IDEO is an industrial design and innovation consultancy firm based in Palo Alto, CA. The company is known for designing products, services, environments, and digital experiences and has also done a fair share of management consulting. The company has designed such products as Apple's first mouse, Microsoft's second mouse, the Palm V PDA, and Steelcase's Leap Chair and counts Proctor & Gamble, PepsiCo, Microsoft, Eli Lilly, and Steelcase as major clients. The firm has also been featured on ABC's show "Nightline" and the 2009 documentary "Objectified," won more Business Week/IDSA Industrial Design Excellence Awards than any other firm, and been ranked in the top 25 most innovative companies by BusinessWeek.
In this post I present a interview with IDEO CEO Tim Brown:
-What was your childhood like?
I grew up in a small town in the south of England close to Oxford. My father was a photographer and so I was used to the idea of image and craft. My schooling was very traditional, imagine something straight out of Tom Brown’s School Days and Queen Victoria but somehow I bucked the system and followed my passion for art. I was the one who crept off the playing field so that I could spend more time in the art studio.
-Were you always interested in business/industrial design?
Certainly not business and not really design. I only discovered design once I got to art school. In fact I thought originally that I might be a painter but quickly realized I didn’t have the talent. I was not at all entrepreneurial growing up and only really discovered business when I was forced to as the head of an IDEO office. I eventually realized that business can be thought of as a design problem and that insight has really helped me.
-What was your greatest business/design idea and what inspired it?
The realization that design thinking could be applied to a much broader set of problems than just the latest high street products. Since making this the main focus of the IDEO we have expanded considerably both in scope, impact and revenues. It was inspired on the one hand by the experience of the Dotcom crash when I realized we had too much of our business focused on tech and secondly by observing early signs of what some of our smartest clients were asking.
-How would you describe your personality/habits and how would you say they have contributed to your success?
I have fairly extreme attention deficit disorder. I get bored with thinking about one thing quite quickly and so I love to jump around between seemingly unrelated topics. While this can be frustrating for my colleagues it has led me to see patterns and have insights that otherwise it might have taken much longer to get to.
-Are there any books/movies/experiences that have influenced your outlook on life/business and if so, how?
Peter Drucker taught me that most of business is pragmatic and not some arcane science. The TED conference, which I attend religiously, has helped satisfy my desire to dive into many disciplines.
-What would you say is the best piece of advice you ever received?
It wasn’t so much a single piece of advice but more a role model. Bill Moggridge, one of the founders of IDEO and the person that first hired me as a graduate student, has constantly modeled the combination of enthusiastic optimism, playfulness and a belief in being human. I think this is the perfect starting point for design and business.
-What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?
Reading (mostly about science and science fiction), driving my 1970 Porsche in the hills of Northern California, watching bad British TV shows
-What do you want to be remembered for?
Having used design to create some positive impact in the world
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