Corporate Skills – Why Brainstorming?

Quality and not quantity, is mostly preached and proclaimed as virtue in matters of commerce and business. This could also rhyme true in many aspects of life’s facets. Where are we going with this? You may ask. Well, one less used and often misunderstood method of ideation is “Brainstorming”. This is where “more is good”. Soliciting ideas through divergent thinking, divergent and not convergent.
Divergent thinking during a brainstorming session encourages plethora of ideas, while keeping ‘scrutiny’ at bay and all forms of ‘criticism’ out of the window. Ideas need to flow through and all ideas are welcome even the ones that are seemingly deviant. In fact, deviant ideas are encouraged.
A bit of history, this sort of ‘formal creative’ process was communicated by Alex Osborn in 1948, he initially alled it “Think up” in his book your Creative Power. In this book he details the multi-person ideation method in great detail and this is now known as Brain Storming.

Few more things to remember:

The purpose of Brainstorming is not to solve problems but to create possibilities.
Overtly praise all ideas during an idea generation session.
It’s a process, so commit to the process therefore no short cuts to reap all the ideas of an ideation session.
Openly share conflicting ideas, it is not about being agreeable and everyone involved must buy into the norm of being different and disagreeing. This can be difficult in organizational hierarchies, but the fundamental in any group ideation session is that everyone is equal and there are no grades and titles only brainstormers.
Plan your ideation session, thinking that since ideas flow easily to individuals, it does not necessarily mean they will deliver the same results during formal sessions with multiple participants. Therefore, a pre, mid and post-session plan is critical to success.
Keep the group size within five to seven, as this gives everyone the opportunity to speak and be heard.
Fill the room with ‘differently’ thinking people. While we are prone flock with likeminded people and opinions, in this case the converse in true. People from different departments, and outside the organization if required.
Set the stage to maximize the output from participants and immerse them to the situation by providing relevant examples of the situation faced rather than just reading the brief.
Energize participants to gain the best outputs and keep away at the thought that this is yet another routine. Lighten the session or start with an icebreaker to get brainstormers into the grove of the session away from regular work.
Look out for non-participants and break them into smaller groups as people may often decide to explore themselves within smaller groups.