It was a clear and rueful acknowledgment that IDEO's main work was elsewhere. Sadly, for many organizations, it's just as easy to imagine a team T-shirt becoming an object of derision, not pride. Nifty T-shirts do not make hot teams any more than a pair of blue jeans and sandals turn JavaScript programmers into Internet millionaires. Most smart people in time-stressed organizations can sense when their company's commitment to a symbol is, well, just symbolic. IDEO doesn't worry about the answer to that question.
Most organizations do.
They had better. Deeds, Not Words Kelley's brave new T-shirt suggestion points to a broader theme that sets both the book and IDEO apart. IDEO's culture is about the actual behavior that goes into innovation. Tom, an MBA-equipped business consultant before joining his brother, has rightly observed that IDEO's environment has less to do with transforming how people think about ideas than getting people to change how they interact with ideas. IDEO opens minds through active play rather than through persistent persuasion.