It’s not given to many of us to change the world in any significant way, but George Prince and Bill Gordon did. The founders of Synectics, they were running an innovation consultancy in the 1960s, providing clients with new ideas to brief, when they realised that clients often rejected George and Bill’s ideas, whereas they went forward with rather similar ideas they had had themselves.
Eureka! Synectics was born out of the belief that if George and Bill helped, facilitated, their clients to get better ideas, they would have a much higher strike rate.
It’s an unfortunate fact that they fell out quite soon after and Bill set up separately, but the seed was sown, and by now there are thousands of innovators and organisations successfully using Synectics-derived methodologies around the world.
I once asked George where the word “facilitator” had come from. “Well,” he smiled, “we just didn’t seem to have a word for it.”
What’s your experience of facilitators and facilitation? Helps or hinders?
Eureka! Synectics was born out of the belief that if George and Bill helped, facilitated, their clients to get better ideas, they would have a much higher strike rate.
It’s an unfortunate fact that they fell out quite soon after and Bill set up separately, but the seed was sown, and by now there are thousands of innovators and organisations successfully using Synectics-derived methodologies around the world.
I once asked George where the word “facilitator” had come from. “Well,” he smiled, “we just didn’t seem to have a word for it.”
What’s your experience of facilitators and facilitation? Helps or hinders?
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