Best Western Captures Best Practices with BrainStorm Rapid Idea Prototyping.

Satisfying the diverse needs of a large membership organization is a continuing challenge. So when Best Western International, the world’s largest hotel company, brought their Governors Council together for a three day conference they turned to Audience Response Solutions.

brainstorming

Best Western wanted its Governors, an elite group of members charged with providing leadership and support to the broader membership base, to offer critical insights on specific company and broader industry issues. Although this group has engaged in traditional brain storming techniques in the past, the results were never satisfactory.
    1. Reams of flip chart paper filled with scribbled notes and scrawled hieroglyphs that were indecipherable.
    2. Disconnected conclusions and recommendations that lack clarity, continuity or relevance.
    3. Scores of ideas, but no action plan.
    4. Printed reports and summaries that arrive weeks after the meeting.
    5. A general sense of poorly utilized time and wasted effort
Best Western knew they needed to make the meetings more productive but were uncertain about the risks of trying something new and were unsure about how to plan, roll out and execute a completely different approach to their brain storming and strategic planning process.

brain storm


Best Western knew they needed someone who could implement both the procedure and the technology that would allow them to maximize the efforts of their Governors. They called on Audience Response Solutions and our BrainStorm Rapid Idea Prototyping process. Audience Response Solutions partnered with intelliMeet, an industry leader in electronic meeting support, to provide the electronic brainstorming computer network and session facilitation.

We developed a comprehensive strategy that incorporated a network of thirty laptop computers to capture input and ideas from the Governors by table and two-hundred audience response keypads that allowed them to individually prioritize the raw ideas and specify their preference on action items.

The goals for the meeting were to:

    1. Keep the 200 participants actively involved in the same meeting room.
    2. Capture as many unique ideas as possible.
    3. Use audience response keypads to prioritize options and select preferences.
    4. Develop item specific action plans.
    5. Deliver printed results and conclusions to the participants before the end of the meeting.
The net result of the BrainStorm Rapid Idea Prototyping session were over 1,500 unique ideas categorized and prioritized by the participants and a session document that is providing a strategic framework to guide the Governors' continuing work.

"The electronic brainstorming sessions were absolutely cutting edge. Audience Response Solutions responded quickly, creatively and professionally."

William H. Skip Boyer, ABC
Executive Producer and
Director, Internal Communications
Best Western International
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