IDEO didn’t struck me as a hip and cool company when I was introduced to it afew weeks back. I casually casted it aside as “just another” successful/lucky start-up.

Well, I believe I totally ate my own words today when I saw how cool the office is. I was previously so proud of the nuffie-corner which was the my very own pride and joy of being in a hip, cool and fun start-up for the past 7 months with Nuffnang. IDEO’s capsule like meeting area with the coffee table made up of a stack of paper, the super cool pantry and the flag raising bicycles concept…there is really so much more to creating a fun, creative environment.

My engineer mindset was hugely deflated during my early phase of Nuffnang as I was deemed to be too safe and too straight in my thinking (after 3 yrs in a school like engine, what else can you expect?!) It took me awhile to really innovate and come up with creative new ideas for advertising campaigns which I lauched . Well, I would definitely love to have an environment like IDEO where I get to interact with cool stuffs all the time. Their massive focus on phototyping really impressed me.

“Imagine, 24 phototype phases for a simple gadget like the Palm V”

“Look at the amount of Microsoft mouse versions they had before the actual one went to the market”

I believe that its the liberal, free reign flexibility that IDEO gives its employees that makes it what it is today. Well, I do have such flexibility back @ Nuffnang, but it was a little different. I bet they don’t have CCTV installed everywhere around the company (unlike N**f***g). From my experiences during the past few months in the advertising, media industry, I believe that creative ideas normally spring up from the weirdest moments and from the weirdest places. I have a secret fetish for the toilet at Nuffnang office for my inspirations and I will definitely think the VW van will be my fav place if I were to work @ IDEO.

Besides the working environment, its people constitute the soul of the company; it moulds the culture of the company. Didn’t expect that IDEO actually hired a race car driver…someone that actually risen to become a creative team leader. In a way, I believe SG startups are still rather conservative in their way of hiring staff. The “T- Concept” certainly is not adopted here.

T-Concept: focuses on the techical capability of the person while also having huge emphasis on the varied diversed backgrounds of the different individuals.

Back at Nuffnang, we have an ex air stwerdress, night safari presenter, ex shoe shop promoter and me (engineer). I guess we have a good mix of experiences and backgrounds to derive positive synergy between us which is build on a common understanding of the needs of our clients. Oh…did I mention that my boss used to sell toys? haha.. but that’s just one company. The mass majority still prefer the employee’s skillset to match the needs of the company. It could be the industry that they are in. Creative houses needs creative people and they not neccessarily have to come from the best design schools or students with top grades. That’s a myopic mindset.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 4:24 am and is filed under Ideo, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.