Eureka!: This little-Ranch-that-could teaches you to "win more, lose less, and make more money" - Creative problem solving

If you think that fun at work disappeared with the dot.com millionaires, you will find hope in this story. If you've known in your heart of hearts that training can be stimulating and exciting so that participants can't wait to return, you will find hope in this story. If you think that do-gooders can't have successful businesses that profit while helping people, you will find hope in this story. This story is about a little ranch that could. Welcome to the Eureka Ranch.

It's hard to describe exactly what happens at the Eureka Ranch house, which is a large red building located on 80 acres of land just outside of Cincinnati. Before you arrive, you'd heard that the grounds encompass a sand volleyball court, a lake for water sports, a three-hole golf course, and other recreation facilities. But as you drive there, you pass industrial parks instead of the bucolic, sprawling vistas you expected. No matter, the Ranch is set back from the road in a world unto itself. But before you get any closer, some background.

The Ranch, founded in 1997 by Doug Hall, entrepreneur and former Proctor & Gamble "Master Marketing Inventor," is part creativity institute, part training center; part amusement park, part laboratory. The Ranch's training program was named by Human Resource Executive as one of the top 10 training products of 2000, and 85 percent of participants rate the program as the best training they've ever attended.

The stated mission of the Eureka Ranch is to "help our friends, old and new, think smarter and more creatively about how to grow their business." The services include

* sessions that teach the Ranch's principles of Marketing Physics and Capitalist Creativity

* inventing sessions, in which a team of "Trained Brains" helps companies generate customized ideas for new products, marketing efforts, or business strategies

* a marketplace simulation, "artificial wisdom" tool that calculates the probability of success for your idea and coaches you on how to increase its odds.

What all of those services have in common is the statement that launches the introduction in Hall's new book, Jump Start Your Business Brain:

"I bring you good news. Business success is not random.... There are reproducible scientific lessons and laws that, when applied with diligence, can help you win more, lose less, and make more money...." It's that absolute obsession for scientific principles and hard data that makes him perhaps different from other creativity gurus.

During 10 years of inventing sessions with such big-name clients as Pepsi-Cola, Nike, and Walt Disney, the Ranch's parent company collected data through extensive research and development. Groups that came to generate ideas for their business were guinea pigs: Ranch staff gathered quantitative and qualitative data and generated detailed analyses following the teachings of statistician W. Edwards Deming.

That information is now being used to benefit companies that can't afford the up to US$150,000 price tag for an inventing session. The training teaches the six laws driving creativity that were extrapolated from the Ranch's research, backed up by plenty of figures and formulas overseen by two Ranch employees with mathematics Ph.Ds.

This borrowing from the rich to benefit the not-so-rich is why a Canadian television station recently called Hall "a corporate Robin Hood." The more moderately priced sessions enable small businesses and individuals to learn the Ranch's secrets to success, as does Hall's recently released third book on principles that work with small enterprises. Many of the examples and case studies in that book were generated as he offered services for free or at reduced prices to small businesses.

The third branch of Ranch services, the artificial wisdom program Merwyn (which shares its name with both Hall's father and Hall's boyhood magician persona), is available to people with money to burn as well as people with empty pockets. Those who can afford it can use the simulated test marketing and coaching to refine a concept or evaluate a fully formed concept's name, pricing, and competition. For those short of cash, the Ranch is offering one trial of the idea-refining service free with each purchase of Jump Start Your Business Brain.

Merwyn, described by Hall as a thinking system that will empower white-collar workers the same way mechanical tools empowered blue-collar workers, cost US$20 million to develop over six years. The system tracks real-world customer behavior and was validated by following the success rates of 900 real, new products over five years. The average success rates the system predicted were within one or two percentage points of the actual figures. As Hall describes it, Merwyn is "basically a giant bookie that sets the odds." But it's also an awesome creativity tool, he adds, because it gives you a laboratory in which to experiment with thought.

Home, home on the Ranch

You step up to the generous front porch that holds a hammock, rocking chairs, and a large, prominently placed rock with the word Courage. Music pulses: It's Van Halen's "Jump!" The smell of coffee wafts under your nose. That's Brain Brew, the Ranch's signature blend.