Brainstorming: How to Get the Most from Your Ideation Sessions. - Issue: 2003 Qtr 4
In today’s business environment, it can be a competitive advantage to be able to generate solutions (and a lot of them) quickly. One effective method employed by many companies for group ideation is “brainstorming.”
Brainstorming is not a just a matter of putting a bunch of people in a room and having a free–for–all. It’s about following a process and coming up with feasible ideas. There are many tips and tricks that can be employed to achieve more (and better) ideas from your brainstorming session. Here are five guidelines to an effective session.
1. Determine key roles upfront.
In a brainstorming session, it’s recommended that the following representatives be present: “the client” (the owner of the problem — can be your customer or someone from your company), “the facilitator” (the person to lead the brainstorming session), and “the resource group” (all the rest of the participants). The client should be open–minded and assist in focusing the facilitator or make decisions that may come up in the brainstorming process. The facilitator controls the environment and is responsible for writing every idea down. Both the client and facilitator should not express their personal opinions but help in guiding the group to a conclusion.
2. Choose your resource group carefully.
When developing an effective brainstorming team, twelve is a maximum number of people, but smaller groups can also be effective. It’s advisable not to always ask the same people to be a part of every brainstorming session you host. Think about what needs to be achieved, then ask people to participate who may bring a unique or important view into the problem. For example, let’s say the goal is to come up with a new food product concept targeted to families in Brazil. In addition to your product team and representatives from manufacturing and R & D, it might also make sense to invite the new employee in accounting who just transferred in from São Paulo — to gain some cultural perspectives.
3. Divergence: Go for quantity and keep the ideas in front of the group.
There are two parts to an ideation session: Divergence and Convergence. When leading a brainstorming through the Divergence phase, the goal is to come up with LOTS of ideas. (The Convergence phase comes later and is when you narrow down to the best ideas — see step 5.) In order for everyone to feel a part of the process, it’s important that they see the ideas as they are expressed. So it is recommended that a white board or flipchart be used at the front of the room so everyone can see as ideas are captured. (If you use a flipchart, tape up the sheets around the room for everyone to see.) This method encourages people to build on other people’s ideas.
4. Use simple tricks to stimulate ideas.
Sometime during the course of a brainstorming session, there may be a lull in the output. Don’t stop. There are many ways to get the creative juices flowing again! For example, role play can be an effective method, e.g. moderate the group to put themselves in your customer’s shoes and imagine a typical day–in–the–life of this intended target audience. Or put related or unrelated items such as magazines, toys, photos in front of the group to stimulate thought. New creative connections may be made, resulting in new ideas!
5. Convergence: Select and analyze.
Coming up with as many as 100 ideas is not farfetched — and should actually be a goal. Now comes the Convergence phase — when the group selects those ideas with the most potential. Again, this should be a group effort. One effective selection method is the “hot dot” method where everyone in the group has a different colored pen and goes up and places a “dot” next to their favorite ideas. After the voting is complete, the facilitator should lead the group in categorizing similar ideas, then evaluating the merits of those ideas along with advantages, limitations and resources necessary to make them happen.
Effective brainstorming takes the right environment, people and process to achieve the most satisfying results. Consider these guidelines for your next session.
Back to top