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Perfect Brainstorming A Team-Based Creative Thinking Technique |
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Yin and Yang to Brainstorming |
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Brainstorming Rules
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Don't overlook the obvious - the obvious solution is sometimes the best.
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All ideas are good ideas (Actually, a minority opinion offered during group decision making often stimulates more innovative solutions to problem)
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Make sure each idea is complete - don't use one-word descriptions to avoid misunderstanding.
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Don't fear repetitions - during discussion afterwards the duplicate ideas you may found them different or they may trigger a different response at a different time.
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Record and display each idea.
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Go for quantity, not quality.
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Suspend judgment.
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Don't stop and discuss.
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Don't edit.
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Keep the momentum going.
How To Run a Brainstorming Session
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Define the problem.
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Help people to understand the problem.
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Clarify the objective.
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Have a brief warm-up session, using a common problem or object
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Brainstorm as many ideas as possible in a short time-frame. Encourage cross-fertilization. Allow time for silent reflection. When the group seems to have exhausted its ideas, ask them for ten more. Record and display all ideas. Make sure that no critical remarks are made.
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Ask the group to identify any assumptions they hold.
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Establish criteria for selecting the feasible ideas.
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Choose the best idea.
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Reverse brainstorm - identify the failure risks for the idea you chose.
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Related Chapters of the Business e-Coach: Management Success: Resolving Problems Effectively Instant Payoff Coaching on Problem Solving |
Why Brainstorming?
The best-known and widely used team-based creative thinking technique is brainstorming. One major reason why brainstorming is useful is that it helps to free us from 'fixed ideas'.
Understanding Right / Left Brain Functions3
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The right side of the brain controls your creative, visual, spatial concepts.
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The left side of the brain controls your logical, mathematical judgmental, analytical activities...More
As evaluation and judgment get in the way of creativity, divide your time between these two types of activity. In a brainstorming session, suspend judgment - your left brain activity - while you're coming up with ideas by using your right brain. So, create, create, create. Then switch over and evaluate, evaluate, evaluate, to arrive at the best conclusion.
Managing the Flow of Ideas
The ideas you want to develop during brainstorming session should flow from the strategies you identify to achieve the objectives.3 The clearer your objective is, the better you will be able to devise strategies to achieve it.
The objective is what you want to achieve. Start all objective statements in the infinitive, and make them measurable, e.g. "to generate at least 20 ideas that could help us to solve the problem" (not "to solve the problem").
The strategy is how you propose to achieve the objective. Start all strategy statement with an active verb, e.g. "invite proposals" or "hold a brainstorming session".
Managing Collective Tacit and Explicit Knowledge
"The process of innovation is a rhythm of search and selection, exploration and synthesis, cycles of divergent thinking followed by convergence."2
During the new idea generation - divergent or lateral thinking - phase, people create a wealth of possible solutions to a problem. In a well-managed development process, where a group of diverse individuals addresses a common challenge, varying perspectives foster creative abrasion, intellectual conflict between diverse viewpoints producing energy that is channeled into new ideas.1
Brainstorming gathers together a set of experts with diverse skills, preferably including client representatives. Main rules to be followed during the idea generation phase: defer judgments; build on the ideas of others; one conversation at one time; stay focused on the topic; and think outside the box - encourage wild ideas. All ideas should be recorded and discussed during the selection - convergent thinking - phase.
As soon as a sufficient choice of innovative ideas has been generated, a solution - convergence upon acceptable action - needs to be defined and agreed upon. Confining the discussion here to managing the tacit dimensions of knowledge three types of tacit knowledge - overlapping specific, collective, and guiding - need to be managed...More
Case in Point: IDEO
Brainstorming is practically a religion at IDEO, one they practice nearly every day. "Though brainstorms themselves are often playful, brainstorming as tool - as a skill - is taken quite seriously."4 In a company without many rules, IDEO people have a very firm idea about what constitutes a brainstorm and how it should be organized...More
Bibliography:
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"Knowledge, Groupware, and Internet", Butterworth Heinemann, 2000
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"The Role of Tacit Knowledge in Group Innovation", Dorothy Leonard and Silvia Sensiper, 1998
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"101 Ways To Generate Great Ideas", Timothy R.V. Foster, 2001
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The Art of Innovation", Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman, 2001.
