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BRAINSTORMING

Let's start with one of the oldest techniques for helping people to be creative—brainstorming.  It was developed in the 1950s and used originally in advertising.  Brainstorming assumes that one of the important reasons most people don’t express their creative ideas is that we tend to evaluate ideas as they are presented. Since most ideas we have are not “great ideas” when we first think of them, we sit silent. Few of us want to suggest a new, unproven, innovative idea only to be met with “Won't work;” “We can’t do that;” or “We’ve tried that—didn’t work.” Recognizing that such comments kill ideas, the developers of brainstorming suggested, “Why not separate idea generation from evaluation?”  If we had the freedom to throw out ideas in a group without the fear of
having our ideas criticized, then maybe more people would suggest ideas. Plus, we might be able to build off each other's ideas. Listening to one crazy idea after another, someone might eventually put one crazy idea together with another crazy idea and come up with something unique that really would work.

As we said, brainstorming has been used successfully to encourage creativity for over thirty years. However, to make it work for you, you must follow some simple rules:

1. Choose a topic to brainstorm that isn't too broad or too narrow. For example, “What causes bad quality?”  “How can we make customers like us?”, “What new use could our customers make of product X?” These are all good brainstorming topics.

2. Brainstorm the causes of a problem before you brainstorm possible solutions to a problem.

3. Brainstorming works best if you restrict the size of the group to six to twelve people. That is enough people to generate a lot of ideas, but not so many that everyone can't participate.

4. To lead a brainstorming session effectively, you have to be something of a cheerleader.  You have to make the process fun and encourage the more reluctant in the group to participate. The more relaxed you are, the more relaxed the participants will be and the more ideas you will generate.

5. Go over the five basic rules with the group in advance:
a.  No one is allowed to criticize an idea.
b. Go for quantity, not quality—the more ideas the better.
c. Everyone should participate.
d. “Freewheeling” is encouraged—the crazier the ideas the better.
e. Combine and build upon each other's ideas.

6. Use a flip chart to record ideas rapidly as they are presented.  Have one or two recorders to help you in writing up the ideas.

7. Keep the whole brainstorming session moving rapidly. Praise the people for the volume of ideas, (“That's great!  We've got a dozen. Let's go for another dozen.”) Note: Never praise a particular idea.

8. If necessary, to get things going or to encourage more ideas offer a “crazy” idea of your own.  

Brainstorming has been repeatedly shown to be an effective technique for generating a lot of ideas in a very short period of time. If the problem or issue being brainstormed is broad enough it is not unusual for a good brainstorming session to generate fifty or one hundred ideas within as little as an hour. Obviously, many of these ideas are unworkable or unusable, but five or ten will be and it is those five or ten that make the whole process worth the effort.

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