Harvard House is a unique alternative to your typical hotel conference room. One of our guests did a strategy and brand building 3-day offsite and was amazed at the results the team was able to produce.
The Power of Face-to-Face Interactions to Light Creative Sparks
We recently hosted Amy’s team at Harvard House for a dynamic team-building, strategic planning, and brand-building session. Amy, who previously coined the term “SaaS” (Software as a Service) and created a $500 billion industry, emphasized the importance of face-to-face interactions.
She noted that while phone calls, Zoom meetings, and emails can quickly connect people, they often create subtle distance. “After the call, people don’t dive into strategy execution or creating minimal viable prototypes of new products that could be the next great thing, they just go back to what they were doing before the call.”
Enhance Human Connectivity
Amy’s idea for the session was a face-to-face gathering where people would live together, eat together, think together, and do things together that would create a better outcome. The goal for the session was to seize white space—identifying valuable business opportunities hidden between existing categories—to create a new category that would drive significant future growth for her current company.
By focusing on strategic thinking, brand building, and deep collaboration, Amy and her team aimed to uncover hidden opportunities and develop strategies that would drive exponential growth and substantial profit windfalls, as well as establish a distinctive competitive edge for their company.
Principles of Seizing White Space
1. Identify Unarticulated Unmet Needs: The team focused on finding problems or desires that customers haven’t clearly expressed, and understanding the gaps in their experiences to spot opportunities.
2. Come Up with The Next Great THING: They aimed to develop solutions that were original but also better or different from existing options, striving for breakthroughs that set them apart.
3. Leverage Core Strengths: The team utilized their organization’s unique capabilities to address these opportunities effectively, ensuring their approach played to their strengths.
4. Act Quickly: Speed was essential to capitalizing on the opportunity. The team moved decisively to bring their innovations to market before competitors could react.
This immersive approach helped the team build stronger relationships and fostered a more innovative mindset. It was designed to position the company for long-term success by creating a compelling brand strategy and product strategy to match. The group had a wonderful time at the house and strengthened their bonds for the first time in a year.
An added plus? According to Amy, it was far less expensive (and more fun) to rent the Harvard House than it would have been to book a conference room plus hotel rooms and meals for everyone for three days!
Consider booking Harvard House for your next team-building session. We provide not just a great venue but also, if you desire, skilled facilitation from Robert Hargrove, author of Mastering the Art of Creative Collaboration.