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The problem with brainstorming is everyone thinks they already do it. When I raise the topic in presentations and conversations with executives, I see eyes start to glaze over and get a smug "been there, done that" look. More than 70% of the executives in a recent survey by accounting and consulting firm Andersen Worldwide said they use brainstorming. But many executives treat brainstorming only as a check box. They overlook the possibility that brainstorming can be a skill, an art, more like playing the piano than tying your shoes. You can continuously improve. You can become a brainstorming virtuoso. You can have heads of giant corporations and of governments fly in to ask for your brainstorming help. (Don’t laugh. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.) If you already do brainstorming, great, you are on your way. But you can deliver more value, create more energy, and foster more innovation through better brainstorming. Brainstorming is practically a religion at IDEO Product Development, one we practice nearly every day. In a company without many rules, we have a very firm idea about what constitutes a brainstorming session and how it should be organized. Based on our experience, here are some suggestions for getting the most out of your brainstorming sessions: MORE IS MORE. You should brainstorm more often, weaving the sessions into the cultural fabric of your organization. Andersen found that, of those who said they brainstorm, 76% brainstorm less than once a month. I consider myself a movie fan, usually seeing 30 to 40 films a year on the big screen (plus as many on video), but if I dropped below one a month I would have to say I was a former fan. If you want to keep in shape, you have to exercise your brainstorming muscles more than once a month. WHAT A BRAINSTORMING SESSION IS NOT. A brainstorming session is not a regular meeting. It is not something you take notes at. You do not take turns speaking in any orderly way. The brainstorming session should not consume a morning or an afternoon. Sixty minutes seems to be the optimum length, though occasionally a brainstorming session can productively stretch to an hour and a half. The level of physical and mental energy required for a brainstorming session is hard to sustain much longer than that. Brainstorming sessions are not presentations or opportunities for the boss to poll the troops for hot ideas. They should not feel like work. And brainstorming most definitely is not about spending thousands of dollars at some glamorous off-site location. FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS. Good brainstorming sessions start with a well-honed statement of the problem, at just the right level of specificity. If you are designing a product for bike commuters, "spill-proof, coffee cup lids" would be a bad topic because it is too narrow and presumes you know the answer. "Bicycle cup holders" is too dry and focused on the product. Maybe bicyclists shouldn’t use cups at all, in which case they certainly don’t need cup holders. A better, more open-ended topic would be "helping bike commuters to drink coffee without spilling it or burning their tongues." Go for something tangible that participants can sink their teeth into, without limiting the possible solutions. BUILD AND JUMP. Watch for chances to "build" and "jump." High-energy brainstorming sessions tend to follow a series of steep "power" curves, in which momentum builds slowly, then intensely, and then starts to plateau. The best facilitators of a brainstorming session nurture an emerging conversation with a light touch. They know to let ideas build on each other freely during the steep part of the ideation curve. Then, they really earn their keep when momentum slows, by adroitly getting the group to jump to a new part of the conversation. In the coffee-while-bicycling brainstorming session example, a good building suggestion might be: "Shock absorbers are a great idea; what are some other ways to reduce spillage when the bicycle hits a bump?" When discussion tapers off, a good jump might be: "OK, let’s switch gears and consider some totally ‘hands-free’ solutions that allow the cyclist to keep both hands on the handlebars at all times. What might those solutions look like?" STRETCHING EXERCISES. At IDEO, we tested the value of different warm-up techniques to determine what helps people perform in a brainstorming session. Before having a discussion about applying specific new technologies to the toy industry, we divided participants into three groups. In preparation for the brainstorming session, one group did background reading and listened to an expert lecture on the technologies. Another group spent half an hour in a toy store looking at the state of the art in all its variations. The third group came into the brainstorming session cold. Guess what? The group whose homework was a visit to a toy store significantly outperformed the other two, both in the quantity of ideas produced and in perceived quality. Not scientific enough to submit to the New England Journal of Medicine, but we were convinced. GET PHYSICAL. Good brainstorming sessions are extremely visual. They include sketching, mind mapping, diagrams, and stick figures. You don’t have to be an artist to get your point across with a sketch or diagram. The best brainstorming sessions often get physical. We move beyond two dimensions and push for three. The first way we do this is to bring in everything but the kitchen sink (and we have brought the sink, too, when it was relevant). That means competitive products, elegant solutions from other fields, and promising technologies that could be applied to the problem. The second way we get physical is to have materials on hand to build crude models of a concept: blocks, foam core, tubing, duct tape, whatever might be useful. The third physical approach is "bodystorming," where we act out current behaviors and see how they might be altered. We have bodystormed on products ranging from vending machines to car seats, where our skits and scenarios pointed to all kinds of opportunities for improvement. Hot brainstorming sessions may generate 100 or more ideas, 10 of which may be solid leads. They can help put a team on course, and the rush of adrenaline can keep team members buzzing for days. A great brainstorming session gives you a fantastic feeling of possibility, and you walk out of the room richer for the experience.
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