Accelerate Pharma Part 1 *The Grand Hotel of Value* \\The Dyson blog
In this instalment of his Accelerate Pharma series, Professor John Dyson explores how environment and culture shape the quality of collaborative thinking – and introduces the concept of the 'Grand Hotel of Value': a dedicated space designed to dissolve hierarchy, spark collisions of ideas, and accelerate the kind of cross-company problem-solving the pharmaceutical industry urgently needs.
Some time ago now, after I had really started to explore in a very practical way the ideas of collaboration, we stumbled across a factor which, on reflection, should have been more obvious: working in an environment which had a strong architectural inheritance. The place, the environment, the location, the aesthetics all had a part to play, and a very significant part to play, in the quality of collaborative problem solving.
Albert Mehrabian's rule in communication is that the spoken word only carries only 7% of the emotional impact, 38% is the tone of voice, and 55% is the facial expression. In a similar vein, we found that only a small part of collaboration is bringing people together. A much bigger impact comes from the place where it’s done, and bigger still is the culture imbued.
You have to take care of what people hear, what they see and what they feel.
This fired our imagination about the creation of a Grand Hotel of Value. A beautiful, relaxing place to stay for people who want to solve problems together. This could be done over breakfast, while swimming in the pool, formally in a meeting room, on the terrace, or in the bar. Collisions of people and ideas in a setting where the mundane can be left in the lobby.
A frivolous thought. Well, maybe, but we did not lose sight of what we felt were the opportunities of place-making and culture setting in being an important element in solving some of the big problems in the world of infrastructure.
Zoom forward several years, and the moment seemed right. Work and projects in a number of business sectors had demonstrated that there is an imperative to be able to industrialise technologies faster and to do so sustainably and cost-effectively. There are proven approaches to doing this; the problem seems to be the adoption of these approaches.
Our first attempt at the Grand Hotel of Value was, in fact, more of a reception. Key client organisations in the pharmaceutical industry came together under the umbrella of Accelerate Pharma to be part of the thinking to address the opportunities.
With a great location, opposite the Watson Crick Institute, a light and vista-filled room, with good food and an open and relaxed agenda and pace, this approach to cross-company, cross-sector collaboration was started.
If you want to know how it went, read my next blog, which will share the learning and suggest paths forward.
