also own suggestions are welcome).
Answers:
Answer 1:
Although IDEO has been working very hard for the project assigned by Simmons, there were some problems that lead Simmons to not reach its goal.
In fact, they received no reaction from customers. This is due to the fact that the process of disclose new products to the customers was too quick and so they cannot recognize the nolveties of Simmons project. Moreover, they lose sight of the identitiy of their clients, they were too enthusiastic of themselves. In order to avoid conflicts and reach consensus decision, they also were always agree with themselves about every outcome, displaying the groupthink problem.
Finally they showed a lack of interaction and collaboration with their clients. All those things led the Simmons project turned out to be a defeat, even if the products were innovative and well segmented.
Answer 2:
As I said before, Simmons showed a lack of interaction and collaboration with their clients. So the first lesson IDEO could learn from the Simmons project is that, especially in the first stage (called “Phase 0”), IDEO can share its teamwork and offices with some key-people of Simmons, in order to let them participate in the activity of forming ideas and brainstorming. The customers of IDEO (Simmons, for example) need to feel like they are part of the project and to learn deeply the culture and the way of thinking, keeping them in mind. Thus, it’s very important to intensify and expand realtions with customers. Moreover, IDEO had introduced and integrated business factor people into the design team, with the