Here is a nice and motivating motivating article about design and innovation from Tim Brown at IDEO.

This is why IDEO is so good….or at least why the world thinks that they are so good. Every article that comes out from their people is not about innovation or business or design. It’s about their process…it’s about their culture….it’s about why they think they are the best.

They have really mastered the ‘project-dropping’ approach of writing where they bring up a concept them provide only their in-house projects as perfect examples of their concepts.

Their process is ‘human centric design through working within the organization’. While there is no set person responsible for their innovations, they emphasize how the front line people are so important to their insight. Basically what they do is work with companies to help their people innovate and then they take credit for the innovation and then use that to promote themselves further.

I am by no means saying that IDEO is not brilliant…but perhaps their brilliance is from the realization that the innovation is already within these companies, and it’s simply up to them to bring it out.

Perhaps these companies need to realize that they may not actually need IDEO if they create an innovative environment.