Innovation through Experience

Below is a reproduction of the blog originally posted by Peter in January 2015

We are today launching our new website and I thought that it would be a good opportunity to explain why I chose the name Recept, and what Innovation through Experience means to me and my colleagues.

Some months after I formed Recept in  July 2010, I was asked in a meeting where the name had come from. Before I could reply one of the colleagues of the questioner said "It's obvious, it's an anagram" and before I had time to form the question "of what?", he went on to say "of Peter C".

Actually, when trying to decide on a name I was looking through an old dictionary that I inherited from my grandfather, at words that began with RE (for Real Estate). Recept (a word that has fallen out of common use) was defined in that dictionary as "a new idea formed in the mind by the repetition of similar percepts, as successive percepts of the same object."

That definition, phrased slightly differently is Innovation through Experience.

To me therefore what Recept means is that in a rapidly changing world, new ideas and new ways of doing business are vital to success. The trick however is is knowing how to evaluate and choose which of those new ideas will work, and efficiently discarding those that won't; and that is where experience is so important.

Throughout our careers the Recept team and I have been at the forefront of innovation, in financial structuring; in the use of joint ventures; in asset and property management; in corporate responsibility and customer service; in systems and process management; in the sustainable design and operation of buildings and in developing the value in new asset classes.

So Innovation through Experience is at the heart of what we do and although it may be have been unintentional, I am proud to have my name so closely associated with the Recept brand.