THE CHALLENGE:

Yum! Restaurants International (YRI) company’s goal was challenging:

“To rapidly and cost effectively elevate our capacity to generate new product ideas and help us fill our global marketing pipeline and to build this capability across a global organization.”

Yum!’s ask was simple: “Have Synecticsworld teach us to facilitate our own idea generation sessions utilizing their creative problem solving process.”

THE PROCESS:

The training took the form of:

• A customized five-day workshop, involving two days of foundation training in aspects of climate, process and thinking skills.
• Three days learning how to plan, design and facilitate meetings using Synecticsworld’s creative problem-solving process.

The workshop culminated with participants facilitating a three-hour meeting of an untrained client team – often drawn from non-profit organizations in the local business community – working on a real problem that client was facing.

Marcus Burr, VP of consumer insights, said:

“We liked their approach to facilitating group creativity and when we learned that they were also in the business of building organizational capability through the transfer of knowledge and process, we saw a potential solution to our challenge.”

The first workshops conducted by the Synecticsworld-trained team took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, followed by four more, one of which was held in Singapore.

To date, the team has trained more than 70 people representing a total of 20 different countries.

THE RESULTS:

The program and the Synecticsworld-trained team not only generated more than 60 ideas for the global marketing pipeline but comments like:

“The most valuable course I’ve ever attended,” (a Marketing Manager, KFC International); and,

“Absolutely fabulous. Every person must go through this program. It’s for life!” (a senior KFC Technical Manager, Singapore)