Gentry Underwood, Head of Knowledge Sharing, IDEO

Background:

[These are my quick notes, complete with  (what I hope is no more than) the occasional typo and grammatical error.  Please excuse those. Thanks!

From time to time, I'll insert my own editorial comments - exercising the prerogatives of the blogger.  I'll show those in brackets. ]

Notes:

• They focus on “design thinking” = human-centered design.
• Three key principles of Design:
  • Empower people, not ideas – ideas are cheap
  • Create platforms for coalescence – give people a place to be together and work together.
    • They have a wiki system organized around groups, they have a blog effort that is a rich source of new ideas, etc.
  • Facilitate and Reward Participation.  Every little bit of friction in the system impedes participation.
    • They are maniacal about eliminating friction in the system.
    • Bring information to people. Don’t make them go find it. (They use a feed system for this.)
    • They display their activity stream on the wall of the office – it encourages people update their stream. This provides built-in rewards
• Good design coupled with good technology will change the culture, which will in turn change they way an org works and what it produces.
• They used a platform from existing software with a custom interface. They are moving to a mGenera platform.