下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
FOREWORD
It was 1990. I had been a consultant and management lecturer for over fifteen years. Probably hung out in three or four hundred companies. But ... this one was different.
Just six blocks from my Palo Alto office, I’d never visited it. And now, following a half-day tour, I recall clearly bouncing in the front door of our office and saying to our receptionist, the first person I encountered, "It’s finally happened. I’ve seen a company where I can imagine working!" (In retrospect, I guess that was a frightening thing to say to her.)
The company in question was IDEO (actually, at the time, David Kelley Design). And I’d been bowled over by the spirit and sense of playfulness that invaded every aspect of its stellar—wildly creative— work.
I hope I’m not generally a braggart, but in this instance I claim some precedence. I think I was the first of the "gurus" to latch on to IDEO as Exhibit A in the folder marked "innovation machines."
That was then, and in the subsequent ten-plus years, innovation has spurted to the tippy top of the "requisite core competence list" for companies of all shapes and sizes. And still, nobody does it better than IDEO.
But how? Fat chance of finding out, as IDEO’s finely-tuned methodology is obviously its best kept secret.
Until now.
Enter ... THE ART OF INNOVATION
Tom Kelley, IDEO exec and David Kelley’s brother, tells all!
This is a marvelous book. It carefully walks us through each stage of the IDEO innovation process—from creating hot teams (IDEO is perpetually on "broil") to learning to see through the customer’s eyes (forget focus groups!) and brainstorming (trust me, nobody but nobody does it better than IDEO) to rapid prototyping (and nobody, but nobody, does it better...).
But this is no drab and dreary academic tour. Hey, IDEO creates very cool "stuff" of all sorts. And the case studies—from grocery carts to toothpaste tubes, electronic doodads to obscure medical devices—breathe life into practically every page of the book.
In recent years, as the L.O.I. (Legend of IDEO) has spread far and wide, the company has had clients begging for advice not just on a product or two, but on the IDEO way of innovating. It has responded vigorously. That’s good news for readers. It means this methodology not only works for IDEO, but has proven to be transferable.
It’s not quite that simple, of course. Beneath the IDEO method lies the incredible, throbbing IDEO spirit that led me to love at first sight. No, it won’t be "1, 2, 3 ... I’m an innovator now." Nonetheless, I can imagine no better launching point than the pages, ideas, and cases of this book. I have been waiting ten years for it. And now I’m lucky enough to own a thoroughly highlighted copy of the galleys ... that I will barely let out of my sight.
Innovation is it, for the foreseeable future. And The Art of Innovation is it for those with the nerve to take the plunge.
So ... on with the show!
Tom Peters
Buenos Aires
October 9, 2000