The idea I have came from an invitation to a local newly opened nightclub. The night club had been set up with the help of film set designers from Pinewood Studios and it is an amazing multilevel club with interesting stage set designs, video and music, providing a really powerful multi-sensory experience.
On coming to the nightclub, a colleague and I both arrived at the same idea, that the club would make an excellent venue for a Synectics course.
The idea is for a two day seminar around a theme something like 'Recovery 2000'. The sense is that unless something is done which is different from the usual, we shall remain in recession for a long time.
The principle participants would be senior U.K. management and company directors, perhaps 50 or so. On the first day we would use accredited Synectics facilitators to help the participants develop wishes and broad goal statements.
The evening would have some 200 or so 'nightclubbers', specifically invited as a result of a competition, possibly across Europe, for the best ideas on generating economic recovery, one criteria being novelty. The evening participants would build on the wishes from the day while enjoying the creative venue, again a facilitated activity.
On the second day the directors and managers would then turn the ideas given into action plans and future suggestions.
The positive elements of this idea are, as we see them, that it would generate really novel ideas, that it would attract such media coverage that real support would be given to pursuing the ideas to final outcomes.
Graham Rawlinson, Director, Enterprise Team, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH (tel 0483 509344; fax 0483 300803).
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