Encourage Wild Ideas

The key word is quickly. Kelley encourages his designers to model their ideas (usually from simple materials like foam or cardboard) within days of coming up with them. As an idea becomes more robust, it goes to the company's machine shop, where powerful computer-controlled machine tools generate prototypes from plastic or metal within hours of receiving software files from a designer's computer. In creative work, Kelley believes, enlightened trial and error beats careful planning every time.

Indeed, one of the most popular slogans at IDEO is "fail often to succeed sooner." Which is why the company's designers store their diagrams, mockups and prototypes on large metal racks outfitted with wheels. When it's time to begin a new project, designers just grab an oversized roll of plastic wrap, seal their belongings, wheel them down the hall or across the street, and join their colleagues.

Can this formula for creativity work in other places? Some of the world's leading companies certainly think so. In a separate (and super-secret) building in Palo Alto, IDEO has opened a lab with Samsung, the Korean electronics conglomerate, where the two company's product developers can rub shoulders. In January, Steelcase, the office-furniture giant, made an equity investment in IDEO and named Kelley its vice president of technical discovery and innovation.

"Companies are coming to us and saying, 'How can you make us more innovative?'" Kelley says. "They want us to help change their corporate culture to make it as creative as we are."

Tia O'Brien (76061.740@Compuserve.com) has been a business reporter at KRON-TV in San Francisco and political editor at KYW-TV in Philadelphia. She is a contributing writer for "West" the Sunday magazine of the "San Jose Mercury News."