Creativity Tools >> Generating many radical ideas - Brainstorming and Reverse Brainstorming

1 - Brainstorming

Generating many radical, creative ideas

Brainstorming is a popular tool that helps you generate creative solutions to a problem.

It is particularly useful when you want to break out of stale, established patterns of thinking, so that you can develop new ways of looking at things. It also helps you overcome many of the issues that can make group problem-solving a sterile and unsatisfactory process.

Used with your team, it helps you bring the diverse experience of all team members into play during problem solving. This increases the richness of ideas explored, meaning that you can find better solutions to the problems you face.

It can also help you get buy in from team members for the solution chosen – after all, they were involved in developing it. What’s more, because brainstorming is fun, it helps team members bond with one-another as they solve problems in a positive, rewarding environment.

Why Use Brainstorming? Conventional group problem-solving can be fraught with problems. Confident, "big-ego" participants can drown out and intimidate quieter group members. Less confident participants can be too scared of ridicule to share their ideas freely. Others may feel pressurized to conform with the group view, or are held back by an excessive respect for authority. As such, group problem-solving is often ineffective and sterile. By contrast, brainstorming provides a freewheeling environment in which everyone is encouraged to participate. Quirky ideas are welcomed, and many of the issues of group problem-solving are overcome. All participants are asked to contribute fully and fairly, liberating people to develop a rich array of creative solutions to the problems they're facing. “Brainstorming 2.0” The original approach to brainstorming was developed by Madison Avenue advertising executive, Alex Osborn, in the 1950s. Since then, many researchers have explored the technique, and have identified issues with it. The steps described here seek to take account of this research, meaning that the approach described below differs subtly from Osborn's original one.

What Is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming combines a relaxed, informal approach to problem-solving with lateral thinking. It asks that people come up with ideas and thoughts that can at first seem to be a bit crazy. The idea here is that some of these ideas can be crafted into original, creative solutions to the problem you're trying to solve, while others can spark still more ideas. This approach aims to get people unstuck, by "jolting" them out of their normal ways of thinking.

During brainstorming sessions there should therefore be no criticism of ideas: You are trying to open up possibilities and break down wrong assumptions about the limits of the problem. Judgments and analysis at this stage stunt idea generation.

Ideas should only be evaluated at the end of the brainstorming session – this is the time to explore solutions further using conventional approaches.

Individual Brainstorming

While group brainstorming is often more effective at generating ideas than normal group problem-solving, study after study has shown that when individuals brainstorm on their own, they come up with more ideas (and often better quality ideas) than groups of people who brainstorm together.
Partly this occurs because, in groups, people aren’t always strict in following the rules of brainstorming, and bad group behaviors creep in. Mostly, though, this occurs because people are paying so much attention to other people’s ideas that they're not generating ideas of their own – or they're forgetting these ideas while they wait for their turn to speak. This is called "blocking".

When you brainstorm on your own, you'll tend to produce a wider range of ideas than with group brainstorming – you do not have to worry about other people's egos or opinions, and can therefore be more freely creative. For example, you might find that an idea you’d be hesitant to bring up in a group session develops into something quite special when you explore it with individual brainstorming. Nor do you have to wait for others to stop speaking before you contribute your own ideas.

You may not, however, develop ideas as fully when you brainstorm on your own, as you do not have the wider experience of other members of a group to help you.

Tip: When Brainstorming on your own, consider using Mind Maps to arrange and develop ideas.

Group Brainstorming

When it works, group brainstorming can be very effective for bringing the full experience and creativity of all members of the group to bear on an issue. When individual group members get stuck with an idea, another member's creativity and experience can take the idea to the next stage. Group brainstorming can therefore develop ideas in more depth than individual brainstorming.

Another advantage of group brainstorming is that it helps everyone involved to feel that they’ve contributed to the end solution, and it reminds people that other people have creative ideas to offer. What’s more, brainstorming is fun, and it can be great for team-building!

Brainstorming in a group can be risky for individuals. Valuable but strange suggestions may appear stupid at first sight. Because of this, you need to chair sessions tightly so that ideas are not crushed, and so that the usual issues with group problem-solving don’t stifle creativity.

How to Use the Tool:

You can often get the best results by combining individual and group brainstorming, and by managing the process carefully and according to the "rules" below. That way, you get people to focus on the issue without interruption (this comes from having everyone in a dedicated group meeting), you maximize the number of ideas you can generate, and you get that great feeling of team bonding that comes with a well-run brainstorming session!

To run a group brainstorming session effectively, do the following:

• Find a comfortable meeting environment, and set it up ready for the session.
  
• Appoint one person to record the ideas that come from the session. These should be noted in a format than everyone can see and refer to. Depending on the approach you want to use, you may want to record ideas on flip charts, whiteboards, or computers with data projectors.
  
• If people aren’t already used to working together, consider using an appropriate warm-up exercise or ice-breaker.
  
• Define the problem you want solved clearly, and lay out any criteria to be met. Make it clear that that the objective of the meeting is to generate as many ideas as possible.
  
• Give people plenty of time on their own at the start of the session to generate as many ideas as possible.
  
• Ask people to give their ideas, making sure that you give everyone a fair opportunity to contribute.
  
• Encourage people to develop other people's ideas, or to use other ideas to create new ones.
  
• Encourage an enthusiastic, uncritical attitude among members of the group. Try to get everyone to contribute and develop ideas, including the quietest members of the group.
  
• Ensure that no one criticizes or evaluates ideas during the session. Criticism introduces an element of risk for group members when putting forward an idea. This stifles creativity and cripples the free running nature of a good brainstorming session.
  
• Let people have fun brainstorming. Encourage them to come up with as many ideas as possible, from solidly practical ones to wildly impractical ones. Welcome creativity!
  
• Ensure that no train of thought is followed for too long. Make sure that you generate a sufficient number of different ideas, as well as exploring individual ideas in detail.
  
• In a long session, take plenty of breaks so that people can continue to concentrate.

Taking Your Brainstorming Further... If you're still not getting the ideas you want, try using these approaches to increase the number of ideas that you generate: The Stepladder Technique – This improves the contribution of quieter members of the group. Brainwriting – A written approach to brainstorming. The Crawford's Slip Approach – This helps you get plenty of ideas from all participants in your session, and gives you a view of the popularity of each idea. The techniques below help you in specific brainstorming situations: Reverse Brainstorming – This is useful for improving a product or service. Starbursting – Brainstorm the questions you need to ask to evaluate a proposal. Charette Procedure – This procedure helps you brainstorm effectively with large groups of people.

Where possible, participants in the brainstorming process should come from as wide a range of disciplines as possible. This brings a broad range of experience to the session and helps to make it more creative. However, don’t make the group too big – as with other types of teamwork, groups of between 5 and 7 people are often most effective.

Key Points:

Brainstorming is a useful way of generating radical solutions to problems, just as long as it's managed well. During the brainstorming process there is no criticism of ideas, and free rein is given to people's creativity (criticism and judgment cramp creativity.)

This tends to make group brainstorming sessions enjoyable experiences, which are great for bringing team members together. Using brainstorming also helps people commit to solutions, because they have participated in the development of these solutions.

The best approach to brainstorming combines individual and group brainstorming. Group brainstorming needs formal rules for it to work smoothly.

2 - Reverse Brainstorming

A different approach to brainstorming
Related variant: "Negative Brainstorming"

Reverse brainstorming helps you solve problems by combining brainstorming and reversal techniques. By combining these, you can extend your use of brainstorming to draw out even more creative ideas.

To use this technique, you start with one of two "reverse" questions:

Instead of asking, "How do I solve or prevent this problem?" ask, "How could I possibly cause the problem?"

Instead of asking "How do I achieve these results?" ask,"How could I possibly achieve the opposite effect?"

How to Use the Tool:

1. Clearly identify the problem or challenge, and write it down.
   
2. Reverse the problem or challenge by asking:
   "How could I possibly cause the problem?", or
   "How could I possibly achieve the opposite effect?"
   
3. Brainstorm the reverse problem to generate reverse solution ideas. Allow the brainstorm ideas to flow freely. Do not reject anything at this stage.
   
4. Once you have brainstormed all the ideas to solve the reverse problem, now reverse these into solution ideas for the original problem or challenge.
   
5. Evaluate these solution ideas. Can you see a potential solution? Can you see attributes of a potential solution?

Tip: Reverse brain-storming is a good technique to try when it is difficult to identify solutions to the problem directly.

Example:
Luciana is the manager of a health clinic and she has the task of improving patient satisfaction.

There have been various improvement initiatives in the past and the team members have become rather skeptical about another meeting on the subject. The team is overworked, team members are "trying their best" and there is no appetite to "waste time" talking about this.

So she decides to use some creative problem solving techniques she has learned. This, she hopes, will make the team meeting more interesting and engage people in a new way.

Perhaps it will reveal something more than the usual "good ideas" that no one has time to act on.

To prepare for the team meeting, Luciana thinks carefully about the problem and writes down the problem statement:

• "How do we improve patient satisfaction?"

Then she reverses problem statement:

• "How do we make patients more dissatisfied?"

Already she starts to see how the new angle could reveal some surprising results.

At the team meeting, everyone gets involved in an enjoyable and productive reverse brainstorming session. They draw on both their work experience with patients and also their personal experience of being patients and customers of other organizations. Luciana helps ideas flow freely, ensuring people to not pass judgment on even the most unlikely suggestions.

Here are just a few of the "reverse" ideas:

• Double book appointments.
• Remove the chairs from the waiting room.
• Put patients who phone on hold (and forget about them).
• Have patients wait outside in the car park.
• Discuss patient's problems in public.

More Brainstorming Tools As an alternative to reverse brainstorming, these approaches can help you find suitable solutions by increasing the number of ideas that you generate: The Stepladder Technique – This improves the contribution of quieter members of the group. Brainwriting – A written approach to brainstorming. The Crawford's Slip Approach – This helps you get plenty of ideas from all participants in your session, and gives you a view of the popularity of each idea. The techniques below help you in specific brainstorming situations: Starbursting – Brainstorm the questions you need to ask to evaluate a proposal. Charette Procedure – This procedure helps you brainstorm effectively with large groups of people.

When the brainstorming session runs dry, the team has a long list of the "reverse" solutions. Now it's time to look at each one in reverse into a potential solution. Well, resulting discussions are quite revealing. For example:

"Well of course we don't leave patients outside in the car park – we already don't do that."
"But what about in the morning, there are often patients waiting outside until opening time?"
"Mmm, true. Pretty annoying for people on first appointments."
"So why don't we open the waiting room 10 minutes earlier so it doesn't happen?"
"Right, we'll do that from tomorrow. There are several members of staff working already, so it's no problem".

And so it went on. The reverse brainstorming session revealed tens of improvement ideas that the team could implement swiftly and easily.

Luciana concluded: "It was enlightening and fun to looking at the problem in reverse. The amazing thing is, it's helped us become more patient-friendly by stopping doing things rather than creating more work".

Key Points:

Reverse brain-storming is a good technique for creative problem solving, and can lead to robust solutions. Be sure to follow the basic rules of brainstorming to explore possible solutions to the full.