(upbeat music)
[Ted Koppel] It used to be that you deferred to the boss.
[Male Speaker] Is it the boss that's always going to have
the best ideas? Not likely.
[Archived Footage Male Speaker] Here, nibble fingers,
alert minds, and tireless machines...
[Ted Koppel] And it used to be in most companies
that chaos was discouraged.
(mechanical noises)
[Dave Kelley] This is where the crazies live.
This is where we do our work. It's different.
[Female Speaker] Good morning. Good Morning. Good...
[Ted Koppel] It used to be you were supposed to climb
the corporate ladder.
[Dave Kelley] Status is who comes up with
the best ideas, not who's the oldest,
not who's been with the company longest,
not who has that biggest title.
If you go into a culture
and there's a bunch of stiffs going around, I can guarantee
they're not likely to invent anything.
(bell ringing)
[Male Worker] You can stack this up big, as big as you want.
(machine whirring)
[Male Speaker 2] That's great. Thanks a lot.
And we had a great time today.
[Ted Koppel] Well, forget the way it used to be.
Tonight, the deep dive.
One company's secret weapon for innovation.
(cuckoo clock)
(trumpeting intro)
[Ted Koppel] A lot further along in this broadcast, near the end
as a matter of fact, you will hear
one of the central characters suggest that we look around.
The only thing that's not designed by anybody, he will say, is nature.
Actually, you could say the same thing by observing
that the only designs that don't require a constant modification
are the ones we find in nature,
but the point is well taken.
From the buildings in which we live and work
to the cars we drive or the knives and forks
with which we eat,
everything we use was designed to create some sort of marraige
between form and function.
Does it work and can we make it look interesting or attractive?
What is truly amazing is how long we tend to put up with things
that may not work particularly well, or it may look especially
unattractive simply because we're accustomed to them
and because no one has ever suggested redesigning
those things.
There's an interesting distinction between design and invention.
Whoever came up with the idea of dental floss, for example,
was an inventor, but the man or woman
who put it inside that clever little plastic box
that lets you tear off just the right length?
That was a designer.
Now, how does the process of designing a better product work?
And would it be interesting to watch that process?
When we first broadcast this program back in February,
we weren't at all sure what you would think,
but judging by the number of you who ordered video cassettes
of the program and the number of people who contacted
the industrial product design firm that is featured in this program,
you liked it a lot.
Here was the premise of the program.
We went to IDEO, the product design folk,
and said, take something old and familiar, like say,
the shopping cart and completely redesign it for us in just five days.
ABC news correspondent Jack Smith tells us what happened next.
[Jack Smith] Nine in the morning, day one,
and these people have a deadline to meet.
[Dave Kelley] So welcome to the kickoff of the shopping cart project.
[Smith] This is Palo Alto, California in the heart of Silicon Valley,
and these are designers at IDEO, probably the most influencial
product development firm in the world.
Designers are the reason TVs have square screens,
chairs four legs, and toothbrushes nowadays
those squishy handles.
In fact, it was IDEO that designed those squishy handles.
IDEO has designed everything from high-tech medical equipment
to the 25-foot mechanical whale in the movie Free Willy
and the first computer mouse for Apple.
Smith ski goggles, Nike sunglasses,
NEC computer screens.
Hundreds of products we take for granted.
[Dave Kelley] This is called the Neat Squeeze
toothpaste tube which...
[Smith] You invented that?
[Smith] The man who runs IDEO is Dave Kelley,
a Stanford engineering professor which a Groucho Marx mustache,
a data genius, and an approach to innovation that usually works.
[Dave Kelley] Well, thank you, Fred.
[Smith] But not always.
[Kelley] Thanks a lot.
I can show you some products that failed.
Came up with this idea called Monster Shoes
where you take these little monsters and lace them
into your shoes like this,
and we built a bunch of them, and they didn't want those, either.
[Smith] Mostly, what IDEO designs, though, does work,
and it works very well.
Dave and his design teams create about 90 new products every year.
[Kelley] The point is that we're not actually experts at any given area,
you know, we're kind of experts on the process of how
you design stuff,
so we don't care if you give us a toothbrush, a toothpaste tube,
a tractor, a space shuttle, you know, a chair.
It's all the same to us.
We, like, want to figure out how to innovate in--in--
by using our process, applying it.
[Smith] And so, for the next five days,
the team will apply that process to bringing the supermarket
shopping cart into the 21st century.
[Peter Skillman] I think first we should maybe all acknowledge
that it's kind of insane to do an entire project
in a week.
[Smith] Project leader is Peter Skillman,
a 35-year old Stanford engineer,
project leader because he's good with groups
not because of seniority.
He's only been at IDEO for six years.
The rest of the team is eclectic, but that's typical here.
Whitney Mortimer, Harvard MBA.
Peter Coughlin, linguist.
Tom Kelley, Dave's brother, marketing expert.
Jane Fulton Surrey, psychologist.
Alex Cassacks, 26, a biology major who's turned down medical school
three times because he's having too much fun at IDEO.
(laughter)
[Skillman] It's climbing up and doing this.
(indistinctive conversation)
[Smith] Safety emerges early as an important issue.
[Surrey] 22,000 child injuries a year
which is--and so they're hospitalized injuries,
and, I mean, there are many others...
[Skillman] That's just reported in the store, that's--
they actually have to go to the emergency room.
[Surrey] No, no, no, no, no. That's hospitalized. Right.
(multiple voices) Wow.
[Smith] And theft. It turns out a lot of carts are stolen.
[Blonde Man] You know, what is the average life of a cart?
Does it last two years, five years, ten years?
And how big is this theft thing?
[Smith] 10a.m.
As the team works, it becomes clear
there are no titles here.
No permanent assignments.
[Kelley] And the other side says-- it gives a lot of help--
says, "be safe."
(laughter)
[Smith] Everyone appears to be equal, and they love to mock
Corporate America.
[Kelley] I'll give you status, I'll give you a big, red ball
on a post, and that says, you're a big guy.
If you've got a ball, you're a senior vice president.
Pfft. You know, what do I care? The desk, the red ball?
It's all the same.
(laughter)
[Kelley] In a very innovative culture, you can have a kind of hierarchy
of, here's the boss and the next person down,
the next person down
because it's impossible that the boss is the one
who's had the insightful experience with shopping carts.
It's just not possible.
[Smith] According to Kelley, even employees who merely
listen to the boss, don't add that much, either.
[Kelley] So you've got to hire people who don't listen to you,
and that--I don't think Corporate America wants to hear that
right yet.
[Skillman] And I think we ought to start making those lists
about the kinds of questions that we're going to ask.
[Smith] The team splits into groups to find out first-hand
what the people who use, make, and repair shopping carts
really think.
[Kelley] Okay, go.
[Cart Expert] The problem with the plastic cart is
the wind catches it.
[Blonde Man] Yeah.
[Cart Expert] And these things have been clocked at 35
across the parking lot.
(laughter)
[Cassacks] Man, that's actually a pretty good point.
[Kelley] The trick is to find these real experts,
and--so that you can learn much more quickly than you could
by just kind of doing it the normal way,
and trying to learn about it yourself.
[Customer] From everything I read, these things aren't that safe either.
You know.
So, probably the seat itself is going to have to be redesigned.
[Kelley] What you're seeing here is kind of the social science
like anthropologists - you know, like you go and study tribes.
What is it that they do that we can learn from
that will help us design a better cart?
[Surrey] One of the interesting things for me is looking at how
people really don't like to let go of the cart, except for the professional
shopper whose strategy is to leave the cart at various places.
[Kelley] In Corporate America, many bosses, like, measure
whether their people are, you know, who the good people
or the people who are performing, the one's they see at their desks
all the time.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
The people who are really getting the information are out here
talking to the Buzz's of the world, going to meet other experts.
Much more useful than sitting at your desk.
[Smith] 3:30 in the afternoon, and the group is back at IDEO.
There is no let up.
(drilling sound)
[Skillman] Each team is going to demonstrate and communicate
and share everything that they've learned today.
People went off into the four corners of the Earth,
and they're coming back with the golden keys
to innovation.
[Cassacks] A shopping cart has been clocked at 35 miles an hour
traveling through a parking lot in the wind.
[IDEO Team Member] We were in the store, what, two hours?
And it was truly frightening just to see the kind of stuff going on.
[Kelley] You got to designate some people to make damn sure
that the store owner's point of view is represented.
[Smith] After nine straight hours, the team is tired.
They call it a day.
[Skillman] So, um...
[Kelley] Everybody cool?
[Skillman] Well, uh, that's great. Thanks a lot. We had a great time
today.
(clapping)
(transition music)
[Skillman] We want to get together and start here.
[Smith] Day two at the start of IDEO's unique brand
of brainstorming.
They call it a "deep dive." A sort of total emersion
in the problem at hand.
IDEO's mantra for innovation is written everywhere.
One conversation at a time. Stay focused.
Encourage wild ideas. Defer judgment.
Build on the ideas of others.
(bell chiming)
[Skillman] That's the hardest thing for people to do
is to restrain themselves from criticizing an idea,
so if anybody starts to nail an idea, they get the bell.
(bell chiming)
[Smith] The deep dive begins, and for the next few hours,
the ideas pour out and are posted on the walls.
[Skillman] Oh, the blind, the privacy blind.
Like when you're buying six cases of condoms,
and no one sees.
(laughter)
[Skillman] Nesting is... It sort of has to nest.
If it doesn't nest, we don't have a solution.
[Cassacks] How about velcro pants and velcro seats for the kids,
and you just drop them down in there and...
[Smith] Velcro seats? Velcro pants for kids?
[Kelley] Yeah, see, you have to have some wild ideas,
if--then you build on those wild ideas,
and they end up being better ideas then if you said--
if you--if everybody only came up with same things, you know,
kind of appropriate things, you'd never have any points to take off,
to build a really innovative idea.
[Smith] It's organized chaos.
[Kelley] Organized chaos...? It's not organized.
What it is is it's focused chaos.
[Smith] By 11 a.m., the group begins narrowing down
the hundreds of ideas written or drawn on the walls.
How? By voting for them.
[Skillman] Vote with your post-its, not with an idea that's cool,
but with an idea that's cool and buildable.
If it's too far out there, and it can't be built in a day,
then I don't think we should vote on it.
[Smith] Why not have you be the judge?
You're the boss.
[Skillman] Because, because I'm going to be wrong.
It's the team that's able to really judge what the best idea is.
(tapping)
[Smith] Otherwise, ideas wouldn't come out?
[Skillman] That's right.
Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning
of the lone genius.
[Smith] Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning
of the lone genius.
If anything sums up IDEOs approach, that is it.
That and the focused chaos that seems to go with it.
[Green-shirted Male] I took a view. I call it the sport-utility vehicle cart.
[Smith] It is noon. Worried that the team is drifting,
what can only be called a group of self-appointed adults
under Dave Kelley holds an informal side session.
[Skillman] We don't want to tell them what to build
or else we take away the benefit of the whole thing, right?
[Kelley] What needs should they optimize their solution to?
[Smith] The purpose is to refocus the deep dive.
[Skillman] Maybe we arbitrarily say, three to five teams.
Four or five teams.
Four or five teams, and we give each team a need area.
Hey, can we grab everybody over to the wall here?
(bell ringing)
[Skillman] There has to be a command decision.
It becomes very autocratic for a very short period of time
in defining what things people are going to work on.
[Smith] Like it or not, the team is told
that we'll split into groups to build mock-ups
covering four areas of concern that have been identified.
(bell ringing)
[Smith] Shopping, safety, checkout, and finding what you're looking for.
I noticed towards the end of the process, the adults took over.
[Kelley] Yeah, that's because we have no choice but to stop
that cycle.
I mean, if you don't work under time constraints,
you could never get anything done
because it's a messy process that can go on forever.
(machine whirling)
[Smith] While the team starts building prototypes,
Dave Kelley takes me on a tour of the rest of IDEO.
[Kelley] What's happening in here is that's a client meeting.
That's a first client meeting. That's the first time we've met
with the client, so we haven't trained them yet.
(laughing)
[Kelley] If we took them straight from there in to a room
where the music was blaring and everybody was throwing
nerf darts at each other, that would be a little hard to take.
You know, so we're warming them up.
But this is, this is where the crazies live.
This is where we do our work. It's different.
You can tell whether a place is playful in about the first
fifteen minutes as you walk down the hall.
(gears unwinding)
[Kelley] Being playful is of huge importance for being innovative.
I mean, if you go into a culture, and there's a bunch of stiffs
going around, they're not-- I can guarantee they're a lot--
they're not likely to invent anything.
[Smith] Invent anything like this futuristic-looking instrument
for kids.
(energetic music)
[Smith] So no matter what you do with that thing,
you always sound--
[Kelley] You sound great.
[Smith] You always sound good.
[Kelley] You have to make it so that this can happen.
(computer thuds)
[Smith] Woah. It didn't break?
[Kelley] No, it didn't break.
(cymbals clapping)
(bell ringing)
[Smith] There's a whole department at IDEO
devoted to toys.
Turns out to be one of its most profitable areas.
Fun, too.
[Kelley] So it's got these little wings that no matter what you do...
If I get in trouble here...
It's always a spiral.
(cuckoo clock chiming)
[Smith] At IDEO, they've found that fresh ideas come faster
in a fun place.
Not only is the furniture on wheels to suit the needs of the moment,
the people are encouraged to actually build their own
work areas.
[Kelley] They were designing this space, and they said to me,
you know, we'd like to have, you know, $4,000
extra in our budget for a DC3 wing,
and I said, DC3-- you have to have that?
And they said, yeah, they have to have it, so...
[Smith] That's a DC3 wing?
[Kelley] Piece of a DC3 wing, yeah.
[Smith] And that's just décor?
[Kelley] That's décor. That's ambiance, you know,
that says, we're weird, and we're proud of it.
[Smith] Umbrellas on the ceiling to shade computer screens
from direct sunlight,
and bicycles on ropes to prevent clutter.
[Kelley] The first guy who hung a bike up on a thing,
he didn't come to me and ask me.
He didn't ask some facilities person if it was okay.
He tried it.
And then, like, he waited and saw if anybody complained.
If nobody complained, another guy hung a bike up.
And pretty soon everybody's got their bikes up, and nobody's
complained, right, so it's that whole thing of trying stuff
and ask forgiveness, you know, instead of asking permission.
It's the way people come up with new ideas.
[Smith] IDEO has such a reputation for innovation
that client companies are increasingly asking Dave
not just for new products, but also to remake
their corporate cultures.
You may be looking at the workplace of the future here.
[Kelley] It's one thing to be able to do a product once in a while,
but if you can build a culture and a process where you
routinely come up with great ideas,
that's what the companies really want.
[Male Speaker] Okay, Peter, we're done.
[Smith] Back at the shop, it is six o'clock.
The four mock-ups are ready for showing.
[Male Speaker] Baskets also can be--If you think you will have
more volume, baskets can be put in.
[Smith] A modular shopping cart. You pile handbaskets onto.
A high-tech cart that gets you through the traffic jam
at checkout.
[Tan-shirted Man] You could mount a scanner on the shopping cart
so that you as the customer, as you pull it off the shelf,
could scan each item.
[Smith] One that's built around child safety.
And another that lets shoppers talk to the supermarket staff
remotely.
[Black-shirted Man] Yeah, where can I find the yogurt?
[Voice through speaker] The yogurt's over in the dairy section.
[Smith] But the adults, again, decide more work needs
to be done before the mock-ups can be combined into one
last prototype.
[Skillman] Why don't we have all the carts come up here
for a second.
[Kelley] I think you'd take a piece of each one of these ideas
and kind of back it off a little bit and then
put it in the design.
[Smith] The design is still not there.
But there's another motto at IDEO:
fail often in order to succeed sooner.
And some of the team will be up half the night trying to put together
a design that finally does work.
(transition music)
[Smith] It is day five, and Dave Kelley
has no idea what the final cart looks like.
Only the team does.
[Kelley] If they kind of got their heads down, they don't look at me,
I'm nervous, you know.
If they say, wait til you see it, then I know we're in good shape.
So I'm getting, wait until you see it. I think it's--that it'll be good.
[Team Members] There it is!
(clapping and cheering)
[Skillman] So we took the best elements out of each prototype,
designed this entire cart in a day, and then
this cart was fabricated in a day with an amazing team of people
in our machine shop pulling this off,
working in shifts throughout the night.
[Smith] Wow, I'm impressed.
[Skillman] So are we.
(laughing)
[Smith] The cart, which is designed to cost about the same
as today's carts is different in every other way.
Hand baskets that stack in a metal frame
and major improvements for all.
[Skillman] You just lift the handle up, you drop the--
put the children in, and then you can close
the handle right over them, and they instantly have some
little bit of a work surface that they can play with.
[Smith] What do you think?
[Kelley] I'm very proud of the team. I think it's great.
[Smith] Does this work for you?
[Kelley] It works for me great. It's also beautiful.
I mean, let's, you know, take it over to a local supermarket
and see what they say.
[Smith] Yeah, works really well.
The carts wheels turn 90 degrees, so it can move sideways.
No more lifting up the rear in a tight spot.
And you shop in a totally different way.
[British Man] Rather than taking your cart everywhere you go
in the store, through a crowded store like this,
it's much more efficient to take a small basket,
rush around to where the particular shelves are,
come back, and put them here.
And treat this as like a center for your shopping.
[Smith] And with a high-tech scanner,
so that in the future, you skip the checkout traffic jam.
[Skillman] Here's how you would scan an item.
You reach over and pick up anything like this salad dressing,
and I would scan it, and if I wanted to accept
that item, I would just press plus
and then drop it in my basket.
[Smith] Because stores don't yet have those high-tech scanners
the team designed, checking out today
means doing it the old-fashioned way.
But the bags are hung on hooks on the cart's frame.
Remember, there is no basket here.
Why get rid of the big basket?
[Skillman] The basket is tyranny.
The basket it tyranny because it's not really needed if all your stuff
ends up in bags, why need the basket
in the first place?
[Smith] Talk to me about theft.
[Skillman] There's no value in this cart without the baskets
because you can't carry anything in it; it's useless to anybody.
You can't use it as a barbeque.
[Smith] So it's not going to get stolen.
[Skillman] That's right.
[Smith] So there's a lot of appeal to store owners then.
[Skillman] Yes.
[Store Clerk 1] I love it. I think it looks great.
[Store Clerk 2] Yeah. At first, I was a little shocked,
but I think you have some fantastic ideas here.
It needs a little refining, but I think that it's great.
I mean, we would want them.
[Skillman] It makes us feel great. And she also gave us some
really good comments about how we can make this thing better.
[Kelley] Just wherever you are, look around.
The only thing that's not designed by somebody is, like, nature.
So the trees are not designed by us,
but everything you see... everything you see.
Every light fitting, every flower vase, every scale, every stand for fruit.
Everything is designed, has to go through this kind of process.
And they can do a better or worse job of innovating or improving,
but everything is designed.
It has to go through this process.
[Smith] It wasn't this effortless, "oh, my god,
so that's how it works" thing that I saw there.
It was actually hard work.
[Kelley] It's a lot of hard work.
We all love it, so it doesn't look like it's hard work.
But it's a lot of hours.
[Smith] A lot of hours.
Also, an open mind, a boss who demands fresh ideas
be quirky and clash with his, a belief that chaos can be constructive,
and teamwork, a great deal of teamwork.
And these are the recipe for how innovation takes place.
[clapping and cheering]
This is Jack Smith for Nightline in Palo Alto, California.
[Ted Koppel] I'll be back with a brief update on our story
in just a moment.
Incidentally, the Nightline shopping cart won a Silver award in the
Industrial Design Excellence Awards,
and there's talk now of developing it commercially.
That's our report for tonight.
I'm Ted Koppel in Washington.
For all of us here at ABC News, goodnight.
[upbeat outro music]