Understanding Salesforce’s Acquisition of Gravity Tank

Why tech companies see design capabilities as a catalyst for innovation

Chris Conley:

Chris Conley pioneered the application of user research to inspire design and management teams. He continues to explore and integrate diverse disciplines to create a highly effective innovation capability. Chris earned a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at Illinois Tech, before earning a Masters from the Institute of Design. He then went on to work at Doblin, a firm that is closely associated with ID, eventually returning to teach at ID from 2001 to 2009.

Founding of Gravity Tank:

Gravity Tank was founded in 1999. As their website at the time states: "GT develops strong collaborative relationships with clients in order to facilitate a broad range of product planning and development efforts."

The early days of Gravity Tank were very much in the mold of a traditional industrial design firm, helping clients create new products and bring them to mass production. But alongside Chris' teaching stint at ID, the company also evolved into an "innovation consultancy".

The company took the existing industrial design skillsets of user centered research and rapid prototyping, and began to apply them to business to build innovation capabilities within organizations. While the company continued to create innovative and award winning new product designs, they also quickly became thought leaders in applying a design thinking approach to solving business problems.

Salesforce Ignite:

Salesforce Ignite was started as early as 2012, intended to provide design thinking capabilities for Salesforce, as well as their clients. The goal was to move beyond Salesforce's existing offerings, which as the time consisted primarily of CRM software, to see how the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model could be used to solve other business challenges that their clients would have.

Incubated from 2012 to 2013, Ignite came about at a time when a range of traditional companies were seeing their industries being disrupted by tech startups such as Uber and Spotify (taxi services and music distribution respectively). Every industry was about to undergo digital transformation of some kind, and Salesforce needed a new kind of thinking and operation to be able to quickly design and prototype solutions for (and more importantly, with) clients.

Mergers & Acquisitions:

In September 2016, Salesforce acquired Gravity Tank along with a slew of other companies in a rapid expansion. In 2015, they had spent over $4 billion on acquisitions, and Gravity Tank was the third company they had acquired that month.

But Gravity Tank was different, as most of the companies acquired at the time were technology companies, bought either for their patents or for their engineering talent. At the time, Gravity Tank had only about 60 people, primarily based in Chicago. The goal here wasn't just acquiring talent, it was about being able to better utilize the assets that already existed within Salesforce.

The acquisition of Gravity Tank was seen as a way to quickly scale the Ignite mode by bolstering their existing capabilities: "through both specific disciplinary capabilities in research, design and strategy, and a way of bringing those skill-sets together in integrated teams."

Folding in of Gravity Tank:

By mid 2017, the Gravity Tank team was integrated into Salesforce, and the gravity tank website redirected to the Salesforce Ignite Website.

Today, Ignite acts as a Design Thinking practice within Salesforce, looking at ways in which they can leverage Salesforce's exiting technology to help clients achieve their objects. By providing a customer focused lens to their clients, as well as educating clients on new strategies, the current iteration of Salesforce Ignite builds on Gravity Tank's mission, and serves as a catalyst for innovation.

Chris Conley has continued to stay in the Chicago area, founding, investing and overseeing a number of different ventures, including Skill Scout, Metroplanning.org, Two Bit Ventures, and most recently, Abundant Professional.