AN OPEN LETTER TO MICROSOFT
Dear Steve: Back in the nineties, I felt I was at the center of the world as a consultant at Microsoft. It was the early days of the Web and I was working with the early versions of Internet Information Server, developing some of Microsoft’s groundbreaking e-commerce sites. At the time nothing in the world was cooler than working at Microsoft. The fact that your...
You Already Have the People To Make Your Company More Innovative Part I: (Creativity Lost)
By Terry K. Gilliam In the article Five Ways to Make Your Company More Innovative (Working Knowledge, HBS, May 23, 2012) Clay Christensen states: “I think about 40 percent of people just are not going to be good at innovating regardless of what they do. And 5 percent are born with the instinct. There are things that they do and ways that they think that...
A New Career for a Football Legend
Imagine That! is a collection of thought pieces, stories, and articles by current and former staff members, clients and other associates that guides readers through 50 years of Synectics, its Body of Knowledge and its impact on clients, organizations, communities and individuals. It was edited by Connie Williams, General Managing Partner and Chief Knowledge Officer of Synecticsworld and Vincent Nolan, retired Chairman of Synectics Europe...
Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAG) & The Power of Small Wins
By Kyle Hermans: Kyle Hermans is Senior Director of Innovation Capacity at Gap Inc. Global, and headed the West Coast Division of Synecticsworld at the time of this article. The Power of Small Wins is the process of working at the heart of a complex challenge backwards: If I put myself in the position where I’ve solved it… then, what happened before in order for...
Do You Have the Right View?
By Joe Giordano “The Noble Eightfold Path is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be...
TO MOTIVATE YOUR TEAM, SET THEIR MINDS FREE!
By Kyle Hermans Kyle Hermans is the Senior Director of Innovation Capacity at Gap Inc. Global, and was the head of Synecticsworld’s West Coast Division at the time of this article. Take a moment and ask yourself, what could you be, do, have or create, without constraints? Write a few of the possibilities down for yourself. Approaching this question with an open mind you will...
Staying Relevant Through Innovation at ATME
By Terry K Gilliam Eastbound on a flight from Chicago, where I was a guest speaker at the American Travel Marketing Executive (ATME) annual convention. One of three on a panel entitled “Staying Relevant Through Innovation,” I was encouraged by the engaged attendance of several hundred people and by their enthusiasm for the topic. To stoke the fire, the moderator of our panel, Pamela Johnston,...
Kindred Spirits in Creative Problem Solving at CPSI Conference 2012
By Joe Gammal It has felt like a home-coming for Synecticsworld at the Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) yearly conference in Atlanta, GA this week. Back in 1960’s, the founder of CPSI, Sid Parnes, was a contemporary of George Prince and Bill Gordon, our own Synectics founders. Through the years, though the connections have drifted, our missions have maintained a kindred spirit. As I prepared...
How to be the change you want to see in your meeting
By Kyle Hermans It was 5:07pm on a Friday afternoon in a colorful agency loft in Chicago. We were packing up at the end of a successful weeklong session solving complex challenges with our client. A man strode over to our team and said: “This was one of the most collaborative gatherings I have ever experienced. Thank you.” “It felt like we all had your...
Is your organization prepared for innovation?
By Connie Williams Everybody wants innovation and just about everyone says they are committed to it… just look at actual corporate mission statements of just a sampling of organizations: “Our core mission is to innovate, create and execute” “Provide our customers with the world’s best and most innovative products and customer support” “Profitable growth through superior customer service, innovation, quality and commitment” “To build shareholder...
The Act of Innovation is and always will be in style.
By Terry K Gilliam “Got innovation?” a recent piece in the WSJ begins. “Just about every company says it does,” the article continues. The central thesis is that the blush is coming off the innovation rose. Likening it to “synergy” and “optimization,” the writer declares that “innovation is in danger of becoming a cliché–if it isn’t one already.” Synecticsworld in Cambridge invented the field of...
Put Your Mental Energy Where it Belongs – Collaboration
By Kyle Hermans Kyle Hermans is the Senior Director of Innovation Capacity at Gap Inc. Global, he was head of Synecticsworld’s West Coast Division at the time of this article. Since the late 1950s Synectics® has been researching the human dynamics of meetings; the interaction and interplay of individuals that increases or decreases the probability of the meeting being successful. In this video, Kyle Hermans...
Connie Williams on the world of Insights
Constance (“Connie”) Williams leads “Innovation on Innovation” — building and codifying knowledge that advances innovation processes to build competitive advantage for our clients. Connie leads Synecticsworld practice areas in Consumer and Customer Insight and New Product Development, and is a marketing veteran who previously served in a number of senior marketing positions at Heublein/IDV (now Diageo PLC) and, earlier in her career, at a major...
Imagine That!
The Imagine That! book is a collection of thought pieces, stories and articles by current and former staff members, clients and other associates that celebrates the first 50 years of Synectics, its Body of Knowledge and its impact on clients, organizations, communities and individuals. It was edited by Connie Williams, General Managing Partner and Chief Knowledge Officer of Synecticsworld and Vincent Nolan, retired Chairman of...
Enterprise Innovation and Creativity
by Francisco Teixeira e Melo Growing your business! That is typically the ultimate desire of every CEO, be it in terms of volume, market share or profitability. Sustainable growth is achieved through differentiation. It is about launching new and innovative products, fulfilling the consumer’s (or customer’s) unmet needs and desires, excelling in service and using never before thought of business models. In other words, it...
How to… spark innovation in your organization
by Roger Neill, People Management Every HR executives would love to play a major role in making their company more innovative. They understand that innovative firms call the shots in their industry – the Nokias, 3Ms, and Sonys of the world that produce a steady stream of new hit products or services and that being able to take some legitimate credit for this would clearly...
