now CBS This Morning co-host Charlie Rose on assignment for 60 minutes tonight we're going to introduce you to one of the most Innovative thinkers of our time he is a man who has had an enormous impact on everyday lives David Kelly is the founder of the Silicon Valley Global design firm idio his company has created thousands of breakthrough inventions including the first computer mouse from Apple the standup toothpaste tube and a better Pringle for Proctor and Gamble audio may be the most influential product design company in the world Kelly was a longtime friend and colleague of Steve Jobs and he is a Pioneer in something known as design thinking an Innovative approach that incorporates human behavior into design the story will continue in a moment the big thing about design thinking is it allows people to build on the other the ideas of others instead of instead of just having this one thread you think about it I come up with an idea and then somebody from somewhere else says oh that makes me think we should do this and then we could do that and then you get to a place that you just can't get to in one mind if you follow David kellyan idio you can see how he has infused that thinking into the legendary paloalto firm he founded more than 20 years ago breakthrough ideas happen every day here the key to unlocking creativity at Ideo may be their unorthodox approach to problem solving they throw a bunch of people with different backgrounds together in a room so you're in the business end y my background is in software engineering journalism aerospace engineer doctors opera singers and anthropologists for example and get them to brainstorm you got to have a certain culture you got to have collaboration you got to have diversity you got to have an anthropologist and a business person and an engineer and a computer scientist all of those kinds of got you got it that's the hard part is the cultural thing of having a diverse group of people and having them be good at building on each other's ideas they encourage wild ideas and visualize solutions by making actual prototypes but the main tenant is empathy for the consumer figuring out what humans really want by watching them if you want to improve a piece of software all you have to do is watch people using it and see when they Grimace and then correlate that to where they are in the software and you could fix that right and so the thing is to really build empathy try to understand people through observing them in other words their experience will communicate what you need to focus on exactly it is a concept that had its Genesis in 1978 when Kelly and some Stanford Pals took the notion of mixing human behavior and design and started the company that would eventually become audio one of their first clients was the owner of a fast growing personal computer manufacturer by the name of Steve Jobs he made idio because he was such a good client we did our best work for him we became friends and he'd call me at 3:00 in the morning 3 a.m. yeah we were both Bachelors so he knew he could call me right so he'd call me at 3:00 and he and he just like with no Preamble hey it's Steve first I knew if it was 3:00 in the morning it was him and there's no Preamble and he just start he said you know those screws that were using to hold the too thing on the inside I mean he was deep into every aspect of things Kelly's company helped design dozens of products for Apple including Apple 3 and Lisa and the very first Apple Mouse a descendant of which is still in use today he said to us you know for $17 make I want you he gave us that number $17 I want you to make a mouse we're going to use in all of our computers so what happened here was we're trying to figure out how to make so you move your hand and how you make the thing move on screen so at first we thought we got to make it really accurate you know like when we move the mous an inch that's got to move exactly an inch on the screen and then after we protected we realize it doesn't matter at all your brain's in the loop the whole thing was make it intuitive for the human but even after they solved that Monumental problem job still wasn't satisfied so he didn't like the way the ball sounded on the table so we had to rubber coat the ball well rubber coating the ball was a huge technical problem because you can't have any seams you got to get it just right and so you know it just be one thing like that suppose St said you you I'd like to have a ball that's not steel but rubber coated and you said no you can't do that Steve what would he say the explanes that I would have would probably are not good on on camera but it was basically I thought you were good you know like I I thought I hired you because you were smart you know like you're letting me down since then design thinking has led to thousands of breakthroughs from redesigning zylus kitchen tools so they're easier to use to coming up with a heart defibrillator that talks to you during an emergency so it talks to you and it shows you visually what to do and they came up with tbo's thumbs up thumbs down button it makes your TV smarter right because you you give it the thumbs up or thumbs down and your TV learns what you like and what you don't like it's why steel case a company that has been building furniture for 100 years turned to audio to reinvent the classroom chair this is one of my favorite things I want you to sit in this chair I love this so this is for kids right so I'm a kid so there you go you're perfect so when we looked at that old wooden thing with the dog egg leg kind of stuff and if you just watch kids and see what they need what do they need well the main thing they need is a place to put their backpack right so you got a place to put your backpack and then they needed to they're fidgety they want to move around so you put it on Wheels right and they and getting in and out of it you know you need to this so it's it's not rocket science it's what it's empathetic empathetic empathetic to people like really like try to really understand what they really value now they're working with clients all over the globe they're using the same intuitive human point of view to improve access to Safe Drinking Water in India and Africa redesigning school systems in Peru and helping North Face expand their brand into China Kelly has always been good at coming up with ingenious solutions to Everyday problems his first job was at Boeing he was part of a team that designed the lights around the passenger windows as well as a milestone in aviation history the laboratory occupied sign but he says the seeds of who he is today can be traced to his childhood in Barberton Ohio the passenger tire capital of the world where he learned the value of building with his hands in my family if the washer broke you didn't go order the part you went down toward the washer part and tried to make a new part to fix it because that was part of the um that was part of the game that you know we're capable of fixing things that was something that was part of you too you were a tinkerer who wanted to take it apart and put it back one of the best stories my mothers tell us I took the family piano apart but it wasn't that interesting to put it back together so it just it kind the piano sat there with this big harp kind of thing hanging out of it for most of my childhood he was in his 20s working unhappily as an engineer when he heard about Stanford University's product design program what he learned there would transform his life as a design thinker and so what happened when you came to Stanford so I get to Stanford and um and uh it was Heaven Stanford was the synthesis of kind of art and engineering and it was wonderful it was shortly after that that Steve Jobs came into the picture for over 30 years they worked together and were close friends what's the biggest misconception about him I think the big the misconception is around that he was kind of like um you know like malicious he was like trying to be mean to people he wasn't he was just trying to get things done right and it was you just had to learn how to react to that he did some lovely things for me in my life jobs introduced Kelly to his wife Casey bransom and Steve Jobs was also there for Kelly When the unthinkable happened in 2007 Kelly was diagnosed with throat cancer and given a 40% chance of survival jobs already suffering from his own deadly cancer gave him some advice he came over and said look you know don't consider any alternative go straight to Western medicine don't you know don't try any herbs or anything why do you think Steve said don't look for alternative medicine go straight to the hard stuff I think he had made in his mind he had made the mistake that he had uh had tried to to cure his his pancreatic cancer in other ways other than I mean he just said don't mess around you know when we both had cancer at the same time was when um I got in really close to him and I was at home you know like like sitting around in my skibbies you know um you know waiting for my next dose of of something and I think it was the day after the iPhone was announced he had one for me right an iPhone you know your own iPhone delivered by Steve Jobs right after it comes out it was a lovely feeling so he decides to hook it up for me so he gets the on the phone to AT&T and he's going to hook up my phone and it's not going well so this is such good news for me eventually he pulls the I'm Steve Jobs card you know he says to the guy I'm Steve Jobs I'm sure the guy on the other end says yeah buddy I'm the polian you know like get out of here but but anyway so he never did really get he never hook it up no not that day but he was close what did he teach you about living with cancer Steve focused more on his kids I think than anything and made me fight more to to survive and so that focus on family you know was something that he taught me you care deeply that you watch your daughter yes as she continues to grow and it's about her what what was her life going to be like if I died that's really motivating it was around that time that Kelly decided to commit himself to something even bigger and while he approached Stanford University and a wealthy client named hezo platner with the idea of setting up a school dedicated to human centered design he thought that was a great idea and um he said he'd help me and I said oh thank you and then I went back and the dev no idea what he meant no the development officer at Stanford says when a billionaire says I'll help you you should call back right away so it turns out hasso funded the whole thing he said $35 million yeah yeah he said how much you need I wish I have said $80 million I he said yes to whatever I said I think Kelly now runs a groundbreaking and wildly popular hasso Platinum Institute of Design at Stanford the D school okay it is recognized as a first program of of its kind dedicated to teaching design thinking as a tool for Innovation not just to designers but to students from all different disciplines I think you can follow your noses a little bit around that like where's the big idea where's the excitement twice as many Stanford grad students want to take classes as our seats available the lucky 500 students in the program augment their master's degree studies in business law medicine engineering and the Arts by solving problems collaboratively and creatively and immersing themselves in the methodology Kelly's made famous but there are no degrees it is something Steve Jobs poked him out of he said I don't want somebody's one of your flaky degrees basically right I don't want them working for me yeah I don't want that work for me if they just have your flaky degree but if they have a computer science degree or a business degree and then they've come and have our way of thinking on top of that I'm really excited about it today his cancer is in remission he spends more time doing the thing things that he cares about most including tinkering in his workshop with his 15-year-old daughter so Claire tell me this what happens here everything really everything yeah so Claire and I come here to do projects together our big project is is right over there presently which is to make a 3D printer it's called a printer bot and it's a little machine that makes 3D objects like a printer that puts ink on a page this makes something three-dimensional his love of making things is as much a part of his DNA as his appreciation for the car which he calls the most important object in our lives so why do you like it what does it mean to you well you know it's uh it's about the same vintage as me and it um and it just uh it's just makes everybody smile okay I like the sound of the motor almost every day you can find David Kelly driving his 54 Chevy pickup truck between Stanford and ID inspiring the design thinkers of tomorrow and quietly shaping the future my theory is that sometimes life squeezes out the best of us I've never heard that but that really resonates with me so if I could write the first line of your Epitaph it might be David Kelly help people find the confidence in their creativity that wouldd be lovely and change the world yeah go to 60 minutes overtime.com for a guided tour with Charlie Rose sponsored by fiser