Technology brokering and innovation in a product development firm

Administrative Science Quarterly, Dec, 1997 by Andrew Hargadon, Robert I. Sutton

2. Semistructured interviews with designers and managers. We conducted 60 semistructured interviews; 37 were tape-recorded and transcribed; we took notes during others. We had multiple interviews with some informants, so approximately 35 people were interviewed. In initial interviews, we asked senior managers and designers general questions about IDEO's history, clients, competitors, structure, human resource practices, and work process. Subsequent interviews focused on themes like technology brokering that we wanted to learn about in detail.

3. Informal discussions. We had hundreds of informal conversations with managers, designers, and support staff, ranging from brief exchanges to long talks over lunch. We talked with almost every employee at the Palo Alto headquarters and had dozens of conversations with the CEO. We also had informal conversations with ten IDEO clients about the company. The content varied widely, with designers often gossiping about new clients, employees who had been hired or had left, the virtues or drawbacks of current IDEO prototypes, "cool" new technologies that they had seen or heard about, or why they loved or despised existing products, ranging from toy Slinkies to Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In addition, after we began asking questions about emerging themes, including technology brokering and brainstorming sessions, designers often approached us with comments, questions, stories, prototypes, and sketches that they believed would enhance our understanding of these topics. Conversations with clients were equally diverse, but al least three of them talked with us about technology brokering. For example, one client described how IDEO designers had introduced his organization to promising technical solutions that were new to that industry but were used widely elsewhere.

4. Brainstorming sessions. We observed 24 group brainstorming sessions in which products were designed, six in person and 18 on videotape. Each meeting was initiated by members of a design team. They invited IDEO designers who were not team members to generate possible design solutions for the project. IDEO brainstorms are scheduled meetings and are held in conference rooms. Five brainstorming rules are displayed in large letters in several locations in each room: (1) defer judgment; (2) build on the ideas of others; (3) one conversation at a time; (4) stay focused on the topic, and (5) encourage wild ideas. IDEO's Methodology Handbook, which outlines IDEO's techniques for new designers, contains 11 pages of instructions about how to facilitate and participate in brainstorms. Designers who lead brainstorms are skilled and experienced facilitators; nearly all IDEO designers have extensive experience as participants in brainstorms.

The sessions we observed lasted between 45 minutes and two hours. The topics ranged widely: three about personal appliances, three about furniture, three about video cameras, two about surgical skin staplers, two about medical devices to aid healing, two about blood analyzers, two about laptop computers, two about personal communication, one about remote controls, one about ski goggles, one about vacuum cleaners, one about faucets, and one about a portable traffic control system. Typically, project engineers introduced the project and described a design problem they were facing, then the other engineers offered possible solutions, often in the form of solutions they had seer in other settings. Solutions were sometimes found in similar products that were brought to brainstorms (e.g., a designer suggested adapting a design solution for a new skin stapler that was already used in a competitor's product) or in products that were brought in from different industries (e.g., a designer showed how a gas engine from a model airplane could be used to power a skin stapler). Designers also described and sketched solutions on paper or on whiteboards in the room. The visible and vocal nature of these meetings offered us the opportunity to observe how new problems and existing solutions were shared among the designers.