Thinkwell is a worldwide leader in the creation of experience-based entertainment for theme parks, museums, casinos and retail and resort destinations worldwide. Thinkwell's clientele is comprised of theme parks, museums, professional sports teams, Fortune 500 companies and destination resorts including Harrah's, Nike, the Los Angeles Dodgers, Universal Studios, MasterCard, Warner Bros., and other premier retail and entertainment organizations worldwide.
If you wanted a metaphor for Thinkwell Design & Production, it could easily be the mind-blowing rollercoaster rides they conceptualize and create. "We’ve had amazing peaks and valleys," Thinkwell principal and COO Joe Zenas says. "Every year has been crazy, a real thrill, and you want to do it again as soon as it’s over."
From just four employees in a garage in 2001 to teams of over 150 working around the globe on high-profile attractions such as Ski Dubai, the Jurassic Park Institute Tour or Cirque du Soleil, Thinkwell’s culture thrives on heart-stopping excitement.
Rapid Expansion, Unique Configurations
Of all Thinkwell’s breathtaking experiences, few are more extreme than project and team management. Tight deadlines, specialist technology, complex project plans and hiring frenzies are built into every project. And no two projects are the same.
At its core, Thinkwell is a small company with huge data needs. Yet, whenever a new project takes off, the team may double in size and see its data needs quadruple. Upon completion, it may need to downscale just as rapidly.
"Our business is extremely scalable," Joe says. "We function very much like a movie studio where we have a core group and projects of varying sizes with teams added on; some are small teams, some are giant. If we’re staffing up for a major theme park, we could be bringing in as many as 20 people a week, for weeks or months at a time."
Solution: Dell Custom Configurations
Given the wide variety of talent required — from structural engineers to graphic designers to architects — each of the 20 people Thinkwell hires in a given week may need a different workstation with a unique configuration. This is where Dell comes in.
"Dell was there with a lease for our first equipment when we needed computers to get started. Now, no matter what we need, regardless of the configuration, we have one number we need to call. For example, we have a designer configuration, a production manager configuration and an architect configuration. We need three of these and four of those, and seven for architects with specific images loaded on the hard drive. It’s a simple phone call to Dell."
"Always-Up" Reliability
Beyond rapid scalability and uptime requirements at corporate headquarters, Thinkwell must always consider the uptime of technology it has designed for client locations around the world.
"A lot of our products that we design are technical solutions that go on the road or go into finished attractions on location. So reliability and ‘always-up’ access is incredibly important for our final product. We’re very much like the military as far as what’s required for redundancies and reliability for a theme park. It has to operate 365 days a year, 14 hours a day, little to no maintenance. And we treat our own backbone, our infrastructure, the same way."
Solution: Dell ProSupport
Dell ProSupport, a suite of professional support services, includes rapid response and access to expertise on specialized applications and technology "We hold our IT guys really accountable for instant solutions. So they turn to Dell ProSupport to help them with problems outside their knowledge base. It’s tech-to-tech, one phone call. We get almost everything we need fixed quickly."
Your Path Could Be Outside Your Comfort Zone
Not surprisingly, Joe believes that finding a course in life and business often means leaving safety and security behind. “You have to be willing to take the risk. My advice to anyone who is starting their own business is to be fearless.”