Go Smart, Go Fast, Go Bold ... or Go Home
“I and my partner spent two days in DesignLab and came out with the right plan- fabulous process! Mark has been my syndication, fundraising and real estate company building mentor for over 7 years. His experience and visionary thinking helped guide me through over $70 million of real estate acquisitions and $30 million of private equity fundraising. He’s my secret weapon for strategic planning and out of the box thinking.”
Kevin Hanford President Hanford Investments, LLC
“We spent 2 days in DesignLab powering through one tough issue after another. I’m a believer- This is the way to work fast and creatively”
Scott Crowley Paradigm Group
“At Intel, I participated and had access to the finest design tools in the world. I spent 4 days with DesignLab-its training, assessment, and design. These processes and tools are every bit as good as anything I’ve experienced to date—our team had some remarkable breakthroughs and our investors ratcheted-up their investments.”
Tinku Acharya Former Intel World-Wide Inventor of the Year – Twice
“In just two days the 15 companies that were part of our DesignLab Group Genius™ work had breakthrough strategies, amazing alignment and a solid working plan for the next six months.”
Peter Melloni Managing Director, Houlihan, Smith & Co. Inc., Investment Bankers & Due Diligence Advisors
“DesignLab has a body of knowledge and perspective on post-modern venture capital practices that should go far to meet the complex needs of 21st Century venture capitalism.”
Fred Hoar Co-Founder Silicon Valley Band of Angels
“As former Technology Director for Capgemini Accelerated Solutions Environment, I am very familiar with the challenges of designing and facilitating the Group Genius™ work with a very tough business launch assignment. These processes and mastery of the dynamics of Group Genius™ DesignLab accomplished in two days what Capgemini’s Group Genius™ takes 3 days to accomplish.”
Lee Rowe General Manager J.C. Carter Company, Inc.
OUTSIDE THE BOX
Innovation is like oxygen, you can’t live without it. The need for syndicators to “think outside the box” may at times be optional and other times mandatory. Often projects have to be set up in a “Breakthrough Project Management” mode.
The point is this- the real estate syndication process has generally been viewed as a stable and unchanging process. Best practices in real estate syndication have evolved slowly over the last 4 decades- and our principals have, at various times, held “leading education” and “thought leader” roles. Today the pace of changing practices is moving faster. This flux demands that real estate syndicators develop the mind-set and methods of change masters. Innovation is the mechanism to become a change agent. Innovation is the key to improving any aspect, element, or component of the syndication process. The syndicators innovation toolbox should have a leading-edge body of knowledge/ success models, collaboration tools and follow-on monitoring processes.
BACKGROUND ON OUR INNOVATION LAB
In 1998, Mark Long, founder of SLG, co-founded a company called PredictionWorks. See www.predictionworksinc.com. The motivation to create PredictionWorks was driven by the fact that new enterprises (including real estate syndication) fail to meet investor expectations 80% of the time. Mark Long and a few partners accepted the challenge 17 years ago to determine “why” the new venture failure rate is so high and do something to fix it. Our research covered the fields of finance, marketing, management, leadership, technology evolution, innovation practices, design, and psychology. When it was all synthesized, one factor stood out as both the “problem” and “solution”—theory. The problem to date is new ventures including new syndication venture-theory-making has been driven by “tacit” theory models (below the level of awareness) held by “syndicators” and investors operating off their own experiences, assumptions, and stories. This “gut feeling” theory making is like “art” or “alchemy.” This alchemy is pervasive and perverse. It has given us what we got—80% failure rate. Now, the evolution from alchemy-based innovation to chemistry-based innovation is at hand. In this new view, the front end of new venture innovation, including syndication ventures, requires the use of the scientific method. Step one of the scientific method requires a hypothesis which in turn requires a “theory of success” for a real estate syndication venture idea. Our firm has codified real estate syndication venture theory. See Education.
OUR LAB IS DRIVEN BY GROUP GENIUS
In 2001 PredictionWorks licensed-in a creativity and collaboration platform from the M.G. Taylor Corporation. Previous licensees were Ernst and Young, Capgemini, Vanderbilt University, and a handful of other leading institutions. 50 of the Fortune 100 companies have used the Group Genius™ process offered by Capgemini’s Accelerated Solutions Environment (“ASE”). See predictionworksinc.com. Capgemini has approximately 20 ASE’s worldwide.
Now for the first-time real estate syndication has a world class innovation platform including the 40-year body of syndication knowledge developed by Mark Long and the models and methods of the Group Genius™ platform. The body of knowledge and the tools are used to discover, design, and validate new property development, property acquisition, property and investor management, syndication deal structures, joint venture structuring, TIC planning, ideas, business models, capital raising plans, corporate planning, and any problem-solving challenge.
NINE MONTHS OF WORK ACCOMPLISHED IN 3 DAYS
The track record of those companies and institutions that utilize the Group Genius™ innovation platform is impressive. One of the reasons 50 of the Fortune 100 companies pay “premium fees” to use the Group Genius™ process is the experience users have of achieving their design and/or problem-solving goals in three days in the lab vs nine months back at the office.
To find out how our affiliate, PredictionWorks, can help your firm discover, design, validate or create solutions for any big challenge contact either SLG or PredictionWorks (www.predictionworksinc.com)
