The Future of Design: IDEO's way

Title: The Power of Design
Source: Business Week (May 17, 2004)
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_20/b3883001_mz001.htm

This article is about the future of one of the most famous design firms, IDEO. Perhaps this article tells us the future of industrial design works. However, ironically, here is no real product design development case. Why? Where is a product design disappeared?
I think design (especially industrial or product design) is in a transitional period to adapt its competitive power to a new environment world which is called as information society. We can easily find out that IDEO’s design works are very different compared to traditional design service. In other view of point, IDEO’s design service is similar to business consulting firms.
What can designers who received a traditional design education do in this kind of company, such as IEDO? And what should we study in school? What is real competitive power of design or designer? How much important the capability of styling is? What or how is relationship between design and innovation? Surely, I think there are several design issues in this article.