Synthetron was founded in 1999 by Paul Verhaeghe, a former director of McKinsey who was joined by Baldo Faieta, a mathematician from Carnegie Mellon University and by Joanne Celens, a manager from Shell International. The creation of the approach was inspired by the observation that the decision making process is often missing valuable input. Organisational and communication barriers can stop excellent ideas or valuable insights from reaching decision makers in a timely and substantiated way.
So Synthetron developed a collaboration software tool to facilitate real-time large scale (up to 1000) and conclusive group discussions. The first release of the tool was in 2004. The founders drew on their extensive experience of both management processes and the development of collaborative internet-based solutions in Silicon Valley.
Synthetron has been investing significantly every year to improve and extend the scope of application of its approach. In 2005 Synthetron converted to ASP and started a commercial approach offering ‘end-to-end’ service in Benelux with some initial expansion outside the region. In 2008 the Synthetron 2.0 release enabled users to scale up to 1000 plus participants and offered different collaborative interaction formats (eg consensus, importance or debate based). At the end of 2009 further investment used Ajax to update the client interface both in appearance and functionality including ipad compatibility. The software is now released in 6 different languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese.
For several years Synthetron has been riding the crowd-sourcing wave. In the web.2 world companies no longer can manage by simply “measuring” people. They need to engage employees, clients and partners in conversations that generate insight into what matters to those people. Synthetron brings you the opportunity to crowd-source regularly and purposefully.
In that regard, Synthetron has strategically moved from being a tool seller/facilitator to a high level consultancy focusing on helping its clients to accelerate and reinforce change by engaging many in online conversations.
The purpose of the conversation may be simple feedback, issue scoping, alignment sensing, progress review or co-creation. Whatever the objective, the approach will provide valuable insights.
Synthetron developed its approach to reinforce change, strategy implementation, HR and stakeholder management and citizen involvement through engaging online conversations. The scripting, methods, benchmarks, analysis and reporting techniques have been developed over time helping Synthetron to differentiate according to client needs and offer value from training, service and in-depth analysis.
The team extended in the home countries Benelux and to cover new markets in France, Germany, UK, Mexico, Canada and Brazil. Collaboration with the academic world (Professor Theo Compernolle, Professor Verdin and Professor Houman) and major investment in research of our unique Change Management database have led to a robust reference base, a framework of 25 change factors, the EBC model and 3H model. Synthetron has been offering its service directly to blue chip companies, GO and NGO and has also partnered with strategy and change consultants, bringing them the opportunity to reinforce their business by building Synthetron into their processes to offer efficient moments of engaging many in meaningful discussions.