Do You Use Creative Thinking or Brainstorming Techniques?

How is Brainstorming defined ?

Brainstorming, one of the most useful creative techniques, is defined as:

A means of getting a large number of ideas from a group of people in a short time.

First “large number of ideas” - most brainstorming sessions give hundreds of ideas for solving problems.

It is a poor session that ends with less than one hundred.

Next, “a group of people”- a group because cross fertilisation is possible. An idea from one member sparks off ideas in the minds of other members, and these are brought out and discussed.

Last, "in a short time” - important when expensive people are involved.

A target, frequently exceeded, is a hundred ideas in twenty minutes. A session should be open-ended in time, some hundreds of ideas can be produced in a session of up to two hours.

Two Important Steps

There are two important steps to be taken when introducing this technique to a group for the first time.

These are to generate an awareness, and a lowering of barriers to creative thinking, and to demonstrate that this technique will produce a large number of ideas.

Only after these two stages is a live problem brainstormed.

Subsequent sessions need only a reminder of the barriers and a warm-up session before brainstorming the actual problem.

Failure to go through these two stages leaves the barriers up, and the session will flop - generating the comment, “if that’s brainstorming, I don’t think much of it”.

What are the Brainstorming Steps ?

However, when everyone in the organisation or group is familiar with the technique, a brainstorming session can be held as part of a committee, or group meeting, and with little or no prior warning.

The steps of the technique are:

Preparing for the Session

2.Plan the session- i.e. using different techniques, check lists, and choosing participants. Brainstorming Techniques and Ideas to improve the generation of ideas 3.Invite from six to twenty people, including if possible:

- some previous Brainstorming participants

- roughly equal numbers of men and women - never a loner of one sex

- a mixture of those who have direct experience of the problem and those who have not.

excluding if possible:

- those of widely different ranks

- sceptical bosses

- non-participant observers.

4.Arrange for a room with flipchart and felt-tipped markers.

5. Plan the meeting to be open-ended (it may last a couple of hours), and arrange for interruptions (eg. phone calls) to be intercepted.

Running the Session

Stress the value of past sessions and run a warm-up session on a dissociated topic.

If all, are newcomers, discuss the barriers to creative thinking and run a brainstorming session on a neutral subject. Problem Statement

2.State the problem, and write it on the flipchart.

Ask for at least six restatements of the problem in the form, “How to.....

Thirty or more restatements may be obtained.

3.Write all restatements on the flipchart.

4.Select one or two restatements and write on the flipchart in the form, “In how many ways can we.......?“

Selection can be done by the leader (autocratically) or by members of the group (democratically). 5.Call for ideas, and write them briefly on the flipchart, numbering them.

Display each sheet of flipchart on the walls of the room.

6.Use care in preventing one participant giving too many ideas at once.

The leader must also suspend judgement.

7.Contribute ideas yourself - you are a member of the group.

8.Occasionally call for a minute of silent incubation, looking at ideas listed on the board.

This applies when ideas dry up, and results in a fresh flood of ideas.

9.Encourage quantity throughout (“Let us see if we can reach two hundred”). 10.When stuck, take a previous general idea and ask of it - “In how many ways can we do this?”

11.Remember that when the group are struggling hard, they are more likely to produce new ideas.

12.Don’t forget the “Wildest Idea” technique to obtain further ideas not thought of in the original brainstorming session.

End the session on the Wildest Idea and participants will go away laughing, feeling that they have contributed.

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After the Session

1.Scrutinise all ideas for possible winners.

During the session, the ideas have been produced so quickly that a winner is quickly forgotten. This quick scrutiny will re-identify them. 2.Pick the five or six most important criteria by which to judge the ideas.

Weight them in importance if necessary.

3.Allocate the ideas to groups.

Select the most promising group, and evaluate the ideas using the criteria.

Repeat with the other groups and put the winners into a “Best Ideas” group.

Apply the criteria to this group and select the few best ideas.

3.Subject each of the best ideas to “Reverse Brainstorming” - i.e. asking “In how many ways can this idea fail?”

4.A way of involving members of the group in evaluation is to print a list of the ideas (unedited and unexpurgated~) and distribute to all members who took part.

Ask each person to select the best twenty (or so) ideas and return their selections to you.

Collate the selections. Usually two or three appear on most members lists - these are the best ideas.

5. Brainstorm yourself again individually, making full use of the ideas, amending, combining, etc.

6.Consider carefully how best to present the new ideas to those with the power to adopt them - don’t forget “Reverse Brainstorming” to prepare for the awkward questions.

7.Make sure that all members of the group know which ideas have been selected for deeper evaluation and implementation.

In particular publicise results and the really good ideas obtained. For more brainstorming ideas, try here

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