IDEO WEDO UDEO

After having returned from my summer holiday and then getting settled in the lab, people had started talking about changes that may occur and developments of the lab which may cause it to become more innovative. As I have discussed, a lot of it's work up until this point was more like that of a classic design consultancy. They have had a bit of competition in this sector and are interested in moving meta to get a competitive advantage. In discussion about this with some of my colleagues, I was reminded of that well known company IDEO and remembered they had a Shanghai office. I decided it could be interesting to pay them a visit and I knew that they were generally interested in seeing students and that sort of thing, so I sent them an email. The email address I had for them was defective so I tried a few other things to no avail. However, a few weeks later Soumitri and Simon were in town and Soumitri mentioned that he had the address of someone in that office through another friend. He gave it to me and when I sent the new address an email I got a response within a few hours. They were interested so we worked out a good time for everyone and made our visit.

The time we spent with them was interesting because we did not go with an idea of what we wanted from them and we did not go with anything to show them. They ordered some food for lunch and asked us to introduce our practice. They then talked about what they do and how their office in China interacted with the global company.

I was the team leader of this endeavor as I had originally expressed the interest. My involvement included initiating contact and scheduling as well as developing and managing relationship. Though we intended to continue the project, it is now over as many of the core people involved are no longer part of the lab.

This may not seem like a project as such, but if it is approached in that way the whole thing becomes a struggle to communicate well and offer a good client to costumer relationship. We never decided what service was going to be provided by whom or for whom but we had an interaction that needed to be managed. So I think we can think of it as a project.

Immediately after leaving the IDEO office all the Chinese students I was with started talking about how they thought this company could not work with Chinese clients very well and how it did not match the fast-paced nature of the Chinese market. This is of course true and I spent some time talking to a few IDEOers about this problem. In the coming years they are interested in opening up this office to participate in the Chinese design market more completely.

I learnt a lot from this little project. I learnt that people do respond to an honest request even when they are a design company that most designers look up to. I also learnt that everyone needs help thinking, even IDEO. Of course I also learnt a lot about how IDEO thinks and how they select people for jobs which may one day be important to me. This task built confidence and understanding in me and the team and has helped a few of the lab members get jobs and recommendations for further education programs.

As IDEO is a kind company, they gave us a few souvenirs including copies of the Art of Innovation in Chinese and The Ten Faces of Innovation in English.

After IDEO we went shopping and then to IKEA before returning home to Hangzhou that night.