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Summary: Wish I worked here :)
Review: I am a designer, and naturally am at awe at all the creative things around me. Usually creativity is everywhere, but it does seem very concentrated around IDEO's offices :)
I have read the book halfway, and already feeling *sick*, nothing to do with the content! but the fact that I am not working there!
Funny as it may sound, I was discussing it with my ex-classmate, and he told the same!
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Summary: This BOOK is awesome!
Review: This book has litterally changed my life. It made me really start thinking about everything and how to make it better. The insight and mental exercise is very replenishing. The author's right, with innovation comes victory.
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Summary: Not bad, but couldn't keep me interested through all of it
Review: This book is packed with tips on how IDEO carries on its creative process, which is interesting, considering the design firm's prestige. The section on brainstorming, for example, I found very useful. However, the book as a whole doesn't quite make it neither as a management book nor as a book aimed at designers. I would say this is the main flaw the author had: trying to cater to two extremely incompatible publics, he looses focus. This made me loose interest in the book halfway through it...
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Summary: A business book for design people. (And vice versa.)
Review: First, let me say what this book is not:
It's NOT a granular, specific, detailed guide to product-design best practices.
Nor is it "Give Your Shop The IDEO Makeover In Ten Easy Steps."What it is, and what it excels at being, is a genial, fast-paced, reasonably persuasive argument in favor of companies that more closely suit the requirements of creative human beings. Kelley's logic goes something like this:
- gather insightful, motivated human beings, regardless of disciplinary background;
- put them under intense deadline pressure, yet pamper them in ways that reinforce a sense of community;
- challenge them to do great, creative work;
- and stand back as they blow you away with sideways solutions the likes of which the world has never seen. This might sound like a recipe for a Montessori for middle-aged hippies, except that IDEO's track record is so impressively studded with design breakthroughs that those of us in the field hold them in the highest respect. Not only that, IDEO's designs have proven to be winners in the market, winning over the hardest-nosed of quants. Kelley successfully makes the case that design is rapidly becoming critical to success in business; that innovation and creativity are the engines of good design; and that environments like the ones IDEO provides for its workers are reasonably reliable incubators of same. If you find yourself engaged by this description, you'll probably, eventually, want more detail than the book is able to provide, but it's a grand place to start.
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Summary: very very interesting
Review: It is sad to say that, as a business writer, I read few business books. The reason is that the vast majority are bad: either they wildly exaggerate the novelty, hence the effectiveness, of some new technique or "movement," or they are supremely dull. Either way, the reporting in most of them is bad and conforms more to the ideology of the reporter than to any reality. A really good business book - one that stimulates genuine new thinking and that reports the facts freshly and accurately - are few and very far between. I am happy to report that Kelley's book is positively excellent. Not only did it get me to re-think certain things I took for granted, such as the effectiveness of traditional marketing techniques, but it actually got me to imagine a different way of conceiving products, the "Ideo way." From now on, when I think of the flaws in things that I buy or processes that I encounter (and pay for), I will immediately question whether they could be better designed. As banal as it sounds, this book got me into that mode of thinking like virtually nothing else I have read in the business genre. I am almost embarrassed to admit that I found the book genuinely inspiring. Even more astounding, the book reports accurately about a truly remarkable company, Ideo. It is a design and engineering company in Palo Alto, CA with offices worldwide, that designed the first mouse for Apple as well as an array of products that are working their way into the consumer mainstream (e.g. heart pacemakers, thick-handled toothbrushes, and the Aerobie football). From Kelley's telling of it, the place is full of creative individuals, healthy competition, and zaniness: with virtually no hierarchy or bureaucracy, they sit around playing and brainstorming and joking, coming up with innovations in great flashes of insight and lots of hard work. To put it mildly, I was skeptical: it sounded like many of the places that mediocre reporters extol as the "future" of innovative companies with ridiculous regularity and that are merely booster science fiction, complete with its own vocabulary ("Think verbs, not nouns"). When I went to the company for a writing project, I expected to find the ugly underbelly that went little reported, the "reality" that was typically hidden from all but those who worked there. Instead, I was delighted to find that I was being too cynical: I witnessed an organization that blended talent, discipline, and fun in its own unique way, the secrets of which Kelley attempts to pass on in "The Art of Innovation." There are far too many nuggets of wisdom to summarize here. Regarding traditional marketing, for example, Kelley (and co-author Littman, who has a wonderful, clear writing style) argues that "observation-fueled insights" - both personal and via tests - will lead to more innovation than merely asking consumers what they like and want. This is, in my opinion, a fascinating insight that requires far more thought than the reader may imagine. All too often, market professionals take at face value what consumers say, rather than questioning whether they are trying to please the interviewer or don't really know their preferences. The key, Kelley asserts, is to anticipate their desires. He also shares the Ideo experience on the "perfect brainstorm" - and I watched them in awe myself - as they think outside the normal barriers of out thought. But there are many, many other subjects, such as their ideas on the control of personal space in the organization. Nonetheless, in spite of their inspiration and irrepressible enthusiasm, Ideo engineers are not dreamers. They are down to earth businessmen and they know the limits of how far they can go in search of the "next big thing." Kelley continually warms the reader not to get carried away, not to become unmoored from deep-seated consumer preferences: as he puts it, "color outside the lines, but...stay on the same page." While a hit product combines good design and cost-efficiency, he warns, they also need good timing, which is extremely difficult to predict: you need some luck as well. In other words, there is substantial risk in what they do, and they fail often. Interestingly, Ideo employees are allowed to fail so long as they learn thereby to stay at the cutting edge or to take their idea and apply it in some new way in another product. While most business books peter out long before the end - some do not even merit getting beyond the book flap - this book just kept getting better for me. The concluding chapters were just as interesting as the earlier ones, making new points and offering sound advice rather than merely recapitulating some banality. For example, at the very end, Kelley talks about one way that Ideo employees try to see the future: rather than seek to pull something out of thin air, they attempt to find "early adopters" of cutting-edge technologies that are not yet well known (or "distributed"). This is a subtle insight that I will study in the years to come. Indeed, this book seemed better to me on the second reading, which virtually never occurs, at least for me, in the business book genre. Recommended with enthusiasm.
Rating:
Summary: Ok... not great
Review: The company sounds like a great place to work, but this book is pretty weak. Specifically, it is not particulary well written or novel in its content. They should have hired a better author to work with.
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Summary: other people's stories
Review: What kind of book makes the same points over and over again chapter after chapter? What kind of author borrows other peoples stories (almost entirely) to make points regarding innovation ?
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Summary: On the management of design
Review: I come to this book as a designer, manager, technologist, and cog in the wheel. I was very skeptical when I picked up this book. It's hard to summarize innovation or clearly articulate the techniques used to get there (many have tried and failed). By it's very nature, innovation goes against the status quo, and institutionalizing it and codifying it seems an impossible task. To find the balance between beauracracy and chaos is a fine talent. I was surprised to find that this book delivers. Yes, it's written from a management point of view, and talks about staffing and running meetings, issues involving acquring and laying out office space, etc. However, the insights into these activities are great. The chapter on "How to run a brainstorming meeting" is a real gem. Perhaps Peter Drucker laid out important rules for focused meetings in The Effective Executive, but here Kelly delivers rules for keeping everyone open, receptive, and creative. Some of the negative reviews of this book seem to be from a design/creativity point of view. People looking for the formula for creativity (we took widget "a" and put on our creativity caps and out came not only the solution to our problem, but an innovation that revolutionized the world). This book doesn't give you that. It does give you a method for constructing a company, or department, or even a meeting in a way that encourages experimentation, creativity, and excitement. I would recommend this book (along with the aforementioned Peter Drucker book) to anyone who manages people, or works with people and wants them to be more creative, more open, and more excited about their jobs. I'm slowly creeping these ideas into my corporate environment and fully expect spectacular results.
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Summary: Still can't see the man behind the curtain.
Review: This book moves quickly and is very inspiring. It started me re-thinking some approaches I have to beginning a project and moving through "stuck" points. I have poured through it to try and find some great answers to the tough client-management/design-management questions and it leaves me a tad disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it has great insight and has a lot of info that I am currently trying to find a place for in my own style. I just get the feeling that Kelley is, at times, preaching to the choir with a slightly different sermon. I'm using it as a great springboard towards other design management ideas.
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Summary: Can all companies become IDEO's ?
Review: If one company should be able to tell what it takes to be innovative it's IDEO. A very 'readable' book from the masters of innovation. Not a single dull moment reading it. However I must say I ended up being sort of jealous, having read the book. Will this also work for large companies ? Or is it better to set up different units to host these creative people ? This sort of stuff isn't answered by Kelley. A book that looks more into established companies and the process of innovation is for instance Webs of Innovation by Alexander Loudon. Conclusion; an interesting read but not to sure to what extent it's applicable to all sorts of companies.
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