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.