Collaboration is another key element in Ideo's success, Kelley says. He points out that even Thomas Edison, America's most prolific inventor, had a great team of people working for him in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

Given the complexity of products and services today, it takes collaboration by experts in many fields to achieve success. Kelley includes interoffice, cross-discipline integration in this idea.

"We are intensely into this idea of improving work spaces. There are a lot of things we do in the office layout that make it so that there are clusters of communal activity," Kelley says. "You can do that over and over again so you can have a culture of continuous innovation."

In a sense, collaboration is responsible for Kelley's entrance into the design field. After all, he holds an M.B.A., not a design or engineering degree.

"How did I end up as the straight guy among all these wildly creative people? I joined when everybody [at Ideo] was a designer or an engineer. After my brother David founded the firm, he said, 'Gee, I think we're ready for one businessperson.'"

It all started in the backyard

More than that, Tom and David Kelley had a close relationship and complimentary skills.

Kelley relates an anecdote from the winter of 1961, when he and his brother were little kids who liked to build snow forts in the backyard. They rolled balls of snow to build the fort's walls, but they noticed that the balls weren't very aesthetically pleasing or even all that functional. They hit upon the idea of using a box to make square bricks, and adding water to turn the bricks into long-lasting ice.

"It was tremendously cold, and I was ready to go inside and have a cup of hot chocolate," Kelley says. "But because of the teamwork that we'd established, it was clear that, nope, we were going to stick with it and get the job done. I think it's that collaboration that anticipated what I currently do."