The Genius Machine Book

Ger­ald is the author of:
The Genius Machine: The Eleven Steps that Turn Raw Ideas Into Bril­liance (New World Library, May, 2009).

Excerpts from Reviews Posted on Amazon:

How the world (really) works…, April 26, 2009
By Lau­rence D. Ack­er­man “Iden­tity Con­sul­tant” (West­port, CT USA)

I am liv­ing tes­ti­mony to the impact of Sindell’s processes, as he used them to help me become con­scious of, and artic­u­late, the 8 nat­ural laws of iden­tity that are the foun­da­tion of my work and my life. Iden­tity Is Des­tiny: Lead­er­ship and the Roots of Value Cre­ation and The Iden­tity Code: The 8 Essen­tial Ques­tions for Find­ing Your Pur­pose and Place in the World. In this respect, Gerry Sindell’s book is really a primer on how to change the world for the bet­ter. His pre­cepts, taken together and applied mil­lions of times over, would yield a far more pro­duc­tive soci­ety, with ben­e­fits for every­one — from the inno­va­tors to the pop­u­la­tions of peo­ple they touch. Read The Genius Machine as a way to revi­tal­ize the mean­ing and impact of your life.

How to develop “bril­liant” intel­lec­tual prop­erty from your “raw” ideas, April 17, 2009
By Robert Mor­ris (Dal­las, Texas) (An Ama­zon Top 50 Reviewer)

“My work is to help peo­ple think.” Thus does Ger­ald Sin­dell intro­duce him­self. It soon becomes obvi­ous that this is more than a voca­tion; indeed, it is a pas­sion, a mis­sion, and a cru­sade to help peo­ple develop as many raw ideas as pos­si­ble (their own as well as oth­ers’) into “bril­liance.” I agree with him that he is “dri­ven” and very much admire him for that. “The ter­ri­ble gap that lies between exist­ing knowl­edge and the per­sis­tence of igno­rance — and its con­comi­tant poverty, ill­ness, and suf­fer­ing — dri­ves me crazy.” What we have in this excep­tion­ally stim­u­lat­ing book is every­thing Sin­dell has learned about that process…thus far. Some think­ing is con­tem­pla­tion (What will I learn from this book?) and other think­ing involves prob­lem solv­ing or deci­sion mak­ing (Which key points should I stress in my review?). “This book is about a third kind of think­ing, one that is directed toward improv­ing an exist­ing idea, think­ing through a com­plete issue, or cre­at­ing some­thing new….”

Accord­ing to Sin­dell, “genius thinkers” look at what every­one else does and see some­thing dif­fer­ent; they know who they are (and aren’t) and what they are dri­ven to con­tribute; they know that noth­ing exists in a vac­uum; they know that the only way to be cer­tain some­thing works is to dis­cover the test that would prove the oppo­site; they also know they are “stand­ing on the shoul­ders” of oth­ers; and they rec­og­nize that, when they have cre­ated some­thing of value in any one area, it will prob­a­bly be of value in many areas; when work­ing with some­thing new, genius thinkers step from time to time and ask: What are the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples oper­at­ing here? Or are we using new rules, and if so, can they be pulled together into a coher­ent group or body of law?; they com­plete their work by answer­ing two ques­tions: Can it stand on its own? Have I pro­vided enough addi­tional infor­ma­tion so that what we have inno­vated can be repli­cated or con­tin­u­ously improved?; genius thinkers enter the frame of ref­er­ence of the intended user and ask, “Have I done every­thing pos­si­ble to ease the learn­ing curve?”

Thus far, I hope that this review has indi­cated what Sin­dell offers in this book with­out com­pro­mis­ing the pro­vi­sion of his key ideas within his nar­ra­tive. For genius thinkers, there is a stage in the devel­op­ment he calls a “point of no return.” Indi­vid­u­als ask, “Where do I want to go in my career?” whereas genius thinkers as a group ask, “Where do we want to go together?” This stage in the process could also be described as a moment of truth. Sin­dell offers a head’s up to his reader: “In devel­op­ing this work, we are about to launch a cre­ation that will even­tu­ally take on a life of its own. If this work suc­ceeds in the mar­ket­place, will it help us ful­fill our goals?” That is another impor­tant ques­tion to ask, one that must be answered care­fully. If the deci­sion is to pro­ceed, then genius thinkers know that the intro­duc­tion of even the great­est inno­va­tions can eas­ily fail if entrusted to those who were not part of the cre­ation process.

More­over, “The respon­si­bil­ity to develop the core com­mu­ni­ca­tion about what has been cre­ated begins with the cre­ators.” They and only they must be its pri­mary advo­cates. Specif­i­cally, they must estab­lish their own cred­i­bil­ity as well as the legit­i­macy of what they have cre­ated. They must iden­tify and then take full advan­tage of “advo­cacy hooks” that will attract and retain sup­port, espe­cially from those who com­prise senior management….

Some­how, Sin­dell suc­ceeds in explain­ing quite well how to do all this in only 129 pages and then con­cludes his book with the pro­vi­sion of an immensely valu­able mech­a­nism, “The Endle­o­fon Ques­tions.” All of these ques­tions need to be answered so that inno­va­tions can be devel­oped to their high­est pos­si­ble level; the answers will also facil­i­tate accep­tance of the inno­va­tions by the peo­ple who would ben­e­fit most from them.

…I agree with Jeff Fox that “all of us have a genius inside.” I really do believe that all of us have (out there, some­where, in some form) a “guardian deity or spirit” that watches over us from birth. I believe that Ger­ald Sin­dell can help many of us to release that force of cre­ativ­ity if we are pre­pared to embark upon and then com­plete what will prove to be, ulti­mately, a rig­or­ous explo­ration of our unful­filled potentialities.

A bit biased per­haps, but I know of what I speak, April 22, 2009
By Dr. Jim Tay­lor (Green­brae, CA)

Full dis­clo­sure: I have known Gerry for about 15 years and he has assumed many roles in my life: men­tor, man­ager, friend, offi­ciant at my wed­ding, book doc­tor, just to name many. He was instru­men­tal in the devel­op­ment, sale, and suc­cess of my two par­ent­ing books, Pos­i­tive Push­ing: How to Raise a Suc­cess­ful and Happy Child (Hype­r­ion, 2003) and Your Chil­dren are Under Attack: How Pop­u­lar Cul­ture is Destroy­ing Your Kids’ Val­ues, and How You Can Pro­tect Them (Source­books, 2005).

Just to give you an idea of the value of Gerry’s ideas found in The Genius Machine, the first iter­a­tion of Pos­i­tive Push­ing was bought for a four-figure advance by a small pub­lisher who later bailed on the project. After a major restruc­tur­ing and rewrite of the man­u­script led by Gerry, the much-changed book sold to Hype­r­ion for a six-figure advance. He is cur­rently help­ing me pre­pare three new book pro­pos­als. To learn more about my work, […]

You might think then that I am too biased to pro­vide an objec­tive assess­ment of Gerry and his book, The Genius Machine (and you may be right). At the same time, I can speak as liv­ing proof of the value of The Genius Machine and the ideas that lie within it. So per­haps con­sume what I say with a grain of salt, but please do con­sume it.

Quite sim­ply, the ideas in The Genius Machine work. I have gone through the Endle­o­fon process many times with my book ideas and am always amazed at what emerges at the end of jour­ney; often hardly resem­bling the orig­i­nal idea, yet so much more clear and compelling.

The Genius Machine has the unique abil­ity to take an idea–a dia­mond in the rough, if you will–and help the orig­i­na­tor of the idea to focus it, sharpen it, direct it, and express it in its most effec­tive form. The Genius Machine not only helps to artic­u­late and com­mu­ni­cate the ideas most clearly, but it also helps to shape them into a form that is highly marketable.

The Genius Machine will cer­tainly be a “must-read” for any­one who has an idea, but doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

And, BTW, hav­ing Gerry in the flesh work with you is an even greater gift.

Eval­u­ate the Power of Your Thoughts!, April 22, 2009
By Thomas Signer (Zurich, Switzerland)

“If you were not suc­cess­ful in get­ting your way of see­ing things out into the world, what is it the world would have lost?” Focus­ing on this key ques­tion, Sin­dell method­i­cally con­structs a frame­work which enables us to test out our ideas for their power. What is of par­tic­u­lar merit is that he hands read­ers a “pilot’s check­list” empow­er­ing the reader to dis­tin­guish plain vanilla from the TRULY POWERFUL thoughts — those that can change the read­ers’ lives and the lives of oth­ers for the bet­ter. His frame­work is sim­ple, yet com­pelling. This time­less ref­er­ence work should be con­sulted when­ever some­one thinks they are on to some­thing big — and they want to be sure of it.

Quick Read and Pow­er­ful!, April 16, 2009
By Bea Fields “Bea Fields” (South­ern Pines, NC) — See all my reviews

If you ever doubted that you can take your idea and turn it into some­thing bril­liant that can impact oth­ers, you must read The Genius Machine. The book is a quick read but so very pow­er­ful. I felt myself mov­ing in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion today…adding more value, being more patient and bring­ing more ideas to the table with each conversation.

Pick up a copy…you can read it in an evening and trust me…you will wake up the next morn­ing with a brand new view of the world.

Run­ning Ideas Through the Genius Machine, April 14, 2009
By Janet Boyer “JanetBoyer.com” (Penn­syl­va­nia) (An Ama­zon Top 50 Reviewer)

“Inno­va­tion begins with a need–whether it’s the next-generation high-speed switch, a change in cor­po­rate cul­ture, the design for a flag­ship prod­uct, or fin­ish­ing a book on dead­line. Through­out our lives we are met with chal­lenges to cre­ate some­thing that isn’t already there. We can either do decent work and make some­thing that, at the very least, does the job, or we can come up with some­thing that is sim­ply bril­liant. In many ways, the choice is yours.” — From The Genius Machine

What is a genius thinker? Accord­ing to author Ger­ald Sin­dell, founder of Thought Lead­ers Inter­na­tional, a genius thinker is one who looks at what every­one else has looked at and sees some­thing new.

In his new book The Genius Machine, Sin­dell dis­tills the eleven-step rev­o­lu­tion­ary sys­tem he has used to guide lead­ers, orga­ni­za­tions, and authors. By tak­ing an idea and then run­ning it through Sindell’s inno­va­tion hop­per, con­cepts are sub­jected to crit­i­cal think­ing, includ­ing dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, impli­ca­tion, refine­ment and advocacy….

Here are few fas­ci­nat­ing nuggets from The Genius Machine:

* “Iden­tity is the source of that feel­ing deep inside us that says we have some­thing we were meant to do in this world, and that if we could just find it, we’d be on the right path. For­tu­nately, we *can* find it.”

* “Geniuses always have their anten­nas out for shuffle-the-deck break­throughs in their own imme­di­ate area and in the world in gen­eral. This is one rea­son why we need to develop our own per­sonal array of fil­ters that we bring us the infor­ma­tion we need as soon as it hap­pens. Shuffle-the-deck break­throughs in the Great Con­ver­sa­tion changes the conversation.”

* “Ele­gance is inher­ently attrac­tive: sim­plic­ity is art­ful. In think­ing and writ­ing, too, ele­gance is appeal­ing. When we have refined our think­ing to the point that our hard work has become invis­i­ble, then we will have achieved ele­gance. Ele­gant think­ing has many advan­tages over its cruder com­pe­ti­tion: ele­gance com­mu­ni­ca­tions more effi­ciently, is likely to be adopted faster, and will often have the strength to fend off the competition.”

* “If you were not suc­cess­ful in get­ting your way of see­ing things out in the world, what is it the world would have lost?”

* “We can often dis­cover our entire frame­work by look­ing closely at any sin­gle ele­ment of what we’re cre­at­ing, since the truth of the whole is car­ried in every one of its parts. Every­thing we cre­ate, in each of its parts, expresses our val­ues, our expres­sion of what we think is the nature of life and humankind, our hopes for our­selves and the world.”

From busi­ness to psy­chol­ogy, pub­lish­ing to edu­ca­tion, med­i­cine to soft­ware devel­op­ment, The Genius Machine pro­vides any­one with a bril­liant vision, com­plex prob­lem, or timely inven­tion with a step-by-step plan for defin­ing, refin­ing, pol­ish­ing and pro­duc­ing those ideas and solu­tions. In fact, a devel­op­ment cycle that might take months or years could fea­si­bly be reduced to days or weeks using the Ende­o­fon system.

Have a book you want to write? Put it through the Genius Machine. Invented a prod­uct that could change the world? Run it through the Endle­o­fon sys­tem. Up against a cor­po­rate prob­lem, human resource hem­or­rhage, or strat­egy snafu? Again, take it through Ger­ald Sindell’s eleven-step process to gain clarity.…

Whether you’re a CEO or an edu­ca­tor, a writer or a stu­dent, a sci­en­tist or farmer, The Genius Machine can lit­er­ally take your intel­lec­tual prop­erty, put it through the Endle­o­fon hop­per, and churn out bril­liance. The funny thing is, though, that once you begin think­ing like a genius via Sindell’s method, you’ll never see your­self, your ideas, or the world quite the same again.

New Per­spec­tives That Could Not Be Left Aside July 8, 2009
By Guillermo Men­doza “agmenta” (Guadala­jara„ Jalisco Mexico)

I have been in the cor­po­rate world and now doing my own projects in the Tequila Indus­try World and I found The Genius Machine an excel­lent rec­ol­lec­tion of expe­ri­ences that Ger­ald put together wrapped in a rather com­plete con­cep­tual frame. I flew from Den­ver to Méx­ico and could not stop read­ing and com­par­ing with other books. I used in the past the work of Robert Fritz ” The path of least resis­tance” which is a very good work as well but I found in Gerald’s book a num­ber of new per­spec­tives that could not be left aside when doing long range project. I rec­om­mend it widely.

Genius by Design with The Endle­o­fon Process, A Dis­ci­plined & Sys­tem­atic Thinking-Through Method­ol­ogy, July 7, 2009
By Lee Say Keng (Sin­ga­pore) (An Ama­zon Top 500 Reviewer)

As an avid reader, it is not sur­pris­ing for me to note that books about how to cre­ate ideas are a dime a dozen. Just pop into any phys­i­cal book store in the city or browse the Ama­zon cat­a­log — you will be astonished!

We all know most ideas often come to us as fuzzy, weak & half-baked; some­times — with a lit­tle bit of inter­ven­tion — as sketchy con­cepts on paper or nifty scrib­blings on the back of a napkin.

So, we come to a harsh real­ity: how to turn a raw idea into a block­buster prod­uct or ser­vice, or how to con­vert a vague, unpol­ished thought into a pow­er­ful idea that can the world?

Even world-renowned cre­ativ­ity guru, Edward de bono, with his huge reper­toire of printed books & pub­lished writ­ings on lat­eral think­ing, has yet to come up with a dis­ci­plined idea devel­op­ment method­ol­ogy, even though his clas­sic, ‘Oppor­tu­ni­ties: A Hand­book for Busi­ness Oppor­tu­nity Search’, has great stuff, which a reader unfor­tu­nately needs to sort out dili­gently for application.

So, we are back to square one. Not exactly so.

I have recently read a new book, enti­tled The Genius Machine: The Eleven Steps that Turn Raw Ideas into Bril­liance, by Ger­ald Sin­dell, a for­mer book pub­lish­ing exec­u­tive & for­mer Hol­ly­wood film producer.

The author’s Endle­o­fon Process is encap­su­lated in the book — there are eleven stages; hence, the name ‘Endle­o­fon’, which is an old Eng­lish word for the odd num­ber — with each stage of the ele­gant process cov­ered by each chapter.

As I see it,‘The Endle­o­fon Process’ as embod­ied in the book is a dis­ci­plined, sys­tem­atic thinking-through method­ol­ogy.

With it, I am con­vinced that any one, through dili­gent appli­ca­tion, can get to enhance his or her think­ing by delib­er­at­ing pur­pose­fully — via a mean­ing­ful series of provoca­tive ques­tions at each stage — on an issue or a project, all the way to its pro­duc­tive outcome.

Here’s a quick bul­let sum­mary of the process stages:

1) DISTINCTIONS;2) IDENTITY; 3) IMPLICATIONS; 4) TESTING; 5) PRECEDENT; 6) NEED; 7) FOUNDATION;  8) COMPLETION; 9) CONNECTING; 10) IMPACT; 11) ADVOCACY;

From a tac­ti­cal per­spec­tive, the eleven process stages are great for any­one to use them for explor­ing his or her cre­ative assets, &/or min­ing his or her inven­tive mind.

The author writes with warmth, can­dour & suc­cinct­ness. His many per­sonal anec­dotes as well as crisp exam­ples of real-world appli­ca­tion are easy to under­stand. Best of all, his easy-going writ­ing style also makes read­ing –by the way, less than 150 pages — a breeze!…

To con­clude my review, I reckon the real gem in the book lies, in addi­tion to the method­ol­ogy, in the thoughtfully-crafted ‘The Endle­o­fon Ques­tions’ which the author has duti­fully assem­bled at the end of the book, as well as also those prob­ing ones already inter­spersed within all the chapters.

Many thanks, Ger­ald, for a great mas­ter­piece!

This 11-step process is a proven key to suc­cess­fully real­iz­ing ideas and bring­ing them to fruition, June 16, 2009
By Mid­west Book Review (Ore­gon, WI USA)

This step-by-step sys­tem for devel­op­ing an idea or cre­at­ing and inno­va­tion helps peo­ple uncover and use their own innate genius and comes from an intel­lec­tual prop­erty con­sul­tant who works with indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions alike. His 11-step process is a proven key to suc­cess­fully real­iz­ing ideas and bring­ing them to fruition, and makes for a pow­er­ful presentation.

The epiphany I needed!, May 9, 2009
By Lise Stew­art (Boise, ID United States)

I am in the mid­dle of try­ing to move an orga­ni­za­tion of very smart and com­mit­ted peo­ple, my part­ners and employ­ees, for­ward in a direc­tion that is new for all of us. How­ever, I had not been able to truly iden­tify why we were stuck and what to do about it. Then, in read­ing The Genius Machine, I expe­ri­enced an epiphany. I had missed the mark — missed the oppor­tu­nity to more clearly define/touch/communicate my iden­tify and, in turn, our col­lec­tive iden­tity. In addi­tion, our process lacked the struc­ture — the sim­ple, ele­gant struc­ture we needed. Based on the book, I wrote a let­ter to my team and prof­fered a new way of look­ing at the product/program we have been devel­op­ing over the past year.

The response has been quite extra­or­di­nary. Using Ger­ald Sindell’s 11 steps, we redesigned our prod­uct, sim­pli­fied our core pro­gram and restruc­tured our launch. While it would take too much space to go into details, I want to stress that we are a pro­fes­sional con­sult­ing orga­ni­za­tion that assists clients in new prod­uct and ser­vice inno­va­tions all the time. We have tried a lot of dif­fer­ent method­olo­gies and tested dif­fer­ent sys­tems — but the beauty of this process is its sim­plic­ity — and the way it is clearly artic­u­lated. I can rec­om­mend this book to all of my clients around the coun­try with con­fi­dence that it can not only be eas­ily under­stood, but also, prac­ti­cally implemented.

An Ele­gantly Sim­ple Book, May 4, 2009
By Win­ford E. Hol­land “Dutch” (Hous­ton, Tx USA)

It really is an ele­gant book … and that is the high­est com­pli­ment I can pay!

Genius Machine is Bril­liant, April 29, 2009
By Ron Mat­tocks “Ron” (Fair­fax, VA)
The Genius Machine shines bril­liantly as a trib­ute to Ger­ald Sindell’s life­long com­mit­ment to craft­ing raw ideas into sparkling gems, and help­ing oth­ers do the same. Sin­dell declares that “Genius thinkers rec­og­nize that, when they have cre­ated some­thing of value in any one area, it will prob­a­bly be of value in many areas.” The maxim applies per­fectly to this book, which is of value to cre­atives in so many dif­fer­ent walks of life.

If you are involved in cre­ative devel­op­ment on any front, this book is for you. I have worked through many of these con­cepts with Ger­ald Sindell’s help, which resulted in the pub­lish­ing of my first book, Zone of Insol­vency. Prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions of the eleven steps are big­ger than life. Read The Genius Machine today!