When worlds collide: Integrated development with business and design students

As one of the world's largest and most innovative design consultants, Palo Alto-based IDEO has a scrapbook of award-winning designs the size of the Manhattan phone directory. In the 11 years of its existence, the company has left its mark with a range of products, from grocery-shopping carts, the Apple mouse, and Polaroid's I-Zone instant cameras to Palm handheld personal digital assistants. Not content to operate solely within familiar terrain, IDEO has even ventured into territory that most design firms just dream about-- the design and manufacture of its own highly technical consumer-electronics products. How do they do it? "Teams are the heart of the IDEO method," writes general manager Tom Kelley in his book, The Art of Innovation. "It's no accident. We believe it's how innovation and much of business take place in the world. Quite simply, great projects are achieved by great teams."1