Effective Intelligence was created in business for business. It arose from an urgent question posed in 1977 to a small research team in Philips, the Dutch multi-national: "Can we raise our performance around the world by improving how we solve problems and make decisions?" No such project had come to light even in the universities, so a commercial business felt driven to take it on themselves. Jerry Rhodes, who was to become the Founder of Effective Intelligence, was invited into the team as the external consultant. In four years, this small group made a unique breakthrough in understanding how 'thinking' works.
They discovered the 21 fundamental operations of mind, which they named Thinking-Intentions, or 'Thunks' for short. Together, they make an alphabet for thought, so that in different combinations, these Thinking-Intentions 'map' all difficult tasks.
The rights to take the research findings world-wide were retained by Jerry Rhodes. From 1981, in order that other businesses could benefit, he undertook many practical projects through which he created and tested the 'tools' and training methods which became the Effective Intelligence Products and Programmes. In the mid-1980s in order to leverage this know-how, the first licensees, some in-house to corporations and some independents, were qualified to teach Effective Intelligence. Licensing continues to ensure standards are maintained and the benefits to be gained are available to all sizes and kinds of operations.
Jerry Rhodes also continued to work with Philips and other businesses to develop and spread the results of the research findings. He worked with many different groups, and significantly with many hundreds of scientists over 15 years, one major project being to improve their research process by shortening the time from conception to marketable product through 'mapping' their thinking. Further significant projects succeeded in shortening the time to idea conception itself, and then to accelerate its development.
The Licensing of Effective Intelligence has taken it to other fields in many businesses and to some prestigious universities, including Harvard and MIT. While it is mainly delivered in English, it is also available in Spanish, French, Dutch, Danish, German, Swedish, Finnish and Chinese. For more information please visit Services and About Us.