Serendipity, synectics and critical thinking

From day one of their 18-month journey to becoming master entrepreneurs, we introduce our Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (ACE) students to essential entrepreneurship skills: serendipity, synectics and critical thinking. This past month, our latest batch of 90 entrepreneur-students walked the talk with their ACE gurus who showed them how to bring their enterprises to higher performance levels, given these skills.

As put forward by ACE guru Eduardo Morato, who delves deeper into the subject in his book, Creativity and Intuition in Management (AIM 2000), serendipity is simply finding something when you are not looking for it. It is the fortunate discovery or coming together of a solution to a problem by chance. It is also learning to intuit.

Synectics is learning to think. Developed by William Gordon, it produces innovative solutions by coming up with absurd situations concocted from unfamiliar worlds. It is a process which puts the mind in an off-balance state. This is done in order to veer away from stereotype approaches and to possibly create innovate solution Synectics wraps the issue into a different context in the hope that a new angle or solution may be uncovered.

Critical thinking is being able to understand and go beyond the obvious. It is being able to see patterns and trends and to identify a potential impact on one’s enterprise. Critical thinking goes deeper into the analysis and understanding of cause and effect. It is learning to insight.

The ACE gurus of Batch 6 led their entrepreneur-students to experience the three essential skills. They were asked to share with each other how they applied their learnings and discoveries. Here are some of their findings.

* Listen to the music: pirates and concerts. An entrepreneur-student in the sound technology game has wondered why their concert equipment always ran out of stock. He was already ordering higher than the historical trend but the concert equipment continued to run out of stock. He checked how his competitors were doing. Did they raise prices? The answer was– nope. Did they make their products price competitive? The answer was again – nope. Did they also experience the same situation? The answer was – yup. He was amazed that concert equipment was selling higher than historical trends could explain.

The situation was, of course, better than having non-moving inventory. But still, this entrepreneur-student could not understand why demand kept going up. In the course of applying his ACE learnings onto his business, the entrepreneur-student discovered the answer in a very serendipitous way.

To gear up for his Master in Entrepreneurship classes, he decided to buy a new computer. The increment cost to put in a compact disk burner was small. He decided to include one in the computer package, anticipating that driving from home to AIM and back would take hours.

One evening, he burned a compact disk with the intention of listening to it en route to school. He proudly set up the compact disk in the car audio system the next day and drove off. With the first musical selection hardly gone one-fourth of its way, he realized that the sounds were nowhere close to the original. It was simply unacceptable to his audio-sensitive ears. It sounded like a pirated compact disk.

From this experience, he moved on to conclude – that’s why our concert equipment is selling beyond forecast!

The pirates were taking income away from the musical artists. Due to piracy, the royalty of an artist was no longer a sustainable source of income. Since musical artists still had to have a source of income, the other viable alternative was the holding of a series of live concerts. Thus, there was a greater than usual demand for concert equipment. The musical artists were doing more live concerts than recordings. Now, the entrepreneur-student knew why sales had been up.

* Listen to your customers talk to others. Another entrepreneur-student could not explain why her supermarket sales did not follow the expected trend of high sales during payday weekends. She also did not understand why her sales were consistently high after five in the afternoon on weekdays.

While doing a Serendipity Walk in preparation for a class sharing, this entrepreneur-student got tired of walking around her selling area. She decided to just sit and rest when she overheard a mother talking to someone over the telephone. She overheard the mother asking (apparently her children): "Anong ulam ang gusto niyo para mamaya or what viand do you want for dinner?"

It was past five in the afternoon. She also observed there were many people buying her products. This entrepreneur-student realized her customers were working people who were in the daily habit of buying the family meal for the evening.

The entrepreneur-student also realized her store was not laid out for that kind of customer. It was laid out for the heavy payday weekend buyer. She now intends to re-layout the selling area to be friendlier to working folk who buy their daily meal requirements on their way home from work.

From these examples, it is clear that entrepreneurs must be able to think, intuit and insight. These are critical skills that will allow the entrepreneurs to go beyond the ordinary. They will not only allow the enterprise to be the best it can be but also for the entrepreneur to be the best he/she can be. All it takes is to listen and be sensitive to your surroundings. Observe what is going on. You will discover new things. And you will see their relevance to your enterprise.

(Alejandrino Ferreria is the associate dean of the Asian Center for Entrepreneurship of the Asian Institute of Management. For further comments and inquiries, you may contact him at: [email protected]. Published "Entrepreneur’s Helpline" columns can be viewed on the AIM website at http//: www.aim.edu.ph).