Page 193 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

94/30. SYNECT ICS 101
CREATIVE
Synectics is a form ot group brainstorming that relies heavily PROBLEM
on analogies and metaphors, association, and the excursion SOLVING
technique to help the imagination find relationships between TECHNIQUE S
seemingly unrelated objects, ideas, products, persons, and
so on.65 The dual purpose of this process is to learn (i.e., 17_7
make the strange familiar) and to innovate (i.e., make the
familiar strange). 66 The process usually uses seven people: a
problem owner, a facilitator, and five other members.

According to its creator, William J.J. Gordon, synectics is
based on three key assumptions:

1. Creativity is latent to some degree in everyone.

2. Creativity is more closely related to the emotional and
nonrational than to the intellectual and rational.

3. These emotional elements can be harnessed through train-
ing and practice. 67

Three mechanisms are used to facilitate such behavior: 68

1. Direct analogy — finding out how the object is like other
things that you are familiar with, such as biological
systems.

2. Personal analogy — pretending you are the object of your
study. This is role playing in its broadest sense.

3. Symbolic analogy — developing a compressed expression
of the problem at hand—a key word. Then one or two
analogies related to this are used to brainstorm.

One of the major differences between synectics and normal
brainstorming is the addition of criticism to the process. In
fact, participants are encouraged to criticize, even to be sar-
castic, but only at the right time. (As some versions of the
criticism process can be quite harsh, the leader's role is made
more difficult by this step.) These sessions can be highly
charged emotionally. Synectics seeks to harness the criticism
and what feelings it evokes. 69

At any step in the process the facilitator may interject the
use of free association, analogies and metaphors, or the ex-
cursion technique. I have found that if you focus on these