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The Brainstorming (Brainstorm)
method is a semi-structured creative group activity, used most often
in ad-hoc business meetings to come up with new ideas for innovation or improvement.
Members of the group are encouraged to put forward ideas about a problem
and how it may be solved, in order to generate as many ideas as
possible, even if they are not always usable alternatives. The idea behind
it is that a group of people can achieve a higher (synergy) level of
creativity than the sum of the participants separately.
Three major rules for a successful
brainstorm session are:
1. participants should be encouraged to
come up with a much ideas as possible, however wild they are (there are no
bad ideas),
2. no judgment should be passed on any
idea until the end of the session (whether negative or positive), and
3. participants should be encouraged to
build on each others ideas, creating unlikely combinations and taking each
one in unexpected directions.
Some additional tips for a successful brainstorm session are:
- use an experienced (external?)
facilitator
- identify a precise topic to be
discussed
- no more than 8-10 people in one
session, if there are more participants split up the brainstorm and report
back to each other afterwards
- make somebody write everything down
- evaluate the ideas in 2 steps: A.
define the criteria B. score the results on the criteria
- at the end of the brainstorming
session, discuss the steps needed to implement the ideas. If this is
complicated, do another brainstorming session on how to implement the
ideas.
Although brainstorms are used
frequently worldwide for over 70 years, the effectiveness of them for
generating new ideas is debatable. Brainstorms are most effective to
generate a lot of ideas in a short timeframe. Group processes are also
effective for evaluating existing ideas. However (bright) individuals are
said to be better at creating original and higher-quality ideas.
Book: Michael Michalko - Thinkertoys (A Handbook of
Business Creativity) - 
Book: Jason Rich - Brain Storm: Tap into Your
Creativity to Generate Awesome Ideas and Remarkable Results -
Compare:
Groupthink |
Six Thinking Hats |
Scenario Planning |
Game Theory |
Root Cause Analysis |
Dialectical Inquiry
| Theory of
Constraints
| Force Field
Analysis
More management models
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