Tom Kelley IDEO

We just came from the plenary session with keynote speaker Tom Kelley from IDEO - BLEW OUR MINDS! Even though we had heard of IDEO before, Tom Kelley really brought the ideas home (great speaker!).

Hearing Tom felt like a totally different experience than our workshop session in RC and the session I attended yesterday, which were both great - they felt more instructional, while this was more concept / big picture. It would be nice to have concept / big picture first, then instructional. Tom's presentation was delivered in a series of stories that drove his points about creativity home and made the creative processes.

IDEO is a human centered design approach base in empathy.

IDEO started by Tom and his brother grew from 20 employees to over 600. It is 14 x harder to get a job at IDEO than to get into Stanford as an undergraduate. Tom has written three books including creative confidence and the art of innovation.

Creative confidence - everyone has a natural human ability to come up with ideas. We do not teach creativity, we unleash it. One must have the courage to speak up and act on ideas.

IDEO started when coming across an Adobe survey on creativity (available online)asking 500 questions and distributed globally.

There is a direct link between a nation's creativity and their economy.

Only 25% get a chance to live up to their creative potential. The world never has enough resources (time, money) - what are we waiting for. We need to find a way to unlock the other 75% of creativity!

We can change the world with this creativity.

Always start with empathy. From empathy one can actually discover and see things with new eyes.

Avoid deja vu - aim for Vuja de - a place that is familiar but seeing with fresh eyes.

IDEO has helped created AED machines that a 6 year ol can operate, how to bring clean drinking water to places in Africa and middle east.

Story: Hallmark artist
Artist would visit elementary schools by grade. Kindergarten - all children would raise their hands when asked, who is an artist. Each grade - less would raise. By 6th grade only 2 or 3. He would joke - what happened to all the artists - did they transfer out? All go off to art school? The message we need to send is that it is ok to be an artist.

Story: Jill
Jill said she was not creative (but would bake great cakes, etc.). Once she found pinterest she became a curator of creativity - stretching the definition and boundaries of what is considered creativity, she got such a tremendous following of users she was posted on pinterest's main page - she has 1.28 million followers now!

Story: Doug D.
Doug made CT scanners / MRI machines. Was always proud of his accomplishments (awards, how many sold). One day he was at the hospital and saw a crying child. He found out from hospital - 80% of child patients must be anesthetized. Doug so upset thought he needed to change careers. SUpervisor sent Doug to Stanford's D School (design school). Doug came back (no money for change) and started with a team of volunteers (including children's museum) to create something. 2 years later they created wonderfully themed machines (like a pirate ship), but most importantly they created scripts for an experience. Now technicians could guide children through an experience (we need you to sit perfectly still in the boat or a pirate will pop out). Now only 10% need to be anesthetized. Doug is now on staff at the D school.

Treat life like an experiment.People will cut you a break if you are experimenting.

Story: SF Lunch
San Francisco school's are trying out a new lunch program. Dim sum style cart brings fruit and veggies to hungry kids at table (don't provide them with anything else to eat and they will eat the fruit / veggie!).

The point of the ideas is to get as many ideas out as you can. Experiment with them as quickly and cheaply as you can.

Story: Elmo app
They had 45 minutes to come up with the app for Sesame Street meeting. They blew up a picture of an ipad and had a staff member act like they were in the screen (later to be replaced by elmo)

Story ReGina
Regina - millions spent on launches that were in water. Someone said - that's great that you support failure. She said - not supporting failure! DISCOURAGING FEAR of failure.

Story: Pulse news
Grad students - company in India - no customer interaction and no customers. Here in US, in a coffeee shop, in a few weeks, interacting with customers all day (ipad first came out writing software), they tested their software on the ipad all day - changing it 100 times a day -t hey created their product. They just sold their company for 90 million dollars.

The process:

Human centered.
Empathy first.
Brainstorm.
Narrow down ideas (client) / convergence
Post its / dots