Inovação na IDEO, entrevista a Tim Brown

Entrevista feita pela Mckinsey em Novembro de 2008 ao CEO da IDEO, umas das mais reputadas empresas de design de produtos, serviços e experiências com provas de sucesso no mercado. A IDEO trabalhou com a Apple no desenho do primeiro rato, no desenho do Palm Pilot, na concepção de lojas Prada em Nova Iorque.

Nesta entrevista Tim Brown dá a conhecer a realidade do processo de inovação na IDEO e confronta-o com o que poderá acontecer noutras empresas que pretendam criar uma cultura de inovação.

Seguem alguns excertos da entrevista:

One of the things I've noticed is that if we spend too much time focusing on doing our projects on time and on budget - running our kind of business well - then the ideas we generate aren't as good. So we talk a lot about managing tensions.

If you don't have a process for choosing projects, starting projects, doing projects and ending projects, you will never get very good at innovation.

In some cases, leading innovation means standing up for ideas when they get to the point where they need to be sold throughout the organization. Most of the extinctions that happen in the innovation ecosystem happen inside the organization - long before the ideas get to market - not in the marketplace.

The bigger barrier (to innovation) is needing to know the answer before you get started. ..... You can understand this, of course, because it's an attempt to mitigate risk. But wanting to know if you have the right idea, before beggining to explore something kills a lot of innovation.

... I think a competitive issue for nations in the future will be the ability of the general populace to generate and develop ideas.

... to motivate your people as innovators, you've got to be prepared to measure yourself by the impact you have in the world - not just your sales or your margins, which are important, of course.

At IDEO .... everybody has a page, which is basically their personal portfolio. One of the things in it is the impact of the work they've done - on their colleagues, on their teams, or on the outside world.