Back from a great trip in the US immersing myself at Stanford and the Dschool as well as attending the NeuroLeadership summit in San Francisco.

The Stanford experience was fantastic and stimulating.  I was accompanied by 56 incredibly bright and intelligent people from a diverse range of companies (Google, The Gates Foundation, Nokia, CITRIX, Facebook and many others) exploring and learning more about organisations that need to respond to the emerging environment.  We particularly learnt about the notion of disruption, foresight, strategy and creating the right culture for rapidly evolving organisations.  We got our hands dirty at the DSchool working with rapid prototyping, ideation and customer focused innovation.  It was also good to affirm the work we are presently doing in neuroscience, particularly in the area of decision making and collaboration, is at the forefront of current thinking in the workplace.

The NeuroLeadership Summit followed the same theme of adaptable and resilient organisations and how the brain can be regulated in order to adapt rapidly.  Some neuroscientists put forward the notion that integration of the mind, brain and relationship is an incredibly important aspect of an individual as well as the organisation.  The questions arose:  How does an organisation create a healthy mind?  Much was discussed about the notion of stress, sleep and memory and its impact on the brain, either being effective or ineffective for performance.  We also immersed ourselves in understanding the neuroscience behind intuition and its importance in good decision making.

Not only did we have some of the top neuroscientists and academics talking about the brain, but we also had the opportunity to meet executives and CEOs from organisations such as Facebook, Dun and Bradstreet, Google, Twitter and NASA.  It was interesting to hear about the strategies and thinking behind these companies and how they thrive in seemingly difficult times.

From both of these learning programs, it was certainly clear that social networking technologies is not only on the agenda but activated at very high levels in those organisations that are excelling.  Interesting to know from the latest stats, that in companies worldwide 60-90% of our communication is digital.

I really look forward to sharing new knowledge from my experience, and its possible application to your organisation, in the near future.

Gretel