The Deep Dive

[Music] it used to be that you deferred to the boss is it the boss is always going to have the best ideas not likely here Nimble fingers alert minds and tireless machines and it used to be in most companies that chaos was discouraged this is where the crazies live this is where we do our work it's different good morning good morning used to be you were supposed to climb the corporate ladder good status is who comes up with the best ideas not who's the oldest not who's who's been with the company longest not 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 they're not likely to invent anything you could stack us up big as big as you want that's great thanks a lot and we had a great time today well forget the way it used to be tonight the Deep dive one company's secret weapon for [Music] innovation [Music] a lot further along in this broadcast near the end as a matter of fact you will hear one of the central character 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 constant modification of 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 marriage 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 may look especially unattractive simply because we're accustomed to them 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 are 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 idio the product design folk and said take something old and familiar like say the shopping cart and completely redesign it for for us in just 5 days ABC News correspondent Jack

Smith tells us what happened next 9 in the morning day one and these people have a deadline to meet so welcome to the kickoff of the shopping cart project this is Paulo Alto California in the heart of Silicon Valley and these are designers at Ido probably the most influential 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 idio that designed those squishy handles Ido has designed everything from high-tech medical equipment to the 25- Ft mechanical whale in the

movie free willly and the first computer mouse for Apple Smith ski goggles Nike sunglasses NEC computer screens hundreds of products we take for granted this is a called the neat squeeze squeeze tooth uh toothpaste tube which you invented the man who runs Ido is Dave Kelly a Stanford engineering Professor with a Groucho marks mustache a dab of genius and an approach to Innovation that usually works well thank you Fred but not always 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 um I didn't want those either so mostly what Ido designs though does work and it works very well Dave and his design teams create about 90 new products every year 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 and so for the next 5 days the team will apply that process to bringing the Supermarket shopping cart into the 21st century I think first we should maybe all acknowledge that it's kind of insane to do an entire an entire project in a week project leader is Peter skilman a 35-year-old Stanford engineer project leader because he's good with groups not because of seniority he's only been at Ido for six years the rest of the team is eclectic

but that's typical here Whitney Mortimer Harvard MBA Peter Coughlin linguist Tom Kelly Dave's brother marketing expert Jane Fon Suri psychologist Alex kazak 26 a biology major who's turned down medical school three times because he's having too much fun at IO kids climbing up and doing this kids do that safety emerges early as an important issue 22,000 child injuries a year which is and so they're hospitalized injuries I mean there are many others not reported in the store that's you actually have that's hospitalized right and theft it turns out a lot of carts are stolen you

know what is the average life of a cart do it last 2 years 5 years 10 years and and how big is this theft thing 10: a.m. as the team works it becomes clear there are no titles here no permanent assignments the other side says gives us a lot of help says be safe everyone appears to be equal and they love to mock Corporate America I'll give you status I'll give you big red ball on a on a on a on a post and that says you're a big guy if you got a ball you're

a senior vice president you know what do I get the desk red ball it's all the same in a very Innovative culture you can't have a kind of hierarchy of here's the boss and the next person down 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 according to Kelly even employees who merely listen to the boss don't add that much either so you got to hire people who don't listen to you and that I don't think

Corporate America wants to hear that right yet I think we to start making those lists about the kinds of questions that we're going to ask the team splits into groups to find out firsthand what the people who use make and repair shopping carts really think okay go the problem with the plastic cart is the wind catches it yeah and these things have been clocked at 35 across the parking lot man that's actually a pretty good point the 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 in the normal way and and trying to learn about it yourself from everything I read these things aren't that safe either you know um so probably the seat itself is going to have to be redesigned what you're seeing here is the kind of social science like anthropologists you know like you go and study tribes what is it that that they do that we can learn from that will help us design a better cart one of the interesting things for me is looking at how people really don't like to let

go of the cart except of the professional shopper whose strategy is to leave the cart at various places in Corporate America many bosses like measure whether their whether their people are you know who the good people or the people who are performing are the ones that they see at their desk 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 buzzes of the world going to to meet other experts much more useful than sitting at your desk 3:30 in the afternoon and

the group is back at idio there is no letup each team is going to demonstrate and communicate and share everything that they've learned today um people went off in the four corners of the earth and are coming back with the golden keys to the to Innovation a uh shopping cart has been clocked at 35 M an hour traveling through a parking lot in the wind we were in the store what 2 hours and and it was truly frightening just to see the kind of stuff going on you got to designate some people to make damn

sure that the store owners point of VI is represented after nine straight hours the team is tired they call it a day so um cool well uh that's great thanks a lot we had a great time [Applause] [Music] today want to get together and start here day two and the start of idido's unique brand of brainstorming they call it a deep dive a sort of total immersion in the problem at hand idido'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

uh that's the hardest thing for people to do is to uh restrain themselves from U uh criticizing an idea so if anybody starts to nail an idea they get the bill you know the Deep dive begins and for the next few hours the ideas pour out and are posted on the walls oh the blind the the Privacy blind like when you're buying six cases of condoms no one see nesting is it sort of has to nest if it doesn't Nest we don't have a solution how about velcro pants and and velcro seats for the kids

and just drop them down on there velcro seats velcro pants for kids yeah see you have to have some wild ideas if then you build on those wild wild ideas and end up being better ideas than if you said if you if everybody only came up with same things you know kind of appropriate things you'd never like have any points to take off to to build a really Innovative idea it's organiz organized cha it's not organized um what it is is it's focused chaos by 11:00 a.m. the group begins narrowing down the hundreds of ideas

written or drawn on the walls how by voting for them vote with your poit not not with an idea that's cool but with an idea that's cool and buildable um if it's if it's too far out there and can't be built in a day then I don't think we should vote on it why not have you be the judge you're the because because I'm I'm going to be wrong it's the team that that's able to really judge what the best ideas otherwise ideas wouldn't come out that's right enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning

blown genius enlightened trial and error succeeds over the plan planning of the lone genius if anything sums up idido's approach that is it that and the focused chaos that seems to go with it um I took a point of view I call it the sport utility vehicle cart it is noon worried that the team is drifting what can only be called a group of self-appointed adults under Dave Kelly holds an informal side session so we don't want to tell them what to build or else we take away the benefit of the whole thing what needs

should they optimize their solution to purpose is to refocus the Deep dive maybe we arbitrarily say we could do five teams four or five teams four four or five teams and we and we give each team a need area hey can we uh grab everybody over to the uh wall here 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 like it or not the team is told it will split into groups to build mockups covering four areas

of concern that have been identified shopping safety checkout and finding what you're looking for I noticed that toward the end of the process the adults took over yeah that's because we we have no choice but to to stop that cycle I mean there's um if you don't work under time constraints you you could never get anything done because it's a messy process and go on forever while the team starts building prototypes Dave Kelly takes me on a tour of the rest of idio what's happening in here is uh that's a client meeting that's a first

client meeting that's the first time we met with a client so we haven't trained them yet if if we took them straight from there into a room where music was blaring and everybody was throwing Nerf darts at each other that would be a little hard to take you know so um 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 15 minutes as you walk down the the hob 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 they're not likely to invent anything invent anything like this futuristic looking instrument for kids so no matter what you do with that thing you always you sound great you always sound good you have to make it so that this can happen who it didn't break no it didn't break there's a whole department at Ido devoted to toys turns out to be one of its most profitable areas fun too so

got these little wings and no matter what you do if I get in trouble here it's always a spiral at Ideo they found that fresh ideas come faster in a fun place not only is the furniture on Wheels to suit the needs of the moment but people are encouraged actually to build their own work areas and they were designing this space and they said to me you know we'd like to have you know $44,000 extra in our budget for a DC3 wing and I said uh DC3 you have to have that and they said yeah

they have to have it so that's that's a DC3 Wing piece of a DC3 Wing yeah and that's just Decor that's Decor that's um Ambiance you know that says we're weird and we're proud of it umbrellas on the ceiling to shade computer screens from direct sunlight and bicycles on ropes to prevent clutter 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 fa facilities person was was okay he tried it and then like he waited and see 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 is the way people come up with new ideas Ido 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 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 okay Peter we're done back at the shop it is 6:00 and the four mockups are ready for showing baskets also can be if you think you will have more volume baskets can be put in a modular shopping cart you pile hand baskets onto a high tech cart that gets you through the traffic jam a checkout that you could mount a scanner on the shopping cart so that you as the customer as you pull it off the shelf

would scan each item one that's built around child safety and another that let Shoppers talk to the supermarket staff remotely yeah where can I find a yogurt the yogurt over daily but the adults again decide more work needs to be done before the mockups can be combined into one last prototype why don't we have all the carts come up here for a second I think You' take a piece of each one of these ideas and kind of back it off a little bit and then put it in the in the design the design is still

not there but there's another motto at Ido 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 so it is day five and Dave Kelly has no idea what the final cart looks like B only the team does if they kind of got their heads down they don't look at me I'm nervous you know if they say wait till 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'll be good there it is there it is 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 wow I'm impressed so are we 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 you you just lift the handle up

you drop the put the children in and then you can close the um the the uh handle right over them and they instantly have some little bit of a work surface that they can play with what do you think this well I I'm very proud of the team I think it's it's great this does this work for you 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 yeah it works really well the cart's wheels turn 90° so it can move sideways

no more lifting up the rear in a tight spot and you shop in a totally different way rather than taking your cart everywhere you go in the store through a crowded store like this uh much more efficient to take take a small basket rush around to where the the particular shelves are and come back and put them back put them here and treat this as like a center for your shopping and with a high-tech scanner so that in the future you skip the checkout traffic jam here's how you would scan an item you reach over

and pick up anything like uh like the salad dressing and I would I would scan it and if I want to accept that item I would just press plus and then drop it in my basket because stores don't yet have those high-tech scanners the team designed checking out today means doing it the oldfashioned 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 the basket is tyranny the basket is tyranny because it's not really needed if all your stuff ends up

in bags why need the basket in the first place talk to me about theft there's no value in this cart without the basket because you can't carry anything in it it's useless to anybody you can't a barbecue so it's not going to get stolen that's right so this ought to appeal to store owners yes I love it I think it looks great at first I was a little shocked but I think it's you have some fantastic ideas here it needs a little refining but I think that it's great I mean we would we would want

them it makes us feel great uh and she also gave us some really good comments about how we can make this thing better just wherever you are look around the only thing that's not designed by somebody i' like is 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 a um a better or worse job of innovating or improving but everything

is designed it has to go through this process it wasn't this effortless oh my God so that's how it works thing that I saw there it was actually hard work it's a lot of hard work um we all love it so it doesn't look like it's hard work but it's lot of hours 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 this

is Jack Smith for Nightline in Pao Alto California 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 Coppel in Washington for all of us here at ABC News good [Music] night