Work Matters

Category: d.school

  • New Research: We Are More Creative When We Help Others Than Ourselves

    There is an interesting set of findings from psychological experiments that suggest we see others' flaws and strengths more clearly than our own (I wrote about this in Good Boss, Bad Boss) and that, on average, human-beings make more rational decisions when make them for others rather than themselves.  As Jeff Pfeffer and I advised in Hard Facts:

    See Yourself and Your Organization as Outsiders Do

    A big impediment to evidence-based management is that human beings, especially those with good mental health, often have inflated views of their own talents and prospects for success. This rampant optimism is a double-edged sword. The upside is that it creates positive self-fulfilling prophecies, which increase the odds of success. The downside is that excessive optimism causes people to downplay or not see risks, and to persist despite clear evidence they are traveling down the wrong path. One study found, for example, that over 80 percent of entrepreneurs surveyed estimated that chances were over 70 percent that their venture would succeed, and over 30 percent believed that their firm was certain to succeed—even though only about 35 percent of new businesses survive their first five years.  Max Bazerman’s book on managerial decision making shows that outsiders often make more objective judgments than insiders do—so having a blunt friend, mentor, or counselor can help you see and act on better evidence.  This is one reason why Kathleen Eisenhardt’s study of successful versus unsuccessful Silicon Valley start-ups found that in companies that survived and thrived, the CEO usually had a trusted counselor on the team—while CEOs of unsuccessful firms usually did not. These counselors were typically ten to twenty years older than the CEO, with broad industry experience, and were most valuable for helping CEOs recognize when they were traveling down the wrong path and a shift in strategic direction was needed.

    This finding that it is better to rely on others than ourselves is also seen in a new study described at one of my favorite blogs, BPS research.   Here is the summary at BPS:

    Across four studies involving hundreds of undergrads, Polman and Emich found that participants drew more original aliens for a story to be written by someone else than for a story they were to write themselves; that participants thought of more original gift ideas for an unknown student completely unrelated to themselves, as opposed to one who they were told shared their same birth month; and that participants were more likely to solve an escape-from-tower problem if they imagined someone else trapped in the tower, rather than themselves (a 66 vs. 48 per cent success rate). Briefly, the tower problem requires you to explain how a prisoner escaped the tower by cutting a rope that was only half as long as the tower was high. The solution is that he divided the rope lengthwise into two thinner strips and then tied them together.

    For the complete description, go here.  The implication of these diverse studies are quite instructive.  If we want to make better decisions, make faster decisions, have a more realistic picture of our strengths and weaknesses, and now, apparently, be more creative, we need to ask others for their opinions and assistance.   There is even a kind of weird implication that rather than working on our own problems, we should always be working on others.  So, despite the cynicism about consultants, they actually do serve a moreimportant  role than many of us have recognized. Certainly, this research suggests the importance of having mentors and colleagues who will give you help, advise you on decisions, and point out the flaws in your beliefs and actions– and that the world would be a better place if we did so in turn for others.  Another cool implication is that consultants need outside advisors when it comes to tackling their own challenges and problems.  In any event, these studies certainly provide interesting evidence of how much humans we need one another.

    The citation for the creativity research is:

    Polman E, and Emich KJ (2011). Decisions for Others Are More Creative Than Decisions for the Self. Personality and social psychology bulletin

     

  • Do you want to DO design thinking? Start with the d.School’s Bootcamp Bootleg

    Last year, I wrote about the first Bootcamp Bootleg here, a compilation of materials and methods assembled by the team that teaches our introductory course on design thinking at the Stanford d.school, which we call Bootcamp. As with last year's model, you can download the latest version free, courtesy of the d.school.  The team has outdone themselves this year, the content is just awesome — fun to read, detailed, useful, and great pictures and drawings to guide and inspire anyone who is applying design thinking (from novices to veterans). 

    I love the opening paragraph:

    Check this out —
    It’s the d.school bootcamp bootleg.

    This compilation is intended as an active toolkit to support your design thinking practice. The guide is not just to read – go out in the world and try these tools yourself. In the following pages, we outline each mode of a human centered design process, and then describe dozens of specific methods to do design work. These process modes and methods provide a tangible toolkit which support the seven mindsets — shown on the following page – that are vital attitudes for a design thinker to hold.

    Then the fun begins.  Here is the crisp summary of the d.school philosophy:

    Show don't tell.  Focus on human values. Craft clarity. Embrace experimentation. Be mindful of process. Bias toward action. Radical collaboration

    Then it goes through the fives "modes" of the design process (By the way, note the term "mode" rather than "step" or stage"  is important here because we never mean to convey that this is a clean and linear process):

    Empathize. Define. Ideate. Prototype. Test.

    To me,while philosophy and process are important, the real stuff, the material here that really makes the Bootleg so valuable, are the dozens of methods it contains.  These have been tried and fine-tuned for the six or seven years the d.school has been around, and for decades before that at places including IDEO and the Stanford Product Design program.   In d.school speak, these methods help you DO TO THINK.  Here are a few samples, there are many more:

    Assume a beginners mindset. Use a camera study. Interview for empathy. Extreme users. Team share and capture. Journey map. Empathy map. Fill-in-the blank character profile. Why-how laddering. Point-of-view want-ad. "How might we" questions. Stoke. Facilitate a brainstorm. Bodystorming. Impose constraints.

    Try the Bootleg. You will like most of it — and will probably get frustrated and fail along the way too. That's part of the process too.  Please let us know what did and did not work for you. Let us know you changed or, as we say "flexed," these methods so they would work for you.  And please let us know other methods you have used, and perhaps invented, to do design thinking

    Once again, a big thanks to the team that developed the first cut at the Bootleg last year and the team that cranked0out this lovely revision.

  • David Kelley on Love and Money: Dan Pink’s Kind of Guy

    This is a post I out up a few months back.  But as I am a guest on Dan Pink's new show "Office Hours" today at 2 Eastern, I thought I would bring to the top of my blog because David's perspective reminds me of Dan's philosophy and evidence in his bestseller "Drive."  Here goes:

    Yesterday, a couple hundred of us gathered at the Stanford d.school to celebrate David Kelley's 60th birthday.  The outpouring of love and affection was something — the guests included old friends he grew-up with, his family, Stanford colleagues (David is a professor and the main founder of the Stanford d.school), IDEO colleagues (David is co-founder of IDEO, was the first CEO, and the driving force behind the culture), dozens of former students, many of his friends from Silicon Valley businesses, and his friends from the car world (David loves old cars and has a pretty cool collection of old American cars and other cool things like a well-restored and "chopped" Mini and some classic Porsches).  The outpouring of affection was even stronger than it might have been because several years back David was diagnosed with cancer, and he seems to have beat it (his doctor was there, who David thanked for saving his life).

    David is one of the inspiring and wise people I've ever met (I once tried to write a book about him and IDEO called The Attitude of Wisdom… I have written about wisdom in subsequent books, but I still regret not finishing that book.)  One key to David's success is that, before he starts talking to the person in front of him, he actually listens carefully and takes in their body language before offering a comment or opinion — it is a rare talent, and one of many signs of his magnificent empathy. (Here is a recent Fast Company article that covers David and some of his latest accomplishments.)

    Document Kelley Lovemoney

    I could tell a a hundred stories about David, and as part of celebrating his 60th, perhaps I will write out a few more.  But one that has been top of mind lately is his "Love and Money" drawing (he did the one above for Good Boss, Bad Boss, but it remains unchanged over the years).  One of the first times I talked to David in depth, at some point in the early 1990s, as I was asking him about his management philosophy, he drew-out the graphic above and explained that, to run a business, you need to make money, but you also need to retain the talents and motivation of great people.  Yes, he said there are times when love and money go together, but there are always stretches of time when a boss needs to ask people to do things they don't want to do and don't love to make the necessary money required to keep the doors open.  But the smart boss realizes that he or she damn well build up some love points in advance to burn when some unpleasant money tasks are required.  

    This simple idea is strikingly similar to one of the main ideas in Good Boss, Bad Boss — albeit one derived from research and theory on leaders rather than David's pencil.  As I argue in the book, the best bosses realize that one of the balancing acts that they walk is between pressing people to perform well for the collective good and treating them with respect, dignity, and injecting joy into their days at work.   This is why I came close to calling Good Boss, Bad Boss "Top Dog on a Tightrope" as the best bosses carry-off this daily balancing act in a masterful way. 

    This is developed on Good Boss, Bad Boss in some detail.  Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 that focuses on my conversation with David about love and money (the same one where he drew the above picture; the original is in my Stanford office):

    David sees his job, or the job of any boss, as enabling people to experience dignity and joy as they travel through their work days (the love part, what I call humanity) AND to do work that keeps the lights on and provides them with fair pay, health care, and other necessities (the money part, what I call performance).  David says that, although sometimes you can accomplish both at once, there are always stretches when people must do things they don’t love to bring in money.  David explains that great bosses work to strike a balance between love and money over time, for example, by making sure that a designer who has worked on a dull, frustrating, and lucrative project gets to choose an inspiring if less profitable project the next time.

    Managers at IDEO don’t accomplish this balancing act just through bigger moves like project assignments.  They do it in little ways too: When designers have been working like dogs and are tired, grumpy, and starting to bicker, managers find little ways to slow things down, have some fun, and promote civility and mutual respect.  This might happen by making sure that a designer who has been grinding away designing a medical device can get a refreshing break by going to a brainstorming session, for example, on how to improve the airport security experience, get doctors to wash their hands, or design new playing pieces for the Monopoly board game. Managers at IDEO also provide breaks by shooting darts from Nerf guns or launching rubber darts called Finger Blasters at their people – which often degenerate into a full-scale 15 minute battles.  Such adolescent antics won’t work in every workplace.  But when the performance pressure starts heating-up and things are on the verge of turning ugly, skilled bosses everywhere find ways to give people a break, or tell a joke, or just make a warm gesture to place more weight on the “humanity” side of the scale.  As David put it, “foam darts aren’t for everybody, but there is always some form of play in every culture that allows people to let off steam.”

    Happy Birthday David.  As the  Neil Young song about his old car goes,  "Long May You Run."

  • Brilliant Meets Ridiculous: A New Klutz Book By John Cassidy and Brendan Boyle

    I've known IDEO's Brendan Boyle for a good 15 years. I first heard of him before I met him, as an inspired toy designer and one of the best brainstorming session leaders at IDEO (he now applies design thinking to many problems, from consumer experiences to organizational design and strategy).  I also heard that he had an incredible ability to come up with really crazy ideas that seemed nuts at first, but if you backed them off a little, or thought about them more, you might actually have something that would sell in the marketplace. 

    One of my favorite examples, and one I still use in talks at times, is an idea that Brendan came-up with — a good 15 years ago perhaps even 20 — for a device that enabled you to use (i.e., steal) those coat hangers that were common in hotels in the U.S. (and I still see them in Europe) that have have the little round balls at the top (see the [picture of one below)– which are meant to be useless to steal (the new solution to this problem, of course, is tiny hook on the hangar that is too small to use at home).  Here is a drawing of this product on an old CAD machine (along with the coat hanger0, and apparently, Brendan has the physical prototype someplace:'

    Picture1

    I saw Brendan at a party the other day and was tickled to learn that he is continuing this tradition in a big way.  He just completed a book with Klutz founder John Cassidy that is, essentially, and encyclopedia of about 200 ideas where "brilliant meets ridiculous.  The book is called The Klutz Book of Inventions.  It comes out September 1st. The process by which they produced it was crazy, but very much straight out of the design thinking playbook.  They would sit around and brainstorm ideas that were crazy and fun and just just possibly useful — like coat hanger device above — and when they would decide one was crazy and brilliant enough to put in the book, they would build a working prototype — in the end over 200 prototypes were built by IDEO's shop (our of over 2500 ideas generated).  Brendan said some of the ideas in the book included a StairMaster for elevators, a helium-filled hide-a-bed (so when you got up, it floated to ceiling), and my personal favorite, parking tickets that have scratchers like lottery tickets where, depending on your luck (I actually have not seen this, and my memory may be off, but this is close), you get, say, a double fine, the usual fine, 50% of the fine, no fine, or now and then, they paid you. 

    This last one intrigues me because it is so Brendan — looking for a way to make an awful experience fun — even if this does not work, the approach reflects a great creative process.  You list things that just suck — going to the DMV, getting parking ticket, and on and on, and try to figure out how to make it fun (you can see why he co-teaches a d.school class on play, see this Fast Company story). As an example, I think Disney does a great of with people standing in line, for example.

    The book contains pictures and and the philosophy, that Brendan explains so well, that one of the big impediments to creativity in everyone from kids to college students, to people who do creative work like product designers and artists, to executives is that they take themselves entirely too seriously — is they not only are often afraid to have fun, don't know how to do it, and feel guilty when it happens, they look on people who are having fun with suspicion and try to stop them when they "catch them" the act.

    I just pre-ordered the book because it sounds so fun.  I hope you will join me in the fun.

    P.S. Brendan sent me some pages of the book, and it has line I just love, one I believe to be true: "Dignity is enemy of invention." The creative process is often about trying stuff so weird and putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, so one motto might be that embarrassment in combination with pride and persistence are hallmarks of the creative process! 

  • Launch Pad: A Stanford Class Where Students Started 11 Companies

    IMG_5857
    There are many entrepreneurship classes taught throughout the world, in some students talk about how what explains the success and failure of start-ups, and very often, such classes include a business plan competition, where groups pitch ideas for new companies.  These classes often do help people start companies, and at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, our faculty have taught classes that have helped future entrepreneurs in many ways.  But this last term, two Stanford d.school faculty members (and experienced entrepreneurs and bosses) Michael Dearing and Perry Klebahn ran a class called Launch Pad where students were just expected to talk about starting a company, the focus on was on launching the company during the 10 week class.  To be part of the class, student teams — and many more applied than were accepted — had to pitch their idea to Michael and Perry, and if they believed the idea was viable and the team was motivated enough, then they were accepted in the class to try to launch their company. 

    The class has been over for a few week and was one of the most successful things ever done at the d.school.  (To be clear, a lot of what do fails, and I have been involved in some less successful classes with Michael and Perry, but they like most people at the d.school have the attitude that if you are failing a fair amount, you aren't trying hard enough or taking enough risks).  Here is what the d.school website says about the class:

    From the first day, students pushed to both launch their own products,
    while using their experience and expertise to help classmates do the
    same. Throughout the quarter, teams constantly cycled through the design
    process, often making major changes to their initial idea in order to
    hone in on what their potential customers wanted, and what would be
    viable in the market    .
     
    The result? Eleven products or service were launched.
    Collectively, the teams had over $100,000 in revenue by the last day of
    class. Eight teams are now incorporated in four countries. Add in a bit
    of press from the New York Times and NBC, as well as a shout-out from
    Steve Jobs during his talk at the World Wide Developers conference, and
    you’ve got Launchpad: lifting design thinking teams into entrepreneurial
    orbit.

    Not bad for a 10 week class, Huh? As just two example, check -out this story about Pulse, which Tech Crunch described as a "must have" app for the iPad, it is a news reader that you can but at itunes for 3.99, and is selling quite well. The students who founded it are Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta.  They already have a company called Alphonso Labs, and two employees, and are the one's who got the shout out from Jobs — note that they just graduated from Stanford two weeks ago and are off to quite a start!  And check out this story on the d.school blog from as few weeks back, they were up to 50,000 downloads and were the #1 paid app at the iPad store.

    A much different, but also very promising, is a service called Worker Express that was founded by Pablo Fuentes and Joe Mellin, which helps unemployed construction workers find jobs.  Check out this story on on the local NBC affiliate and this one at Fast Company.  I think the picture above is especially interesting because it shows how the prototyping process worked during Launch Pad, essentially, in the d.school space, the founders of the 11 companies had a "beta" or practice trade-show where they set-up booths and pitched their ideas to a a host of diverse people on campus and to the classes coaches and teachers too, so they could develop and refine their messages.  The picture captures Pablo and Joe pitching their service.

    I am very proud of all the students in the class, of Michael and Perry, as well as d.school Fellow Corey Ford, who were part of the teaching team that made this all happen.  Great work.


  • David Kelley Nails It Again: “The d.school teaches creative confidence.”

    Last Friday, we had an opening gala for the new building (actually it is a massively reconstructed old building) that houses the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford — or as everyone calls it, the d.school.  In fact, if you can take a video tour of the new building.  We were swimming in university officials of all kinds, although since it was the d.school, there were more students and former students than anything else.   Hasso gave a lovely and quite funny speech and the good feelings ran high all afternoon.

    Many interesting things were said that afternoon. Yet, as is pretty much always the case, our founder and inspiration David Kelley (who also was the co-founder, first CEO and driving force behind IDEO) made the most striking observations.  David commented that, yes, we teach many elements the design thinking process to our students (in fact, many are cataloged in this amazing and free document called "The Bootcamp Bootleg," which I think is better than any book on how to practice design thinking than you can buy). He argued however, that the most important contribution that the d.school makes to Stanford students and the people we teach from outside the university too (from elementary school kids, to Girl Scouts, to doctors, to executives) is creative confidence.  David went on to explain that the main tests used to decide who gets into Stanford and who does not, as well as the bulk of the training in the technical aspects of engineering, math, and the sciences, are constructed to that there is a right answer to the question and it is the student's job to find that answer and report it back to the teacher.

    Certainly, such definitive technical knowledge is crucial.  I want engineers who can calculate the right answers so that bridges don't fall down and airplanes don't crash.  As valuable as it is, however, such training — with its focus on individual achievement under conditions under which the right answers are already known — means that a lot of the people who come to the d.school for classes lack both the skills and the confidence to work on messy problems where the faculty don't know the answer (this is very disconcerting to some of our students) and the only hope is to keep pushing forward, observing the world and the people in it, identifying unmet needs, brainstorming solutions, and trying to develop prototypes that work — and failing forward through the disconcerting process.

    The thing I liked most about about David's emphasis on "creative confidence" is that I think he nailed the single most important thing that the d.school does when we are successful.  Yes, the assignments we give people and methods we teach them help on the journey, but as David suggested, the result of spending decades in educational system (this is true of the U.S. and other countries) where those anointed as the best students rapidly uncover the one and only tried and proven true answer (look at the blend of SAT scores and grades used by most colleges for admission decisions, at least 90% of that entails uncovering known right answers) is that some of the "smartest" students freak-out the most when faced with messy and unstructured problems.

    The journeys that we take students of all ages on just about always entail helping people confront and overcome their discomfort with trying to solve unstructured problems (that the faculty have not already solved — and in most cases — don't know how to solve).  When the d.school process works right, that confidence means that, even when people aren't sure what methods to use, they have the energy and will to keep pushing forward, to be undaunted when ideas don't work, to keep trying new ideas, and — as happens — even when the deadline for the project comes and they do not have a decent solution, to believe that if they just had another few days, they would have come up with a great solution.   

    So, although many words were said about what the d.school does at our opening ceremony and many more will be said in the future.  David has, as always, come-up with the best compact summary of what we strive to do: Teach Creative Confidence. 

    P.S. A related argument was made by psychologist Robert Sternberg, who argued that creativity can't happen unless people decide to pursue it. See this post.  But I think David's point is even more crucial, because if people decide to pursue, but lack confidence they can succeed, the are likely to suffer and unlikely to succeed.

  • Fantastic Free Conference on Reconciling Business Growth and Sustainability on May 4h at Stanford


    My friend and colleague Debra Dunn
    from the Stanford d.school just wrote me about a conference that she is hosting
    as part of her class on Sustainable Abundance. 
    She has put together such a fantastic line-up that I think I am going to
    sneak out of the house to attend.   Here
    are the details and it is open to the public and free. BUT as they need to know
    roughly how many people are attending, if you are going to do so, please     RSVP to miniconference@rocketmail.com.  Here is the scoop:

    2010
    SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCE MINI CONFERENCE

    Theme: Reconciling Business Growth and Sustainability

    When:   Tuesday, May 4, 3:15-5:00

    Where:  Stanford d.school, Peterson Building (Building 550), Studio 1

    Panelists:

    Andrew Ruben, Wal-Mart.  He was appointed
    by Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott as the first vice president of the company's
    sustainability initiative. Now he heads Wal-Mart's private brand sourcing
    strategy and drives   increased ecological transparency of Wal-Mart's
    suppliers.

    Adam Lowry, co-founder of Method Home Products.
    Lowery now  heads the Greenskeeping team
    at Method, which is composed of environmental specialists, scientists, and toxicologists

    Albert Straus, founder and President of Straus
    Family Creamery    , the first Organic Dairy west of the Mississippi

    The conference will be moderated by Debra Dunn and Bob Adams.   Bob pioneered the design for sustainability practice at IDEO, where
    he is now a Fellow.

    The range
    of experience and skill here is just stunning. 
    The thing that really impresses me about this line-up is that every
    person is deeply committed to supporting sustainably in ways that mesh with and
    support financial performance.  And all
    five — the panelists and moderators — have done more than talk about doing so,
    they each spent years making it happen, 
    I also have heard most of them speak, and this is a remarkably lively,
    fun, and honest group.  Again,     please
    RSVP to miniconference@rocketmail.com.   

    P.S. As
    an added bonus, if you go to the conference, you get to see the new d.school
    building, which is very cool.

  • DoYou Like My New Graphics?

    I was rather shocked, and quite delighted, to get an email from Katie Clark at IDEO yesterday with several different new graphics for the top of my blog.  I didn't ask her or talk to her about, she just decided to send me some new ones because she and her colleagues at IDEO were looking at my blog and decided to try some new designs.  I feel mighty lucky to have friends who are world class designers and decide on a whim to give me presents like that.  Thanks Katie!

    The new design above is the one I like best.  In the IDEO and d.school spirit, this is a prototype and I can always go back to the old design or perhaps see if you like one of the other one's better.  For starters, what do you think of the new design above?

    P.S. I would also like to give a big thank you to Tim Keely for inserting the new graphic.

  • The d.School in a Box; Download Your Own Free Copy of the Bootcamp Bootleg

    I wrote a long post yesterday about the methods that we teach and apply at the Stanford d.school, and how many have their roots in what has been taught at the Stanford Engineering School (and recall the d.school is a unit of the Engineering School).  But I only talked about these methods and the associated mindset in broad brush.   Fortunately, I can point you to a wonderful handbook that was just posted a couple weeks back on d.schools news — the d.school blog. The folks who teach the introduction to design thinking class,which we call Bootcamp, have complied what they call the Bootcamp Bootleg (get the pdf here). The Bootleg lays out and explains the general "D. Mindsets" like "create clarity from complexity,"  "show don't tell," "get experiential and experimental."  Then it moves to different "modes" including "empathize,"  "define," ideate," "prototype," and "test."   Most useful of all, the Bootleg contains detailed and road tested explanations of many design thinking (and doing) methods: Assuming a beginner's mindset, user camera study, how to "interview for empathy," "team share and capture," empathy map," "powers of ten" and on and on.  The Bootcamp Bootleg provides convenient one-stop shopping for anyone who wants to learn about the nitty-gritty of how design thinkers practices their various crafts, to find tools use throughout the design process, and for anyone who is teaching or coaching a group of design thinkers.

    A big thanks to the team who put together the Bootleg — it is as useful as a tool like this can be, and it is free for the taking!

  • Engineering as a Driving Force Behind the Design Thinking Movement

    One of the most notable and intriguing recent innovations in businesses and business schools is the design thinking movement.  A couple weeks ago, the  New York Times had a big story how MBA education is being reinvented in many places because — as former MBA and d.school star student Laura Jones explained it — “At business school, there was a lot of focus on, ‘You’ve got a great
    idea; here’s how you build a business out of it.’ The d.school said,
    ‘Here’s how you get to that great idea.’  As the article explains, design thinking is now part of the curriculum in many business schools — Stanford, Berkeley, Virginia, and although I am not entirely sure what is going on at Harvard Business School,  I did see that Diego Rodriguez of IDEO (and Metacool fame) led a workshop at IDEO for Harvard MBAs the other day.

    I think that is wonderful that design thinking — with its emphasis on observing and identifying human needs (and not just relying on what they say, but by watching what they do as well), on developing a point of view about what problems need to be addressed, generating ideas, prototyping like crazy, and testing ideas (and doing it all very quickly and not being overly attached to ideas) — is being applied now to so many different kinds of problems: designing better experiences for hospital patients, building a better bicycle for "the rest of us" rather than the tiny percentage of people who are obsessed with bikes, designing and implementing better customer experiences, changing organizational structures, and on and on and on — read IDEO CEO Tim Brown's delightful Change By Design if you want to see the astounding range of problems that are being tackled with design thinking these days.

    There is, however, a part of the story that seems to be slipping away (especially in the business press and in business schools) that I think is important to tell, and that executives, students, and journalists often don't seem to realize: Engineers and engineering schools are one of the main driving forces behind this movement. You can see the impact of engineers clearly in the development of two iconic design thinking organizations that I know well and have been involved in for many years: IDEO, the magnificent innovation firm, and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, which everyone calls the Stanford d.school.  I did an 18 month ethnography of IDEO in 1990s (with Andy Hargadon, who is now a management professor but already had two degrees in engineering product design from Stanford at the time). I still am involved in the company a bit as an IDEO Fellow.  And I have been teaching at the d.school since it founding.  I guess you could say I was among the founding faculty — but to be honest, one person deserves a lot more credit for starting the d.school than any of us, David Kelley.  He was the driving force — in terms of ideas, building emotional involvement, and raising funds.  And, although IDEO was formed through a merger between David Kelley Design and two industrial design firms, one owned by Mike Nuttall and the other by Bill Moggridge, they will tell you that engineer David Kelley was the strongest driving force — which was why he became CEO when the firm was founded and is currently the Chairman.

    I don't want to leave you with the impression that Industrial Design played a minor role in the rise of the design thinking movement (indeed, Bill Moggridge and current IDEO CEO Tim Brown are industrial designers), but I want to focus on the role David Kelley and other engineers have played in this post.  David is an engineer by training (first at in electrical engineering at Carnegie-Mellon and then at Stanford in product design) and is a mechanical engineering professor at Stanford.  David was a central figure in teaching product design classes at the  Stanford Engineering School for decades before the d.school was born (and built IDEO at the same time). David  has used his creativity and charm to entice and educate many of us business types to embrace design thinking and there are now lots of MBAs and other business types working at IDEO and teaching at the Stanford d.school.  Yet most of the acknowledged masters of design thinking at the d.school and IDEO have engineering backgrounds (with the main exceptions being industrial designers like Tim and Bill) — in particular, they have degrees in engineering product design.  The essence of what happens at both IDEO and the d.school can be seen in the product design process that has been taught for decades at Stanford — which has been tweaked, refined, and expanded to address a much wider range of problems (and continues to be an ever-evolving prototype at both IDEO and the d.school).

    Consider two of the most revered design thinkers and teachers I know: Diego Rodriguez at IDEO and Perry Klebahn at the d.school.  When I first met Diego, a good 15 years ago, he had just graduated from Stanford (where he earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering) and was working at IDEO.  Diego did get increasingly interested in business, got a Harvard MBA, and now — back at IDEO as a partner and  head of the flagship Palo Alto office– has become one of the most imaginative business thinkers I know (If you don't read Metacool, you are really missing something). Yet, when I talk to Diego, listen to his ideas, and watch his masterful teaching and coaching, I can always see how the magnificent engineering designer inside him remains the strongest guiding force.  His relentless advice to do things like get out and talk to and watch some real human beings, to develop a sharp point of view, to brainstorm, to "prototype until your puke," and to view ideas as easy to get, important to throw away, and ultimately best judged by users and the market (rather than experts) all go back to his product design roots.  This really struck me when, a few years back, Diego was designing a new organizational structure for client that, many years before, he had designed a product for when working as a young IDEO designer.  He remarked to me "The end product is a lot different, but the process I am using is remarkably similar."

    I see the same thing in how Perry approaches problems.  Perry has always been a product guy, as he invented the modern show shoe as a Stanford product design student and then went on to grow a company that sold and spread the product called Atlas, then was COO of Patagonia, and most recently was CEO of Timbuk2. Perry has also taught numerous product design classes at Stanford over the past 20 years, and in the last five years, taught over a dozen classes for students and executives at the Stanford d.school.  In the process, I have watched Perry move beyond and expand his engineering design skills to an ever broader set of problems, things like helping software executives gain empathy for what Gen Y workers want, rethinking the strategy of a Fortune 500 company, and lately we have been talking about how to apply design thinking to reinvent HR.   Yet Perry's engineering roots are always evident.  I was just watching the other day in class as Perry used his product engineering background to guide a class exercise aimed at improving employee selection, recruitment, and socialization practices for our d.school fellows program.  He pressed the students to look for unmet needs, to identify the problem they were trying to solve, to brainstorm ideas for prototypes quickly, and then to test the emerging ideas with users — even though those ideas were unfinished and crude approximations of organizational practices.  This process, although modified by Perry and
    many others to fit problems of all kinds, is simply a variation of the design process that Perry used as a Stanford Engineering School student years ago to invent the modern snowshoe — and then to grow the company and customer based required to make the product succeed.  One of his primary mentors throughout the process was David Kelley, of course. It is no accident that the Stanford d.school is a unit of the Stanford School of Engineering.  It is also no accident that many of us who teach design thinking to students (many of whom are MBAs working on business problems) have been mentored by engineers who are masters of design thinking — people like David, Perry, and Diego. 

    In this vein, the sole Stanford Graduate School of Business professor who teaches regularly at the d.school is Jim Patell.  He teaches magnificent classes on Extreme Affordability, where students design products like water pumps and lights for the poorest people on the planet. Jim was introduced to design thinking by David Kelley and then mentored by him for years.  Now Jim teaches with Dave Beach, an engineering professor who (among any other things) runs the "Product Realization Lab," (the machine shop) at the Stanford Engineering School.

    Certainly, depending on the problem at hand, other talents and disciplines play key roles in d.school classes and the design process.  As an organizational psychologist, I believe the behavioral sciences have a lot to add to design thinking, and certainly believe my expertise is useful classes were we coach students in ways to spread infectious action (like this project) or when veteran executive Debra Dunn and I taught a class that helped Perry and his team at Timbuk2 build a better company meeting.   

    Yes, I am tenured professor in the Stanford Engineering School, but I am not an engineer. The core of what we do at the Stanford d.school and of much of what they do so well at IDEO is rooted most strongly in product design engineering, especially the flavor taught in the Stanford Engineering School.  That is why, frankly, I always feel compelled to involve "real" product designers like Diego and Perry in the d.school classes I teach — even though I am starting to believe that I know this design thinking stuff pretty well after teaching it for four or five years.  Indeed, the masters of this craft aren't just established veterans like David Kelley and his students from long ago like Perry and Diego.  Debra Dunn and I — and our students — have benefited a great deal by involving Kris Woyzbun (now at IDEO) in our class on treating organizational practices as prototypes.   We like the fact that Kris took numerous classes on applying design thinking to business problems from us at the d.school and she was a star student — but I would argue that one of the main reasons she was a star in those classes and now at IDEO is that she also has a masters in engineering product design from Stanford.

    Like many other people at the d.school, I get in arguments about what design thinking is, how it ought to be applied, and the times when it isn't right to use it. But there is little disagreement at Stanford that the brand of design thinking that we teach largely reflects a mindset and set of methods that was developed and refined at the Stanford Engineering School for decades before design thinking was ever a hot business topic. 

    P.S. I want to emphasize that this post reflects my biased experience at Stanford and with IDEO. No doubt, engineers in other organizations and universities have had a huge impact as well. And I said, other disciplines have been crucial as well — at IDEO Industrial Design has been especially critical.