Project: GFL
Studio: IDEO Palo Alto
Discipline(s): Communication Design, Organizational Design, Design Research
Team Members: Deb DeVries, Leesa Gallaher, Iain Roberts
Studio: IDEO Palo Alto
Discipline(s): Communication Design, Organizational Design, Design Research
Team Members: Deb DeVries, Leesa Gallaher, Iain Roberts
Client: Ford Motors. IDEO has a long standing relationship with Ford Motors, effecting system change throughout the organization with a human centered approach. The brainchild of Jim Hackett (Former CEO. Ford Motors), Greenfield Labs is a long game strategy to develop this new human centered design practice that had proven great success at Steelcase while leading as their CEO. Since its inception in 2016 GFL has since become “D-Ford” with studios running in Detroit, Palo Alto, London, Shanghai and Melbourne.
Brief: Establish a new organizational model and individual brand identity, allowing two companies to collaborate, pushing human centered design and new innovative mobility products throughout the greater Ford Company.
Story: Impact: GFL was a skunkwork project created as a separate subculture within Ford, composed of both IDEO and Ford designers, experimenting with how to blend the approaches of both companies in what we called “the third way”—not entirely Ford, not entirely IDEO but a healthy alchemy of their respective best attributes. The new sense of identity created psychological safety and ownership within the lab that is unique from other Ford innovation ventures. GFL’s initial strategy was bold and aggressive by design, to forcefully imprint a separate culture and establish new ways of producing viable future products. After that incubation period, GFL has now become the physical location in Palo Alto while the lab structure has now become “D-Ford” across the global locations.
Impact: The D-Ford lab (Formerly GFL) continues to expand with its global locations, boldly exploring new mobility products and pushing this century old empire into near and far visions of a car company that will no longer make cars but rather better ways of humanizing mobility.
Brief: Establish a new organizational model and individual brand identity, allowing two companies to collaborate, pushing human centered design and new innovative mobility products throughout the greater Ford Company.
Story: Impact: GFL was a skunkwork project created as a separate subculture within Ford, composed of both IDEO and Ford designers, experimenting with how to blend the approaches of both companies in what we called “the third way”—not entirely Ford, not entirely IDEO but a healthy alchemy of their respective best attributes. The new sense of identity created psychological safety and ownership within the lab that is unique from other Ford innovation ventures. GFL’s initial strategy was bold and aggressive by design, to forcefully imprint a separate culture and establish new ways of producing viable future products. After that incubation period, GFL has now become the physical location in Palo Alto while the lab structure has now become “D-Ford” across the global locations.
Impact: The D-Ford lab (Formerly GFL) continues to expand with its global locations, boldly exploring new mobility products and pushing this century old empire into near and far visions of a car company that will no longer make cars but rather better ways of humanizing mobility.
