Successful brainstorming helps you become more innovative, generate more ideas and make better decisions. So, whether you’re working on a new business, writing your book, solving a mystery, planning your holiday or you’re working on the next big discovery for science, learning how to brainstorm effectively can be invaluable. Here’s a quick lesson on how to do it well!
Brainstorming is a group or individual creativity technique that is used to generate a larger number of ideas to a defined problem. The focus is on moving past limits and restrictions to freely produce as many ideas as possible. This process can be divided into two phases, a divergent phase (free idea generation) and a convergent phase (idea filtering).
Prior to the start of brainstorming, it’s a good rule to set up an atmosphere that’s conducive to creative thinking. First, think about setting. Where will you have your brainstorming session? Find a place that will limit distractions. It might be a quiet and empty room, a corner of a café or a park. Make sure the surroundings are comfortable and conducive to open thinking. Then, think about the tools. Getting your hands on some gadgets can help. There are quite a few: a whiteboard, some sticky notes, markers, notebook paper, a digital tool like mind-mapping software can all be useful in the brainstorming process. Provide the group with a clear problem statement. For instance: ‘How can we increase sales by 10 per cent in the next 12 months without expanding our staff and without increasing the product price?’ The problem statement gives direction to the brainstorm and makes sure it stays focused. It’s also a good idea to provide some session guidelines. For example: ‘During this session, we agree to defer judgement and say ‘yes’ to all ideas, to plant some wild ideas, to build on the ideas of others, and to focus on quantity in the first phase (quantity vs quality).
There are many tactics to make a brainstorm work. Simple brainstorming occurs when a group of people come up with ideas freely. For a productive session, participants should be urged to express their thoughts without the fear of harsh criticism. While team members share their thoughts, be sure no single person can monopolize the session. Every person deserves a chance to speak, potentially through a round-robin process in which each member takes a turn to speak, going around the table or others in the room. A facilitator can direct the discussion and encourage members to participate. Try to ensure that the session stays on track. It can also give the impression that the activity is efficient. Keep members focused on the task at hand. Strive to record every idea that is offered and list them all. Post or display ideas on a whiteboard or sticky notes for everyone to see.
This visual technique of structuring thoughts and ideas around a core idea is called a mind map. Start your map by writing the central concept in the centre of a blank page. Add subtopics or ideas that are connected to the central idea as branches or keywords or short phrases, and connect these smaller ideas to the central idea. Add color, images and symbols to your map to stimulate creativity and to memorize the structures of your ideas.
This simple silent brainstorming technique, known as brainwriting, is perfect for that. Everyone has time to capture as many ideas as possible without getting interrupted, pressured to speak, or feeling threatened by colleagues who might dominate discussions. To help, facilitate the process as much as possible; this is absolutely essential for virtual brainstorming sessions. Here’s what you need to do. Ask everyone to spend a minute or two capturing their ideas individually on paper or even electronic sticky notes. Then you need to pass each piece of paper on to the next person, then the next person and so on.
SCAMPER is structured brainstorming asking eight structured questions that, if answered, often stimulate lateral thinking. It is used to expand a creative answer so it is Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. Answer the questions: What can I replace? Is there a better substitute? What can I put together or combine, that could create something new and useful? How can I alter the idea in small or large ways that could make the idea more appropriate for a different audience or situation? If I used the idea in a different way, what else could I make or do? What components of the idea could I remove to make it simpler? What can be done with the idea structurally; what might it look like in reverse?
In the Six Thinking Hats, another technique, created by Edward de Bono, one could look through six ‘hats’: the White Hat, aimed at facts and information, the Red Hat, emotion and feeling, the Black Hat, indicating problems and dangers, the Yellow Hat, for the sunny and positive part, the Green Hat, for creativity and new ideas, and the Blue Hat, to manage and to direct the thinking process to combine all of them.
Here are some more tips to help: 1. Diversify your group: diverse groups bring in diverse perspectives and experiences that turn into richer brainstorming sessions. 2. Encourage wild ideas that participants can freely work on, coming up with imaginative suggestions. After all, some of history’s greatest inventions and leaps of science originated from seemingly whimsical ideas (think the ice-cream cone that began as a cucumber, or king Mongkut’s origami paper model becoming Japan’s very own reconnaissance drone). Sometimes a totally outlandish idea triggers a chain reaction of brilliant suggestions, giving you just what you needed. 3. Encourage participants to build up on others’ ideas by using ‘Yes, and …’ instead of ‘No, but …’. 4. Lengthy brainstorming sessions result in mental fatigue, so plan for a few breaks at regular intervals to keep participants fresh and full of energy. Just a short break or a change of environment can re-energize a participant. 5. Analogies open up new ways of thinking about the problem. Try thinking about the problem as being similar to something totally unrelated. When you come back to it, you might see a radically different side, possibly with solutions you haven’t thought about. 6. Time limit of brainstorm sessions helps create a sense of urgency and also prevents over-filtering by participants. Let your imagination run wild If you’re trying new forms of collaboration, starting with five to eight minutes should be sufficient time to familiarize yourself with the form and see how it works.
Creativity is very important in our daily lives. Brainstorming can be a very good way to help us come up with creative ideas, and helping us find solutions to even the most complicated problems. By preparing for the creative atmosphere, using various techniques, and taking advantage of some best practices, we can make our brainstorm more effective. Simply, think freely, encourage everyone to contribute to the discussion, and build upon each other’s ideas. Remember to be patient; with practice and determination, you’ll be a brainstorming expert!
