Organizing for innovation : an examination of collaborative teams in industrial design

Abstract

Why are some industrial design firms more successful than others in consistently producing high quality products and services? Do they hire more talented people, or are they organized so as to maximize the potential of their teams? I begin this thesis with an examination of literature on teamwork, the dynamics of idea propagation, and the product development process itself. This is meant to extract some insights into successful teams across a broad spectrum of activities and what they did to generate a creative output. These examples include references to historically significant teams such as Thomas Edison's Lab and the Manhattan Project. By using such extreme examples, I am seeking similarities in more common projects and organizations. I use a workgroup framework to analyze the factors involved, including the context, the people on the teams, their task requirements and formal organization, group cultures that emerge, as well as the outcomes that define the success, or otherwise of a project. I interviewed a number of professionals in the industry. These include professionals from IDEO, Design Continuum, Modo, and sevenO2design, as well as professors at the MIT School of Engineering, Media Lab, Sloan School, and Olin College of Engineering. The main focus is in analyzing the collaborative processes and methods of these sample organizations. My objective is to identify their methodology for organizing the creative process and how they maintain a high standard across projects, industries and over time.