a designer takes on his
biggest challenge ever
continued from page 83
deployed a team to shadow nurses, doc-
tors, and pharmacists as they prescribed,
filled, and administered medications to
patients. In the U.S. alone, more than 1. 5
million people are harmed by medica-
tion errors annually; Kaiser’s informa-
tion—videos and journals—from the
observation phase revealed that inter-
ruptions were the main driver behind
errors. The team took that insight and
brainstormed solutions ranging from
streamlining the process for medicine
delivery to protecting the process from
other employees. They then prototyped
tools—including aprons that said leave
me alone! and red do not cross! lines in
front of pill-dispensing machines—that
could solve the problem.
The program has been so successful—
his time while he was sick.
In 1983, Kelley started a small business
with Sottsass linking Italian design with
Silicon Valley technology (their product—a
phone—made it into MoMA but failed in
the marketplace), and he understands the
frequent criticism that American design is
inferior to European. “The rest of the
world defines design as an artistic disci-
pline,” he says. “They were taught culture.
I wasn’t taught who painted anything. So
as Americans, we’re at a disadvantage.”
But while Americans may be underrepre-
sented at the Milan Furniture Fair, he
says, the United States has something few
other countries can match: diversity. The
way Kelley sees it, our polyglot populace
gives us an extraordinary advantage in
generating truly creative ideas.
That idea was one of the animating
forces behind the d.school—a place that
would help analytical Stanford types
become creative thinkers. The school
in the middle of the Stanford campus,
will open this fall.
“Programs like this are absolutely nec-
essary if the U.S. wants to maintain its
position in innovation,” says Plattner
from his company’s headquarters in
Walldorf, Germany. “For many products,
it’s a mandatory strategy for survival.
And David’s so passionate, he can even
motivate me.”
Kelley is still a bit astonished at what
he has been able to pull off at Stanford.
“I’ve been here 30 years, and nobody paid
any attention to me at all,” he says. “At
one point, they were trying to reduce the
size of my office—which was 78 square
feet. Now I’m sitting in meetings with the
president, with him asking if I want
another building.” Hennessy is now talk-
ing about making creative confidence a
requirement at Stanford, just like a for-
eign language.
Whether or not design thinking revo-
“from david, i’ve learned that there has to be someone to create something
out of nothing,” says a friend and former student. transformed.
“david embodies that. anybody who spends time with him comes away
”
reducing interruptions by 50% and increas-
ing on-time delivery by 18%—that Kaiser
is now rolling it out to its 36 facilities and
responding to inquiries from around the
world about its effectiveness. “Kaiser Per-
manente has always been innovation
driven,” says Christi Zuber, director of
Kaiser’s innovation consultancy, “but
Ideo gave us a teachable approach.” It’s
hard to imagine McKinsey giving away
its proprietary techniques, but Ideo’s lar-
gesse is in sync with Kelley’s mission—
and with his confidence in his own com-
pany’s ability to reinvent itself. “I can
give our methodology away,” he says at a
staff meeting on Ideo’s future, “because I
know we can come up with a better idea
tomorrow.”
besides his mania for cars, one of
Kelley’s primary design passions is his
house, designed by his late friend Ettore
Sottsass, the founder of the design collec-
tive Memphis. It’s a sprawling, eclectic
masterpiece with multiple, asymmetrical
wings: a green one shaped like a Monop-
oly house for his daughter; a two-story,
barrel-vaulted office for his wife; a blocky
guest house, where Kelley spent most of
would welcome students from business,
law, education, medicine, engineering—
the more diverse, the better.
In recent years, universities across the
country have developed an obsession
with cross-disciplinary collaboration.
One of the foremost success stories, the
James H. Clark Center for Biomedical
Engineering and Sciences, is right on the
Stanford campus. Still, it took eight years
for Kelley to convince Stanford that his
unconventional idea—a school that grants
no degrees, but functions as more of a
specialized graduate program—had merit.
“When David was making the case for the
d.school at Stanford,” says Tom Kelley,
“he went to [university president John]
Hennessy and said, ‘Look, we’re good at
“deep.” We have Nobel Laureates drilling
down into esoteric topics. But what if
there are problems that aren’t solved by
deep, but broad? We should have a side
bet in broad.’” In that climate, Kelley’s
notion finally began to find an audience.
By 2005, he had persuaded Hasso Platt-
ner, a founder of the software giant SAP,
to pony up $35 million to the d.school.
The new 42,500-square-foot home of the
Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, smack
lutionizes the world and all its ramen
experiences, Kelley’s influence is sure to
live on in the institutions he has built and
the people he has touched. “David’s legacy
is that he spends his life doing things he
believes in, with people he believes in,
with the abiding faith that it will lead to
good things,” says Dan Bomze, CEO of
CleanWell and a former Kelley student.
“From David, I’ve learned that there has
to be someone to create something out of
nothing. He embodies that. But he makes
people feel he couldn’t have done it with-
out them. Anybody who spends time with
him comes away transformed.”
As for Kelley, he’s currently cancer-
free, energetic, and full of plans. But
every six months, he has to submit to a
scan to make sure the disease has not
metastasized. It’s a terrifying reminder
that, as for all of us, life is short.
“So I sit here today,” he says, leaning
forward in the shelter of the Ideo yurt,
“knowing there’s a chance it could come
back. So I better make some hay. I better
get my religion in place in as many people
as I can. It’s working really well.” 1.
> feedback: tischler@fastcompany.com
