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UK Consultant Teams up with Swedish Defence Research Agency to Offer...

A unique relationship between Swedish Government defence scientists and a Norwich-based business consultant is bringing a radical new problem-solving approach to UK businesses.



Simon Middleton, a specialist brand and creative-thinking consultant, who founded Simon Middleton Company Ltd last October, has teamed up with the Swedish Defence Research Agency, based in Stockholm.



Together they are offering a strategic business consultancy service, based on Computer-Aided Morphological Analysis.



The unique approach has already been very successful in Sweden, where it has been used to tackle major projects in areas as diverse as insurance risk-assessment, radioactive waste disposal, social housing, fuel rationing, poverty reduction and natural disaster recovery planning.



Now, working with Simon Middleton, the Swedish Government researchers want to demonstrate the commercial value of their approach, particularly to large financial and industrial companies, as well as to the public sector.

Simon Middleton explained: 's8220;It sounds a little bizarre, but the story behind this agreement is actually perfectly logical as well as very exciting.'s8221;



's8220;In my creative-thinking workshops, including one called The Creative Power Hour, I teach a variety of techniques to help businesses innovate and solve problems.



's8220;I am always looking for new ideas, and a few months ago I started reading about the work of the late Fritz Zwicky, a Swiss astrophysicist who was involved in rocket design for NASA.



's8220;Zwicky's8217;s work involved trying to solve extremely complex and multi-faceted problems, and he developed a wonderful approach to this, which he called Morphological Analysis,'s8221; Simon added.



It didn's8217;t take long for Simon to adapt and simplify Morphological Analysis to use in his workshops: helping businesses to develop new products and services, charities to create new fundraising initiatives, and even individual coaching clients to make tough decisions about their future.



Simon posted an article about his work on a news website, and much to his surprise, received an email from Tom Ritchey, Deputy Director of Research at the Swedish Defence Research Agency.



's8220;It turned out that Tom and his colleagues had been using Zwicky's8217;s approach for nearly 20 years, but they had gone an important step further by developing their own very clever computer software to support it,'s8221; said Simon.



The great strength of Morphological Analysis is that it allows users to consider a great number of different options and outcomes before taking action, exploring every possibility in tackling a complex problem. By testing possible scenarios it can avoid the need to learn by making costly mistakes.



But because it explores so many avenues, Morphological Analysis also generates large amounts of data: too much to be easily recorded on paper.



's8220;The beauty of the Swedish computer-aided version is that it can handle all the different possibilities, and you can constantly test minor variations to see what the effect is on the whole picture,'s8221; said Simon.



's8220;I am absolutely certain that the approach, which I will be using side-by-side with Tom, a hugely experienced morphologist, will help companies to solve seemingly intractable and potentially expensive problems,'s8221; said Simon.



Now the consultant and the Swedish researchers hope that large businesses in the UK, as well as Government departments and other public sector organisations, will be interested in trying out the technique.



's8220;We have a vast amount of case study material which proves the effectiveness of Morphological Analysis. The Swedish Research Defence Agency is a very advanced organisation and they have created an exceptional strategic tool,'s8221; Simon added.



Simon Middleton and his Swedish colleagues are offering no-obligation presentations to any UK business or organisation interested in finding out more about Morphological Analysis and how it could help in solving their strategic challenges.



Interested businesses should visit www.simonmiddleton.com

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