With the success of firms like Ammunition, FuseProject, and NewDeal etc…Are 50+ people firms too big to succeed?
Success meaning great meaningful inspirational work.
at 500+ in 8 locations I’d say not having any trouble.
Obviously I’m biased, but I feel the value we bring is a little different. Global talent pool of ID, IxD, GD, Brand, Strategy, Technology, Engineering, Development, and an ability to impact and influence the bigger picture, from broad vision to go to market.
Love what the firms you mentioned are doing, the offering is just a little different.
Recent public work (lots of crazy stuff happening behind the scenes of course!)
http://thinkin.frogdesign.com/
Working on sume super fun stuff, I’ll tell you about it in 24-48 months…
new stuff usually goes here as it becomes public:
Great work.
The reason I ask is , I have noticed the big boys spending more of their time framing and strategizing than making. When I mean making, I do not mean creating beautiful concepts/renders or books that end up sitting on some ones desk. In other words strategic guidelines or roadmaps. I mean true actionable work. Work that makes it to the market, connects with a consumer, and is truly innovative. Work like Beats (ammunition), like New XBOX (MNML) and SlingBox (newdeal)
Recently I have seen failures from IDEO (Tendril’s IDEO-Designed Home-Energy Monitoring Device Fails, Utilitari ) and even Ziba.
I noticed that the small firms are approaching diverse integrated design (ui, ethno, product) faster and better. A lot of these firms are small groups that have broken off the big boys or big corps. I recently heard from an old colleague that most of the talented people from IDEO and Ziba have recently left to start a new firms. I’m curious if it can be a good movement.
All true, but at a nose bleed price.
Three letters, KKR. 
“If we go 2-3 years with out a product that fails we are doing something wrong”
easy to say if your not the client that takes the financial bath.
I wish I saved the link to the article I got the quote from. I think it was linked off this sight, maybe even the main page. Anyways he was the owner of the company and he was just referring to how they are always pushing the limits. In return for constantly pushing the limits some products were destined to fail.
“If we go 2-3 years with out a product that fails we are doing something wrong”[/quote] easy to say if your not the client that takes the financial bath.[/quote]
I wish I saved the link to the article I got the quote from. I think it was linked off this sight, maybe even the main page. Anyways he was the owner of the company and he was just referring to how they are always pushing the limits. In return for constantly pushing the limits some products were destined to fail.[/quote] Ok if its “his” nickle then cool, hate it when designers (or anybody) is flippant about losing a ton of cash on a duffer product.
Yes, they are. As companies grow, communication becomes inefficient and competition between departments rises (efficiency/costs), so, you can’t be confident any longer that all fellows are sitting in the same boat. It’s rather different small companies then, placing orders at each other . Too much ressources are spent doing this kind of stuff:
What I’ve heard so far, the limit to full efficiency of a company is 10, not 50 
I don’t believe this to be true. It is all about how a big cooperation is structured and that you have the right people leading the right people.
As companies grow, their ability to take on hi-risk projects grows as well.
I am not saying that all big firms do this. Some do grow stagnent. But there is now way I can judge that as I do not know whatever is being worked on for a client or on their own initiative.
But out of my own experience I can say that a lot do of course silent projects. Big firms are indeed pushing boundaries, but as there is a lot more invested and at stake, these projects most often in collaboration with the industry, never make it in its consultancy form to the public arena. And they don’t need to.
I like to believe that firms such as Ziba, Frog, Ideo… you name it, attract amazing design talent who have it in their DNA to push and develop. But the bigger the firm, the bigger the secrecy, the higher the stakes.
Large cooperations also do not need to advertise their achievement while smaller firms must seem fresher and more cutting edge in order to compete.
Don’t you think smaller firms have failures too? Think of a bigger firm and how much more work they put out on yearly basis then a small firm. Maybe the # of failed projects is more, but the % is equal or less than small firms.
Bigger firms also have the resources to do things that a smaller firm couldn’t. There are pro’s and con’s to each. You could throw in big in-house corporate design teams too. They are all important because they give options to the clients.
I think these two meanings of “big” get mixed up quickly. Capital resources vs. manpower.
@ max
though that are 2 things that might get mixed up a bit, there still is a big correalation between the two of them in regards of the size of the firm.
its just a matter of fact that a firm with 50+people is much more likely to have bigger financial backup than 2-10 person studios. rockstar designer is a “ausnahmen bestätigen die regeln” (another) thing.
and what i have seen is, that with the luxury of choosing a team from your staff that has relevant knowledge for a project you can work very efficient. around 50 people is a good number i think. thats the point where you can cover a lot if you want to. i am not saying 50 industrial designer but 50 people within a few different areas sounds good to me.
i always wondered how projects within frog are handled. any information on that yo?
Having a global talent pool in 8 cool cities to live and work in means having the ability to staff projects with hand picked teams. I’ve directed projects out of Shanghai and Seattle and I’ve had designers spend good chances of time in many of the studios because they were a good fit for a program.