Related Activities
- Ideas in a Box [25]
- Parts Is Parts [30]
- SAMM I Am [33]
Procedure
- Distribute the Story Boards Handout, review it with the participants, and answer
any questions they may have. - Tell group members to brainstorm solution categories (attributes) and write each
one on a large Post-it®Note and place them in a row approximately five feet above
the floor along a wall. - Instruct group members to use each category as a stimulus for problem solutions
and write these solutions on new notes. - Have them place the solution notes below the appropriate category card.
- Have the group members examine the solutions and try to generate additional
ideas from them or combine solutions across categories and use them as stimuli
for new ideas. - Tell the participants to continue this process (Steps 4 and 5) until the group gener-
ates a sufficient number of ideas or time runs out. - Direct them to write down any ideas on Post-it®Notes (one idea per note) and
place them on flip charts for evaluation.
Debrief/Discussion
This is an “oldie but goodie” approach that provides some structure to the idea genera-
tion process while providing a fun, energizing activity. Unlike most other activities, Story
Boards allows people to walk around and be active during idea generation—a feature
found in some research to be conducive to creative thinking. Because of the flexibility the
large Post-it®Notes provide, you might ask participants to devise their own variations of
this procedure. For instance, you might suggest that they experiment with “affinity
groups” and use the notes to cluster together related ideas.
Also consider having participants debrief using the following questions:- What was most helpful about this exercise?
- What was most challenging?
- What can we apply?
- How would you rate the value of this exercise to helping us with this issue?
- Will this exercise be helpful in the future for other sessions?
- What did you learn?
- What will we be able to use from this exercise?
- What ideas were generated, and which ones were most interesting?
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