When I joined Synectics to head up their business around the world outside of America, in the first board meeting I criticised the company’s promotional materials. “Boring,” was the word I used, as I recall.
This was a mistake. The other board members totally agreed with my assessment and, before I knew it, I was commissioned to create a new corporate brochure.
This was particularly a problem for me because, far from being unusually boring, Synectics’s existing brochure was the usual kind of self-serving corporate-speak.
The question was: what could be done about it? How could we produce something different, better and special that would reflect our company more accurately and at the same time add value to people’s lives in terms of creativity and innovation?
Several months passed. Then, desperate to get going, I had a beer with the freelance writer, Andrew Bailey. I described the situation to him.
“What have you got?” he asked.
“Well, nothing really,” I replied. “Except… I have a file of interesting quotes and stories that I’ve been collecting for the past twenty years.”
“Let’s start there,” said Andrew briskly. “We’ll do Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book of Innovation.”
So that was the start-idea for what became Imagine. It was so successful that we printed, circulated and sold some 50,000 copies over the following years – and it’s still in print now.
Asked in an interview to name the most important business book ever, Unilever’s Roger Kirman unhesitatingly nominated Imagine.
Gratifying!
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