It sounds like a war room and looks like an interior decorator's showroom.  In a sense, the DesignShop on the top floor of [the organization's] national headquarters is a combination of both. Floor-to-ceiling magnetic write-on, wipe-off walls display multi-colored arrows, circles, squares, pyramids and sketches of the human head.  Another sticky boards there is paper--pages, fragments, cards--spelling out goals, objectives, strategies, tactics, schedules, assignments. Clearly, this is the stuff of which battles are made. But the campaign being planned and waged at Acacia is for control not of an enemy but of information.  As in a decorator's scheme, everything is consistent in form and style.  It takes some getting use to but it fits together. "We're teaching people to manage the process of creativity." says Matt Taylor, second vice president, planning and design.  The DesignShop, part of the Taylor Executive Systems, which [the organization] bought early this year, is the operation's most dramatic focus.
Alan Dessoff, Designing Our Future

Taylor Management Centers have taken a body of ideas, adapted them, applied them to actual work with clients, refined them--and proven they work.  The company has developed a reputation among leading-edge management theorists for being years ahead in applying information and system theory to the concerns of daily management. Because our approach has been one of coming from the future and anticipating product potentials, we have a several year lead on other organizations who have been more market driven, those who wait until they see the need and then develop the product. Using a process of rapid prototyping, participants in DesignShop events design, build, and use their models in a series of rapid iterations that allows the best ideas to grow in richness and acceptance. Our environments and technical systems, along with the DesignShop and collaborative processes practiced in Nav Centers help to create that neutral atmosphere where the group genius comes to life and forges those courageous decisions.
 
 
 
 

In 1984, the Taylor's ideas found an audience in a major national insurance firm headquartered in Washington, DC. As heads of the planning section of the organization, the Taylor's brought their environment and technology as well as their processes into the spotlight.  DesignShop^TM events were used by the FAA to find solutions for scheduling and safety issues and by the US Army Corps of Engineers to design organizational training.

Creativity is the process of eliminating options.
MG Taylor DesignShop^TM Axiom
 

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