RADICAL SABBATICALS is the name for our corporate travel & events series. In our experience, the key to a successful corporate program, whether the goal is employee retention, management team building or client loyalty, is a laser-like focus on ROI. To achieve this, we keep our approach dead simple:

• we work with companies to assess needs
• we articulate those into a simple brief (or program spec)
• we then design, stage & execute against the brief; and finally
• we measure ROI across four dimensions - namely ROE (return on expectations), retention of learning (memories), changes in behaviour (transformations) and, of course...ROI (the price/value equation)

Call or e-mail Andrew White (awhite@horizon-co.com ) for a credentials presentation.

Our corporate hospitality trips are designed to deliver two things: unparalleled opportunities to spend quality time with your clients and exclusive experiences that will demonstrate the value that you place on the relationship. We bypass the corporate box and forgo the obvious weekend in Vegas to focus instead on truly exceptional events: how about driving a Ferrari f430 through Tuscany; following Tiger Woods at the Masters or sitting in the private enclosure of Rajput royalty at the Pushkar Camel Fair? If you want your clients to stay loyal, then take them on a trip that they’ll spend the rest of their lives bragging about.

Our incentive trips are designed for organizations seeking to recruit, reward, retain and motivate their best employees. We operate on the stunningly simple premise that if you want someone to feel valued, then you should give them something valuable: a once-in-a-lifetime travel experience orchestrated by seasoned experts.

Our corporate retreats are designed for leaders seeking results-oriented, goal-driven off-sites that inspire participants to solve real problems rather than simply entertain employees. We skip the tired old formulas of sterile resorts and juvenile rope courses in favour of a more nuanced approach, operating on the premise that travel is simply the catalyst for perspective change.

Our methodology: We understand how to design an experience that has a lasting effect beyond its consumption, whether that lasting effect is in the form of a life-long memory or retention of learning – either way it is the memory that extends the experience over time. Staging experiences that resonate over time is not just about entertainment but rather about engaging all the participants in a program that finds the “sweet spot” across five different experience realms: 1) Entertainment; 2) Education; 3) Activity; 4) Environment; 5) Sensation.

Radical Sabbaticals are premised upon the notion that the most powerful memories are formed through the alchemy of participation and immersion. We believe in moving beyond merely seeing the sights or getting away from it all in order to pursue the more elusive transformative moments of personal discovery and meaning.  In our experience, these moments tend to occur when people push themselves out of their comfort zones, but paradoxically, people only tend to push themselves once they have learned to slow down, breath deeply, and relax. Our expertise lies in creating the conditions in which moments of spontaneity and magic can flourish.

The Challenge: How to cultivate creativity and original ideas (i.e. innovation)? Gary Hamel, the world's reigning strategy guru, identified the most important issue of our time as building organizations "where innovation is both radical and systemic". Whether the frame of reference is personal, professional or educational, the capacity for innovative thinking has become one of our generations most prized and sought after talents.   

The Answer: "Perspective is worth 80 IQ points". An innovative insight is rarely the product of an individual's brilliance; innovation typically comes from looking at the world through a slightly different lens. (i.e. perspective change).

The Solution: The Radical Sabbatical series uses experiential travel as a vehicle to take diverse groups of people out of their comfort zone equally, thereby forcing them to look at their world through a different lens (i.e. adventure).

Horizon & Co's definition of adventure is: “any intentional experience that substantially alters your perspective long enough to see things we have never before seen and to see familiar things in ways we have never before seen them”. In our opinion, programmes that employ physical hardship, endurance and deprivation miss the point – the travel element of the programme is simply the catalyst to help move people out of their comfort zones (since people don’t change their behaviour when they are comfortable). Our view of the “adventure” aspect of travel is that is should be about “challenging your own internal limits of daring”, not ropes courses and traditional outdoor adventure activities (although we're not averse to having a bit of fun while we're at it...).