Essay About Dennis Boyle And Ideo Product Development

Iedo Case
Iedo Case
9-600-143
REV: APR I L 2 6 , 2 0 0 7
Professors Stefan Thomke and Ashok Nimgade, M.D. prepared this case. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases
are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.
Copyright © 2000 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685,
write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School.
STEFAN THOMKE
ASHOK NIMGADE , M . D.
IDEO Product Development
“I should have had café latte,” thought Dennis Boyle as he was sipping his strong espresso at
Peets coffeehouse, just around the corner from his office. Many designers and engineers from his
company, IDEO, one of the worlds largest and arguably most successful product development firms,
often gathered here and talked. It was late summer 1998 in Palo Alto, the heart of Californias Silicon
Valley, and Boyle gathered his thoughts for a meeting with David Kelley, the head and founder of
IDEO.
Boyle had just led his group at IDEO through the development of 3Coms Palm V hand-held
computer, which designers and managers at both firms already considered a successful product with
very large commercial potential. Now he was being asked to design the competing Visor product by
the very same individuals he had worked with previously. The only twist was that these clients
themselves now worked at Handspring, a new venture whose goal was to come out with a fully
compatible, slightly smaller and less expensive palm-size computer that could easily add
functionality. 3Com had even licensed out operating software to Handspring.
Although working on the Palm V challenged IDEOs engineering skills, working with Handspring
promised to challenge the very manner in which it operated. It operated on the principle of getting
all team members to “fail often to succeed sooner”—a creative process that often looked to outsiders
like “spinning wheels.” The process usually generated a fountain of absurd-appearing but
innovative ideas before the final answer and product miraculously came through a process of
discipline and fast decision-making.
The IDEO philosophy melded Californian iconoclasm with a genuine respect for new ideas and
invention. For over two decades, the firm contributed to the design of thousands of new products
ranging from the computer mouse to the stand-up toothpaste dispenser. Along the way, it had also
become the largest award-winning design firm in the world (see Exhibit 2). IDEO came to national
prominence when ABCs Nightline illustrated its innovation process by showing its designers reengineer
a decades-old icon, the supermarket shopping cart, in just five days.
Now Boyle had to decide whether he should suggest to Handsprings management to add more
time to a development schedule that was less than half of what it took to design the stunningly
beautiful and innovative Palm V. Boyles group feared that an overly aggressive development