RDVP Seminar (10/8/2004) David Kelley

David Kelley, founder of IDEO and professor at Stanford, spoke about the d-School, a new proposal for a Design school at Stanford. Design (along with medicine and drama) is a discipline where practitioners are sought after rather than academics (hence Kelley's ability to be a tenured non-PhD). As interdisciplinary research gains currency at Stanford, the momentum for the proposed program has gone from zero to unstoppable. Hasso Platner, founder of SAP, has recently commited to being a major donor in the campaign to raise $35-50M for transforming a building (550 Panama), and funding new faculty positions. Even now, the work has begun to figure out the agenda, curriculum, and point of view. It will build on the current project-based learning philosophy of Kelley's existing classes. The three main themes (proposed by a survey of 250 design program alums) are:

1. Super low-cost design for the developing world
   
2. Sustainable / environmentally conscious design
   
3. Projects to improve K-12 education
   

And while spin-off companies such as IGNITE Innovations are showcase success stories, Kelley hopes to judge the program by spawning imitators at other schools, as well as showing how the program changed the lives of the students, and those students subsequently changed the culture at major companies.

I discovered the difference between a d-school professor and a b-school professor: b-school talks always have 2x2 matrices. So do the d-school talks. But in the d-school, they rotate the axes 45 degrees, so it's an "X" instead of a "+" and it looks cooler. The matrix in question was "problem types" and the two axes were whether the goal was understood and whether the methodology was understood. So on the East point (remember, this is rotated 45 degrees...) we have the "Foggy" problems where neither the goal nor methodology is clear. On the West point, for "Paint by Numbers" problems both are clear. On the North point, "Movies" have a well-defined methodology (scriptwriter, producer, gaffer, best boy, etc) but an unclear goal. The South point describes the "Quest" problems where the goal is clear, but how to achieve it is not.

He also spoke a bit about some of the elements of IDEO/d-school culture that enable the creativity that his groups are so famous for. First, authority for rule making is pushed far down to the local units, so that everyone feels involved in setting the expectations for their studio. Second, diversity is incredibly important. (I'm still not completely sold that IDEO is a diverse place: they hire a LOT of Stanford grads and everyone that I've met there seems to fall into the "hip, iconoclastic" archetype.) Third, you need to establish strong channels for constructive feedback; especially getting people to defer judgment on crazy ideas long enough to say how they can be improved, rather than just that they won't work. Finally, we talked about how IDEO handles the recruiting/selection process. David admitted that they had a simpler problem than many, because fast growth has never been a goal of IDEO
(they've taken nearly 20 years to grow to 400 people). Plus, the pipeline from Stanford design program allows him to get a deep understanding of a student's potential over several courses and years. But as they expanded to looking for people outside the mechanical engineering/design discipline, they used more of a group consensus model: hire junior people, but get buy-in from 10 current employees that they think the candidate should be an employee. The candidates are "lunched" multiple times to give exposure to the new colleagues, who, if they vote yes, have a vested interest in seeing the new employee succeed. Therefore, it's like instantly having 10 mentors.

Interesting heuristic from Bob Sutton on measuring how innovative a company is: Go to meetings and see what fraction of the attendees talk. Higher the fraction, the more innovative.