Chapter 4: Creativity and innovation 73- Free-wheel – anything goes, the wilder the better
- Quantity – the more ideas the merrier
- Combine and improve – link ideas, improve suggested ones.
In leading a brainstorming session
the four main steps are:
1 Introduce aim of session and remind people of
Osborn’s rules
2 Warm-up if necessary do a practice exercise (eg
20 uses for a hammer)
3 State the problem not too detailed
4 Guide time to think
generation of ideas
no judgement/criticism/evaluation!
clarify
maintain free-flow of ideas
In leading a session which is ‘sticky’ and short of ideas to start with,
ask ‘what if ’ questions to stimulate thought.
Brainstorming sessions should always be followed up, perhaps in
smaller groups and ideas should then be evaluated by:- deciding the selection criteria
- selecting obvious winning ideas
- eliminating the unworkable ideas
- sifting ideas into groupings and selecting the best in each
- applying the selection criteria to obvious winners and ‘best of ’
the various groups - testing the selections by ‘reverse brainstorming’ (ie in how
many ways can this idea fail?) - informing the participants of further developments.