Tonight, the deep dive. One company's secret weapon for innovation. We went to IDEO, the product design folk, and said, take something old and familiar, like, say, the shopping cart, and completely redesign it for us in just five days.
ABC News correspondent Jack Smith tells us... what happened next. Nine in the morning, day one, and these people have a deadline to meet.
So welcome to the kickoff of the shopping cart project. This is Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Valley and these are designers at IDEO, probably the most influential product development firm in the world.
IDEO has designed everything from high-tech medical equipment to the 25-foot mechanical whale in the movie Free Willy and the first computer mouse for Apple. Smith ski goggles, Nike sunglasses, NEC computer screens, hundreds of products we take for granted. The point is that we're not actually experts at any given area.
We're kind of experts process of how you design stuff. So we don't care if you give us a toothbrush, a toothpaste tube, a tractor, a space shuttle, you know, a chair. It's all the same to us.
We, like, want to figure out how to innovate in, in, by using our process applying it. Project leader is Peter Skillman, a 35-year-old Stanford engineer. Project leader because he's good with groups, not because of seniority. He's only been at IDEO for six years.
The rest of the team is eclectic. But that's typical here. Whitney Mortimer, Harvard MBA.
Peter Coughlin, linguist. Tom Kelly, Dave's brother, marketing expert. Jane Fulton Suri, psychologist. Alex Kazaks, 26, a biology major, who's turned down... medical school three times because he's having too much fun at IDEO.
Safety emerges early as an important issue. 22,000 child injuries a year which is and so they're hospitalized injuries I mean there are many others. And theft. It turns out a lot of carts are stolen. As the team works, it becomes clear there are no titles here, no permanent assignments.
The other side says, gives us a lot of help, says, be safe. I'll give you a big red ball on a post, and that says you're a big guy. If you got a ball, you're a senior vice president.
You know, what do I care? The desk, the red ball, it's all the same. In a very innovative culture, you can't have a kind of hierarchy of here's the boss and the next person. down, the next person down, the next person down, because it's impossible that the boss is the one who's had the insightful experience with shopping carts. It's just not possible.
The team splits into groups to find out firsthand what the people who use, make, and repair shopping carts really think. Okay, go. The problem with the plastic cart is the wind catches it. Yeah.
And these things have been clocked at 35 across the parking lot. Oh, man. That's actually a pretty good point. The trick is to find these real experts so that you can learn much more.
much more quickly than you could by just kind of doing in the normal way and trying to learn about it yourself. From everything I read, these things aren't that safe either, you know? So probably the seat itself is going to have to be redesigned.
One of the interesting things for me is looking at how people really don't like to let go of the cart, except for the professional shopper whose strategy is to leave the cart at various places. It's 3.30 in the afternoon and the group is back at IDEO. There is no let up.
Each team is going to demonstrate... and communicate and share everything that they've learned today. A shopping cart has been clocked at 35 miles an hour traveling through a parking lot in the wind. We were in the store, what, two hours?
And it was truly frightening just to see the kind of stuff going on. You've got to designate some people to make damn sure that the store owner's point of view is represented. After nine straight hours, the team is tired. they call it a day so uh well uh that's great thanks a lot we had a great time today IDO's mantra for innovation is written everywhere.
One conversation at a time. Stay focused. Encourage wild ideas.
Defer judgment. Build on the ideas of others. That's the hardest thing for people to do is to restrain themselves from criticizing an idea. So if anybody starts to nail an idea, they get the bell. The ideas pour out and are posted on the walls.
Oh, the blind, the privacy blind. Like when you're buying six cases of condoms, no one sees. If it doesn't nest, we don't have a solution.
Organized case. It's not organized. What it is, is it's focused case.
Vote with your post-it not with an idea that's cool, but with an idea that's cool and buildable. If it's too far out there and it can't be built in a day, then I don't think we should vote on it. Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning.
and blown genius. Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius. If anything sums up IDEO's approach, that is it. Worried that the team is drifting, what can only be called a group of self-appointed adults under Dave Kelly holds an informal side session. Four or five teams.
Four or five teams, and we give each team a need area. It becomes very autocratic for a very short period of time in defining what things people are going to work on. If you don't work under time constraints, you could never get anything done because it's a messy process that can go on forever. Back at the shop, it is 6 o'clock, and the four mock-ups are ready for showing. Baskets also can be, if you think you will have more volume, baskets can be put in.
A modular shopping cart you pile hand baskets onto. A high-tech cart. that gets you through the traffic jam at checkout. That you could mount a scanner on the shopping cart so that you as the customer, as you pull it off the shelf, would scan each item. One that's built around child safety.
and another that let shoppers talk to the supermarket staff remotely. Yeah, where can I find a yogurt? But the adults, again, decide more work needs to be done before the mock-ups can be combined into one last prototype. Why don't we have all the carts come up here for a second? I think you take a piece of each one of these ideas and kind of back it off a little bit and then put it in the design.
The design is still not there, but there's another motto at IDEO, fail often in order to succeed. sooner and some of the team will be up half the night trying to put together a design that finally does work. There it is!
There it is! So we took the best elements out of each prototype. The cart, which is designed to cost about the same as today's carts, is different in every other way.
What do you think? Well, I'm very proud of the team. I think it's great.
Does this work for you? Works for me great. It's also beautiful. The cart's wheels turn 90 degrees so it can move sideways.
No more lifting up the rear in a tight spot. And you shop in a totally different way. The bags are hung on hooks. on the carts frame. Remember there is no basket here.
At first I was a little shocked but I think it's you have some fantastic ideas here. It needs a little refining but I think that it's great. I mean we would we would want them.
She also gave us some really good comments about how we can make this thing better. A lot of hours, also an open mind, a boss who demands fresh ideas be quirky and clash with his, a belief that chaos can be constructive and teamwork. A great deal.
deal of teamwork. And these are the recipe for how innovation takes place. This is Jack Smith for Nightline in Palo Alto, California.