Generating Ideas using Brainstorming
The brainstorming technique was developed by Alex F. Osborn in 1957 and brainstorming means where a team of members generates a large amount of alternative fruitful ideas on a specific problem without any criticism and then evaluates each idea in terms of their pros and cons. Brainstorming techniques fall into four broad categories: visioning, exploring, modifying, and experimenting.
Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way - Edward de Bono
Origin of Brainstorming
Alex F. Osborn an advertising executive began developing methods for creative problem-solving in 1939. He began hosting group-thinking sessions and discovered a significant improvement in the quality and quantity of ideas produced by employees He first called these sessions as ‘organized ideation’ which was later dubbed by participants as "brainstorm sessions". Osborn recommended that all members of the group should be provided with a clear problem statement to be addressed and the problem should be simple and targeted.
Meaning of Brainstorming
Brainstorming means where a team of members generates a large amount of alternative fruitful ideas on a specific problem without any criticism and then evaluates each idea in terms of their pros and cons.
- The purpose behind this group's creative technique is to provide other information as input for further stimulation.
- A comprehensive checklist is then made to eliminate the ideas that are clearly unworkable while retaining those that are worth further consideration.
- A particularly useful tool for stimulating divergent thought is brainstorming.
- Brainstorming builds fluency and flexibility. Enhances the group’s ability to produce many original ideas easily and also to come up with many different kinds of ideas
Principles of Brainstorming Sessions
For a brainstorming exercise to succeed, it's crucial to observe four key principles:
- Focus the brainstorming on an actual problem that your group is trying to solve.
- In other words, your brainstorming should be bound by real-world constraints.
- Limit the discussion to one conversation at a time and keep it focused on the topic.
- Participants are encouraged to provide wild and unexpected answers because the quantity of ideas affects the quality of the final decision.
- Ideas receive no criticism or discussion.
- Try to build on the ideas of others whenever possible.
- Ask questions that haven't been asked before
- Ask questions from different perspectives
- The group simply provides ideas that might lead to a solution
- During the session apply no analytical judgment as to the feasibility.
- Judgment should be suspended while ideas are being generated.
Four brainstorming techniques
Brainstorming techniques fall into four broad categories: visioning, exploring, modifying, and experimenting. Each category uses a different thought process, but there are some commonalities. Modifying and experimenting techniques, for example, start with existing data and use intuition to draw ideas from those facts. With visioning and exploring techniques, the intuitive process is followed by information gathering and data analysis.
1. Visioning
In this approach, the group tends to imagine a long-term, ideal solution and means of achieving it. The group starts by ignoring constraints of cost, time, and resources and try to produce the ideas for an ideal future. It has been observed that a breakthrough idea often comes from a seemingly irrelevant place. Once multiple ideas are generated team will start discussing the action plan to implement these ideas.
2. Exploring
In this approach, the group often uses guided imagery like symbols, analogies, and metaphors to describe an ideal scenario as well as to challenge assumptions. A variation of this method is to take the assumptions on the table and literally reverse them. A related approach called paradoxical thinking also helps free your mind from conventional patterns by developing an awareness of opposites.
3. Modifying
In this approach, the focus is to adapt to the current status quo. Modifying techniques begin with the status quo (like current technology or business situation or product or service) and tries to make adaptations to the current state. Exploring additional features or functionality the customers would you like to be included in the program or service.
4. Experimenting
The last approach is to experiment by methodically combining elements in various ways and then test the new arising combinations.
Evaluation of Ideas Generated During the Session
Each idea is to be considered in the light of the points like
- Does it meet the objectives?
- Does it solve the problems?
- Does it introduce new problems?
- Will it fit in with current systems?
- What functions are essential from your customers' point of view
- What criteria are determined by the company's values?
- What are your cost constraints?
- What are your size or shape constraints (for a product)?
- Within what time must you complete the project?
- Thinking cross-functionally/ organizationally
- In what ways the product is compatible with existing products?
- Taking risks and balancing day-to-day versus longer-term risks
- Can it accommodate growth?
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Generating Ideas using Brainstorming
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