Speech Summaries

Tim Brown President and CEO IDEO

Design As A Competitive Advantage

Tim Brown, President and CEO, IDEO, began by explaining that there is more to a product than its functional and technological qualities. It's important to take into consideration the "experiential" value that is associated with every aspect of acquiring and using a product. A consumer goes on a "customer journey," a story that is spun from all of the things she encounters on her purchase process. The customer journey that one goes on in the healthcare industry is a good example of how emotionally charged and significant each aspect of an experience can be.

Often experiences are so powerful that they are products in themselves, and thus experiences should not be given away for free. In fact, they can be manufactured and refined in ways that can add value. How does one add value to an experience? By creating a prototype. In creating an experience, a living prototype can be used.

When designing an experience, the limits of control are challenged. In design, there is usually a top-down approach, where the greatest amount of control is maintained. However, when designing experiences, there can be a top-down and/or a bottom-up approach. Apple and Disney are good examples of a top-down, highly scripted, very controlled experience, even down to their distribution and retail. In a bottom-up approach, an attempt is not made to control every experience, rather a set of rules and behaviors are established and put in place at each stage. This method maintains some level of control while at the same time allowing flexibility for participants to customize the experience at different stages.

There are key components to designing an experience. Assess if the customer wants the experience, and make sure that she knows she is having the experience -- if she doesn't know, you can't make her pay for it. Also, ensure that the customer has an experience that she can tell someone about. TiVo is a good example of a challenging product to describe to someone -- what exactly is it? When it comes to experiences, mass marketing does not work well, and other forms of more network-focused marketing will work better.

Questions And Answers

Q: Have you ever done everything right with prototyping and had the product still fail?

A: We have not done everything right. Where things fall apart is the gap between the creation and the marketing of something. I would like to see a much tighter link between the two, especially when creating experiences. The story that you tell through the development of the product is the same story that marketing must tell.

Q: What industries are better suited to the top-down versus bottom-up approach?

A: Top-down control works better in industries that are changing less rapidly and have the ability to forecast. Alternatively, in a rapidly changing industry, top-down is hard to control. When there is a lot of change, bottom-up might be a better approach.