How to Run a Brainstorming Session
In a nutshell:
1. Keep to Osborn’s rules.
2. Have a facilitator to manage the group.
3. Define the problem as a broad ‘How to’
statement.
4. Set a numerical target for the number of
ideas generated – and make it challenging.
5. Separate individual idea generation from
group idea development.
6. Select ideas to be taken forward by voting.
7. Keep the session short – probably no more
than an hour at most.
Now, in more detail:
Brainstorming is a structured process for generating new ideas.
It was invented in the 1930s by Alex Osborn, an American advertising executive. He listed four simple principles to help us generate new ideas.
Alex Osborn's four rules of brainstorming
- Criticism is ruled out.
- “Free-wheeling” is welcomed.
- Quantity is wanted.
- Combination and improvement are sought.
In truth, Osborn doesn’t develop the discipline of brainstorming much further. He emphasizes the importance of:
- getting going – not waiting for inspiration to strike;
- focus – on the objective of the session, what we want to achieve;
- attention – of the whole team to one kind of thinking at a time; and
- concentration – sticking at it, refusing to give up if no ideas come.
Above all, he stresses the need for effort. Again and again, he insists, in his book Applied Imagination, that nothing is more vital to the success of a brainstorming session than working hard.
In the decades since Osborn published his book, a great deal of research has examined brainstorming and how well it works. Osborn’s rules stand up well, but we can add to them in the light of this research and make brainstorming even more effective.
Let’s look first at what Osborn meant by his own rules, initially in his own words.
1. “Criticism is ruled out. Adverse judgement
of ideas must be withheld until later.”
We can imagine thinking as a process in two stages.
First-stage thinking (what Osborn calls ‘ideation’) is perception. We recognize some part of reality because it fits a pre-existing mental pattern. The output of first-stage thinking is language: we name what we have perceived and ‘label’ it.
Second-stage thinking (which Osborn calls ‘judgement’) manipulates language in order to do something useful. We judge using reasoning and evaluation. Reason gives meaning to what we have perceived; evaluation tells us whether we like it or not, and what we might choose to do about it.
We’re much better at second-stage thinking than at first-stage thinking. Indeed, we are so good at it that we can build machines to do it: computers are second-stage thinking devices. We’re not nearly so good at first-stage thinking; we tend to assume that we know what we are looking at. As a result, we tend to leap to judgement about our perceptions. In brainstorming, such second-stage thinking can be fatal because it prevents the generation of new ideas.
So Osborn’s rule essentially means ‘withhold second-stage thinking until you have done some good first-stage thinking’.
2. “ ‘Free-wheeling’ is welcomed. The
wilder the idea, the better; it is easier to
tame down than to think up.”
Generating ideas means looking at things in new ways. Turn your eyes from the screen on which you are reading this text and look at the first object you see. What is it? You have named it, using first-stage thinking.
Now ask: ‘What else is it? What could it be?’ Find new ways of naming it.
The first few ideas you come up with will probably be fairly predictable; that’s ok. A video remote is: a transmitting device; a keypad; a control mechanism.
Now ‘freewheel’: allow yourself to have some wild ideas. It’s a missile (most things can be missiles!); a straight edge for ruling; a container for batteries; a doorstop; a window-prop; a back-scratcher; an exercise device for your gripping muscles.
We are developing our first-stage thinking. Most of the good ideas have already been thought; the potential is in the wild ideas, the silly ideas, the crazy ideas.
3. “Quantity is wanted. The greater the
number of ideas, the more the likelihood of
useful ideas.”
Rule 3 supports Rule 1: generating lots of ideas automatically stops us judging ideas as they appear. Interestingly, research in the early 1960s suggests that, in any idea-generating activity, the ratio of good ideas (rated by their uniqueness and value) to the sheer number of ideas tends to remain constant – whether the group applies brainstorming rules or not! So the best way to get more good ideas is to generate as many ideas as we can.
4. “Combination and improvement aresought.
In addition to contributing ideas of their
own, participants should suggest how ideas
of others can be turned into better ideas; or
how two or more ideas can be joined into
still another idea.”
Rule 4 might seem to contradict Rule 1. Doesn’t combining and improving ideas mean judging them? And aren’t we supposed to be withholding judgement? Yes, and yes.
An idea is only ever the product of a single mind. Research has shown that individuals are more productive than groups in generating creative ideas; groups are better at developing them. Brainstorming can benefit from using both, but only if we separate the two activities. (It’s not clear that Osborn quite understood this point.)
So here is the first of three new principles to add to Osborn’s four rules.
Separate idea generation from idea development, and run the two activities at different times
Begin by asking people to generate ideas individually. Gather them anonymously, to encourage the wilder ideas to surface and counter any politics or inhibitions in the team. Then use group brainstorming to group the ideas, build on them, combine them, vary them, develop them and transform them.
And the other two new principles?
Set targets for the number of ideas generated
The discipline of ‘scoring’ can produce more ideas and help crazier ideas to surface. Research strongly suggests that setting people specific and challenging targets for a task motivates them to set higher personal targets. You will need to decide what you think a challenging target might be; but twelve ideas per person per minute is not unreasonable. Don’t expect to achieve the target (that’s what ‘challenging’ means!); but expect people to generate perhaps 25% of your target number.
Define the initial task as a ‘How to’
Brainstorming is appropriate for broad, ‘fuzzy’ problems where the aim is not to fix a fault or put something right, but to find something new.
We can structure a problem according to:
- initial conditions: where we are now;
- goal conditions: where we want to be;
- operators: how we move from initial conditions to goal conditions; and
- constraints: anything that limits or regulates how we act.
If these four factors are well defined, a problem is ‘well structured’ – and solving it becomes more or less a technical exercise requiring expertise or experience. (Think of a jigsaw puzzle or fixing a fault in a machine.) If any or all of these factors are not well defined, the problem becomes 'ill structured’ – and that’s the kind of fuzzy problem for which brainstorming is ideal.
Put very simply, define your problem as a ‘How to’ statement and you will almost automatically make it less well structured. (Even ‘How to fix the clutch’ becomes a more creative problem statement than ‘The clutch is broken’.) Make the ‘How to’ statement as broad as possible, and you will open the doors to more creative ideas.
Based on these thoughts, here again are my seven rules for effective brainstorming.
1. Keep to Osborn’s rules.
2. Have a facilitator to manage the group.
3. Define the problem as a broad ‘How to’
statement.
4. Set a numerical target for the number of
ideas generated – and make it challenging.
5. Separate individual idea generation from
group idea development.
6. Select ideas to be taken forward by voting.
7. Keep the session short – probably no more
than an hour at most.
Afterword
The urban myth that the word ‘brainstorming’ is offensive to people with epilepsy has been roundly dispelled by Epilepsy Action, Britain’s largest member-led epilepsy organisation in Britain. For more, go to:
http://www.epilepsy.org.uk/press/facts/brainstorming
This content was provided by one of our users, alanbarker830
