While the term “think tank” is new, according to historian Jacob Soll, the concept can be traced back to the humanist academies and scholarly networks of the 16th and 17th centuries. The origins of think tanks in Europe can be traced back to the 800s, when emperors and kings began arguing with the Catholic Church about taxes. “From Charlemagne1 to the 17th century, when the kings of France were still arguing about whether they had the right to appoint bishops and receive a cut of their income, monarchs hired teams of independent lawyers to advise them on their financial and political prerogatives against the church.” Soll cites the Académie des frères Dupuy, founded in Paris, as an early example.
Imprint (U) Ltd has developed its own weekly think tank and has named it the Imprint Academy. Here, the Directors, Senior Associates, Associates, Associate trainees, and the interns read books of best practice in the modern business environment and discuss how to implement some of the ideas to the operations of the institution. This is approached with the basis of trying to achieve more with less while effectively and efficiently utilizing the resources they have at their disposal.
Views from these such sessions at the organization vary by ideological perspective, sources of funding, topical emphasis, and prospective consumers. The principle of adult learning is applied during idea generation and below are some of the most applied techniques during the sessions.
Brainstorming/ brain writing, the team in groups creatively combines effort to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously. This is done individually and in groups. Individually, the teams’ members post their ideas and other members’ creativity and experience take the idea to the next stage. Collectively, the team members leverage one another’s experience and creativity to generate the best ideas. Mind mapping goes with brainstorming in that, ideas are noted on the whiteboard in random positions and connecting lines are drawn between all the ideas in no particular order to see if any of the connecting ideas can result into something useful and novel or if one can gain inspiration from the map.
Role-playing: This seemed silly at first, but role-playing has generated a lot of innovative ideas. Using this technique, the staff speak and formulate ideas and opinions from the point of view of other staff positions within the organization. From these sessions, the team has generated several ideas and processes that have been implemented and have improved the company’s way of doing things positively.
“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.”
Edward de Bono
The Academy sessions have proven to be especially useful, as they provide insight to how to increase on efficiency, improve synergy and take businesses to new levels of execution. Through starting its own weekly think tank, Imprint has shown that it is possible for cooperate businesses alike to start their own think tanks.
Emmanuel Wambi
Associate Consulting
No comment yet, add your voice below!