The month of July is dedicated to posts about innovation and ideation.  Every post will be about a word that can either help or hinder the innovative process. We will look at both the pros and the cons of that word. Today’s word is…

Synergy.

The question is, do you choose lots of idea and stories or is it best to rally around one common theme.

Every organization has to find it’s synergy points.  Many times as an organization of 13 campuses (and for you it may be 13 departments) we have to decide between localization (which is often the best practice) or synergy.

Here are some positives that I have found in choosing synergy.

1. Central Support Marketing. When we are all together around one idea or theme Central support can build and execute marketing pieces.  It’s not probable that we could make 13 ‘great’ marketing pieces (for each individual campus), but a shared theme brings synergy to one piece that will benefit all campuses.

2. Message support.  If we share a common theme, it allows us to mention the details of that theme in the message. On the other hand, with localization we are forced to be ambiguous, which is not as effective from a marketing standpoint.

3. Series support.  We can tie the overall message series to a shared theme.

4. Creative support.  Campuses or departments do not vary on their worth nor leadership abilities, but there is definitely a spectrum of creative abilities. Because of this spectrum, there is a a great deal of positives when we can pool our ideas together and share the creative weight.  Its crowd surfing for the creative minds.