by Linda Naiman
Why do people hate brainstorming so much?
If the same people who work with the same problems everyday meet and discuss these problems using the same language and procedures the outcome is always predictable. Sameness breeds more sameness. Seeing the world with old eyes only helps produce old ideas. —Arthur VanGundy, PhD
Sounds tedious doesn't it?
Here are seven more reasons why brainstorming doesn't work:
- Lack of preparation. You can't just call a meeting and ask people to brainstorm without any preparation.
- Lack of focus. Proceeding with a poorly defined topic.
- Judging every idea as it is put forward.
- Letting a few participants dominate the discussion.
- Lack of structure. Creativity without structure produces a formless mess.
- Fear of being wrong or stupid
- Brainstorming done badly by unskilled facilitators.
Alex F Osborn, an advertising executive (and the O in BBDO) invented brainstorming in the 40s. He devised four basic rules intended to reduce social inhibitions among group members, stimulate idea generation, and increase overall creativity of the group:
Foundational rules of group brainstorming
- Focus on quantity: The greater the number of ideas generated, the greater the chance of producing a radical and effective solution.
- 2. Withhold criticism: By suspending judgment until after the idea generation phase, participants will feel free to generate unusual ideas.
- Encourage wild ideas: Wild ideas make people laugh, and laughter stimulates creative thinking.
- Combine and improve ideas: Good ideas may be combined to create better ideas.
These four rules are a good start, but brainstorming is only one small part of the innovation process. Following a design innovation protocol will ensure focused, directed, strategic creative thinking, to help you produce desired results:
Design innovation protocol for better brainstorming
- Define the objective/challenge, and determine what will make the project successful. Hint: Focus on what would add value for your customer. Draw up a specific problem or opportunity statement, which describes what you are trying to achieve.
- Choose the right people for your project. Break out of silos, and include people from diverse backgrounds, as well as your customers (internal and external) to generate ideas from multiple disciplines and perspectives.
- Research background information and gather data on customers, the marketplace, and competition. Identify the needs and motivations of your end-users. Collect stories about what works, and what drives people crazy. Make sense of your research by looking for patterns, themes, and larger relationships between the information, and extracting key insights. Encourage a mind-set of questioning, and challenge assumptions, such as, "This is the way we've always done it."
- Frame opportunity areas. Don't just focus on problems. Focus on the outcome you want to achieve. As David Cooperrider, one of the originators of Appreciative Inquiry (AI), states, "The seeds of change are planted in the very first questions we ask." The basic process of AI is to begin with a grounded observation of the "best of what is," then ideate through vision and logic "what might be," informing the design of "what should be" and creating a blueprint for the new innovation—"what can be."
- Ideation begins before you even have a brainstorming session. Creativity comes from a blend of individual and group ideation. Give people time to think about the challenge at least a week before your brainstorming session, so they have time to incubate ideas on their own. (Give them time to reflect on ideas and improve on them, after brainstorming as well.)
- Host your brainstorming session using a skilled facilitator and play by Osborn's rules. Brainstorm as many ideas as possible to serve the identified needs of your end-users. Ask questions like "What if…?" "What else…?" and "In what ways can we…?"
- Embrace the principles of improvisational theatre: Refrain from sarcasm and pre-judging others. Build on the ideas of others, think in terms of 'yes and' rather than 'yes but;' make your partners look good, listen as well as talk, play team-win, let go of the need to control a situation, lead through a common vision, and celebrate small wins. This will help you establish an atmosphere of fun, humor, spontaneity, and playfulness. If your culture is one of fear, brainstorming won't work, so make it safe for people to generate ideas, without the worry of being ridiculed.
- Use a variety of idea generation techniques in your meeting to spark ideas, and appeal to the diverse thinking styles of your participants. Try visual thinking, semantic intuition and brainwriting. Allow between 10 and 20 minutes for each technique, depending on the discussion and the energy of the group.
- Review your objectives, and select the most promising ideas. Does this add value to the customer? Evaluate your ideas, based on criteria such as feasibility, desirability, and market timing.
- Prototype. Combine, expand, and refine ideas in the form of models or sketches. Present a selection of ideas to the client, get feedback, revise and make a decision about what to implement. Michael Schrage, research fellow at MIT, says, "Effective prototyping may be the most valuable core competence an innovative organization can have." Reactions to your prototype, inform your innovation. "Innovation is about good new ideas that customers will pay a premium to adopt and use!"
- Implementation: Formulate an action plan using SMART goals: Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. Assign tasks. Execute. Deliver. How will you measure success?
- Learn: Get feedback from the end-user, and determine if the solution met its goals. Discuss what could be improved. Document the project online, for easy access to ideas, mistakes to learn from, and best practices to emulate.
- Celebrate. Pause. Start your next project. Continue to improve.
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