Kelley brothers a major force behind growth of design thinking

The past decade or so has seen the inexorable rise of design thinking as a guiding tenet in the business landscape, with the processes used by designers increasingly applied to larger challenges that ostensibly seem far removed from the demands of crafting new products.

The increasing ubiquity of design thinking is a testimony to the influence of one particular company that has pioneered the concept and implemented it across business, non-profit and policy circles – the renowned Silicon Valley-based design studio IDEO, which has arguably done more to codify the practice of innovation than almost any other firm.

"We created that term, design thinking, and it's now owned by the world," says IDEO general manager Tom Kelley. "It's amazing that in about a decade, it went from this thing that was only said behind closed doors in this boutique design kind of way, and now it's everywhere."

Few can offer the sort insight into the spread of DT as the extremely affable Kelley, an Ohio native who has overseen the growth of IDEO from a relatively small team of a few dozen designers to its current stable of 650 staff based in studios around the world. The hugely influential design firm was founded in 1991 when Tom's brother David, a giant in the design world, merged studios with celebrated British designers Bill Moggridge and Mike Nuttall. It was an earlier incarnation of IDEO that designed the first Apple mouse, and the extensive list of clients for whom they have designed products include Palm, Microsoft, Medtronic and Ford.

“It’s been fun to see the phrase ‘design thinking become a meme that has gone out into the world,” says Kelley of his firm’s signature approach, “but what’s more important is that the idea, the practice of DT, which way predates the use of the term – we’ve been practising DT for more than 30 years at IDEO – has come around to be embraced by even the sceptical business people.”

Changing perception

Key to the adoption of DT is the changing perception of design itself. It is no longer seen dismissively as the art of making products or marketing look nice, but rather as an integral part of the creative process itself, and that has translated into greater acceptance of design processes throughout the corporate hierarchy.

“I came over from a very straitlaced, analytical business and consulting environment,” says Kelley, who joined the firm in his mid-30s at his brother’s invitation. “When I came over to IDEO, it felt like we were doing this creative part of the business that our clients kind of approached as ‘optional fun’ – many felt the real business was done in the boardroom and we were over at the kids table doing this stuff that was optional fun. That was fine, we were having fun, but it’s so much more fun now to be at the boardroom table.”

The overarching story of IDEO has been the hugely successful transition from a traditional design studio to a design-led consultancy firm, providing a host of diverse clients such as Proctor and Gamble, Samsung, healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente and the Marriott hotel group with design-led solutions to disparate problems. From having designed computer mice and office chairs, IDEO now redesigns corporate cultures, and in its own way, that evolution is itself a product of the firm's dedication to iterative prototyping.

“There is a continuous thread,” says Kelley of the shift in emphasis. “A quick summary is we have gone from design to design thinking. But the mental process is very similar.”

“We are using the same core techniques as we did 30 years ago,” he explains. “It starts with empathy, it’s about taking a human-centered view. This is how problems get solved, you start with humans and then you apply your technology. You use fast prototyping as a way to learn. You’re not going to learn by reading books alone, but the way organisations learn is by experimenting, trial and error. So it’s the human-centredness, it’s the prototyping, and then it’s the storytelling – once you’ve got your wonderful idea that you deeply believe in, it’s not enough, you’ve got to wrap your idea in a story.”

Books

IDEO’s influence on the design world is vast, both in terms of its products and consulting, but also in the relationship to the d.school at nearby Stanford, the prestigious design institute that was founded by

David Kelley

in 2004 and which has also helped champion the concept of DT. Furthermore, a series of books by Tom Kelley on the IDEO approach to fostering design-led thinking,

The Art of Innovation

and

The Ten Faces of Innovation

, have become canonical texts in the business innovation literature, and Kelley delivers talks to some 10,000 people every year, further propagating the lessons learned at IDEO.

But Tom and David Kelley are not satisfied with merely establishing the concept of DT – their most recent book, Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, attempts to tackle the myth that only certain people are blessed with creativity, and that it is possible to cultivate creativity in people who would never have considered themselves creative.

For those who suspect that creativity is not the sort of thing that can be trained or developed later in life, Kelley offers a compelling example – himself.

“It is really possible [to train creativity], and I think I’m living proof. At age 35, or whatever, I’d worked for an accounting firm, I’d done five years of spreadsheets, I don’t think anyone looking at me in 1987 would say, ‘Oh Tom, you’re just naturally creative.’ No, not at all.”

Then his brother invited him to join IDEO, and he was finally able to tap that creative core, and now he is keen to spread the message. “The people who are seeking [creativity] just a little bit, they don’t identify as creative but they’re kind of restless. I’ve gotten such fun emails from people, hundreds of emails from people who say the process has ‘changed my life’. I had somebody say this is ‘the manual of my life’. These people are very close to releasing that creative energy, and this book can be a catalyst for them.”

The spread of DT illustrates how it is possible to expand perceptions of the creative and innovative processes, but how does Kelley feel about the risk of DT becoming an overused, misunderstood buzzword?

“Of course there’s a risk of overuse. As I’ve witnessed, it has happened a lot with the word innovation – people slap the word innovation on things that are not innovative. I’m sure there are practitioners of DT out there who haven’t had a lot of experience and are trying it out.”

Overall, however, Kelley is more enthusiastic about the benefits of spreading the idea than owning the concept.

“This is part and parcel to having a generous approach to new ideas. I see it in other people’s books, for example, where people have service marked a word that they’re using, because they’re worried that if they share it too much, other people will begin to use it. For us, this is kind of the opposite, we want the whole world to embrace design thinking, we want everybody in the business community and beyond to develop creative confidence, and if you genuinely want that, then you can’t hold it so tight, and that means you lose the possible financial advantage of ownership, but also it means that other people will adapt and shape and translate the ideas. That’s evolution, we’re okay with that happening.”

Social innovation

The evolution of IDEO has seen it move increasingly into the realm of social innovation, applying DT to diverse challenges from the provision of clean drinking water in

India

to the school lunch system in a

San Francisco

school district to a huge education project in

Peru

, a project that particularly inspires Kelley.

“We’re helping to reinvent the school system in the nation of Peru,” he says. “We’re looking at 200 charter schools based on design thinking, and we’ve already seen tremendous improvements in educational attainment. We’re building 200 schools, we’ve built 23 so far, and IDEO designed the physical schools, the curriculum and the business model. If you can change a nation’s school system, you can change a nation. For me personally, this is a lot more fun than designing a new product – this is so rewarding.”

Perhaps that is the key achievement of David and Tom Kelley and the IDEO team – making it seem that the evolution from designing the first Apple mouse to redesigning developing world education systems is both obvious and inevitable. Those are qualities, of course, that lie at the heart of all great design.

Tom Kelley is one of the speakers at the Ibec Better by design 2015 Annual CEO Conference taking place on Wednesday, March 4th, at Dublin Castle.