Brainstorming
When You Use It
• When you have a defined task and want to
generate many, varied or unusual ideas/options
• You will need
- a Problem Owner who is responsible for the content,
the ideas of the session
- a Facilitator to look after the process, how the group
goes about generating the ideas
- flipcharts with sufficient paper, markers and masking
tape to record the ideas
How You Use It
• Brainstorming is a widely used creativity tool,
and also the most misunderstood and misused!
• To brainstorm effectively
- the Facilitator explains and writes up the rules of
brainstorming for everyone to follow
- the Problem Owner gives a very brief background to
the task and answers any factual questions the group
may have
- the group then generates ideas which are recorded
on flipcharts as they are generated, literally and
legibly
- The facilitator records the ideas and polices the rules
(and checks with the problem owner every 10-15
minutes that the session is going in the right direction)
Rules Of Brainstorming
• Defer judgement
- of others ideas
- and of your own
• Look to generate many ideas
• Look for wild and different ideas - freewheel
• Build on others ideas
• All ideas are recorded and numbered
What It Gives You
• Many idea fragments which will need to be
evaluated and developed further
- usually in a separate session
• Be prepared to lay aside a lot of them
- while all ideas have value, the value of 80% of the
ideas generated in a typical session is that they
stimulated the remaining 20%
Additional Tips
• Encourage and ensure that all group members
contribute ideas
• Where time is short (or there are many ideas
on a particular issue all coming at once), ask
the group to write their idea on a post-it note
and place it on the flip chart
• Where problems are tough and intractable
consider using Interactive Innovation™
-a
proprietary technique of ours
- trained facilitators for these sessions exist in all our
offices (ask your training leader for details)
. Brainstorming
When You Use It
• When you have a defined task and want to
generate. sufficient paper, markers and masking
tape to record the ideas
How You Use It
• Brainstorming is a widely used creativity tool,
and also the most misunderstood