Case Analysis for Making Progress at IDEO

BY Group 8
(Mr. Anil Kumar MP13009 & Mr. Vishav Sharma MP13070)
Core Situation Analysis
The case is essentially about the company IDEO, which works with many clients with the concept of
design thinking, they mainly take projects from the customer and work on these project with targets and
millstone. There work is of innovation but against common perception they work very systematically
with tough targets. There project with the most of the companies runs for few days to few week and
then team moves to new project. All the projects go through following three activity sets
1. Inspiration : Understand the problem from various sources and what kind of solution customer
want and what is feasible solution by interacting with all possible stakeholders with project
2. Ideation: Concept generation, brainstorming, prototyping. Refinement towards single design on
the basis of feasibility and economic analysis
3. Implementation: Final design testing with user, clients and do the necessary changes as per the
user requirement.
This model was quite successful with in IDEO, but one of regular client of IDEO Con Agra Foods felt that
they need to work with IDEO on different model i.e. longer periods of engagement with fixed teams
from IDEO who exclusively work on projects from Con Agra Foods.
IDEO and Con Agra Foods agreed to the longer term concept of team and one dedicated team of IDEO
designers have been deployed with Con Agra Foods and results of this model were very encouraging and
the IDEO team was able to work on lot more impact project and both companies after completion of
one year of this tie up decided to continue with the model.

Problem Definition
IDEO had culture of project base approach in innovation, where designer have to work with milestone
and targets and IDEO was successful with this culture for two decades .This culture dont give much
freedom in given project as people have to meet the strict targets . Also designers have freedom to go
to another project which can be entirely different from existing project, so verity of work designers can
work on use to be huge and it use to big motivation factor for designers.
But in case of dedicated team for Con Agra Foods, the project structure was not that rigid and teams
have much more independence. On the basis of first year it can be easily said that this model resulted in
more impactful work for Con Agra Foods by IDEO and was definitely successful
This success was real problem because for designers especially younger one the most inspiring think in
designing is verity of work in which they can contribute in different ways. This was the original model of
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IDEO and IDEO believes that they were successful over two decades because of this model where
designer were inspired by verity of work they get to do with IDEO.
But new collaboration with Con Agra Food Challenges this concept because even though the work done
in the first year was more impactful but lack on the verity quotient. There was possibility that after initial
success in this model designer may not feel creative enough to do quality work because of
repetitiveness of work

Possible Alternatives
1. IDEO decide to go on its original model of short term projects with its customers and Clients.
2. IDEO decide to work with its clients with on longer arrangements as done with the Con Agra
foods
3. IDEO decide to work in mix strategy and keep working in its original model of short term
projects but choose to work on longer term arrangements with certain client where it feels it
can contribute with greater impact projects

Evolutions of Alternative
1. If IDEO decide to go with original model, it will help it to sustain the culture of project based
innovation which is tested and tried successful model for company. It will also help the company
to engage the talented designer who wants to do verity of work. But changing scenario in
industry demands more impactful work from IDEO which require long term association such as
done with Con Agra Foods. Also some of the senior designer wants to do more impactful work
2. This alternative is just opposite to the first alternative and advantages of first alternative
become disadvantages here and vice versa
3. This is mixed approach where best of two practices can be used for doing verity of work by
young designer and when they matured and want to do more impactful work they can be part
of long term association team with some quality customer like Con Agra and Innova Schools.
This is most balanced and practical approach for future. In this approach IDEO need to be very
careful in choosing that with which company they should do short term projects and where long
term projects will be fruitful for IDEO and other company.

Recommendation
Our team propose alternative three of mixed approach for future.

Implications
We have defined design thinking as a concept where innovation is done to meet human needs in
technical possible and economically feasible way. If we consider that approach IDEO have to focus on
more impactful project which is possible with long association with other companies. So company can
do small duration project with certain companies to engage new designer in company but then they
need to migrated to impactful work which is possible with longer association.
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