1. Defer Judgement
This is the most basic and most important rule of brainstorming. It’s also the most difficult one for “smart” people to follow.. The more experienced and smarter we get, the easier it is to shoot down nascent ideas with our intellect. But the point of brainstorming is to “generate” ideas, not “evaluate” them- that happens later as a separate exercise. Both activities are important for success, but it is imperative that they are conducted separately. The opposite is also true. If challenging someone’s idea causes them to retreat, praising an idea has a similar negative effect. If during a brainstorm someone proclaims, “That idea is brilliant- let’s get going on that one now!”, the “bar” has been raised to a level where it is intimidating for that person or anyone else to contribute new ideas. Participants feel that they need to create an idea that is better than that one in order for it to be worthy of contribution. In effect, participants begin to “self-judge,” which is also a violation of the first rule of brainstorming! The process slows down and the energy is sucked out of the session. We can learn a lot from kids in understanding this rule. As a toy inventor, I conducted several brainstorm sessions with young children and this is one rule I never have to remind them of once we start. Every time one of them puts forth an idea, without fail, an enthusiastic “Yes! And...” is sure to follow.
2. Encourage Wild Ideas
The point of brainstorming in the first place is to generate new and creative ideas, pushing beyond what is safe and predictable. Many times, the truly wild ideas aren’t in themselves valuable, but reigned in a notch or two they become useable. If you didn’t allow yourself to explore these really crazy ones, you wouldn’t have come up with these saner but better ideas. The power of group brainstorming is not in collecting a list of “what we already know” (an online wiki would be a better forum for that type of process), it is in making connections with concepts and ideas that you previously wouldn’t have realized could be connected. Your brain is a collection of random unrelated personal experiences and memories just waiting to be applied to the topic at hand. New ideas are created when you combine ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Once again, kids seem to not have a problem following this rule either!
3. Build on the Ideas of Others
It’s widely known that in the end of any project, initiative, or program, the best and most successful of them will be the ones with so many fingerprints on them that no any one person can claim all the credit for it’s success. This holds true for brainstorming as well. Active listening is just as important as being able to spew out ideas rapidly in a brainstorm. It’s the combination of different perspectives built upon each other that creates ideas that are more unique. None of us is as smart as all of us. At the end of a brainstorm session, if none of the ideas were builds off of the ideas of others, the creative potential of that session wasn’t realized. Once again, kids seem to not have a problem following this rule either!
4. Stay Focused on the Topic
Here’s where kids start to have difficulty following a brainstorming rule! They are so creative that there minds can jump anywhere at anytime! For creativity to be harnessed for real-world problem solving, staying focused on the topic is important. It is easier to stay on topic when the topic is well defined and more narrow than wide. Effective brainstorming is a balanced combination of “both “fluid” and “flexible” thought processes. Fluid thought (Depth) is the ability to exhaust a list of similar concepts (ie, list every type of sport ending in “ball”-baseball, football, basketball, skeeball, etc...). Flexible thought (Breadth) is the ability to exhaust a list of dissimilar concepts (ie, list every describable attribute of a “baseball”- round, hard, white, inedible, dangerous, etc...). The implications of not staying focused on the topic during a brainstorm session, is that the list will contain more breadth than depth. It is better to brainstorm multiple discrete topics in succession, exhausting all fluid and flexible ideas in each session, than it is to have a broadly stated topic that covers too much ground.
5. One Conversation at a Time
Here’s another rule that kids have a hard time following! This rule is tied to “Building on the Ideas of Others” and “Stay focused on the Topic.” You can’t do either rule effectively if you have more than one conversation going on at a time. In really successful brainstorms, it becomes difficult for participants to contain their excitement and they are inspired to start having side conversations about some of the ideas. Brainstorm sessions should not last very long (60 minutes max per topic) so it is important to stay focused on the session and continue to participate. This energy that is created during brainstorms is why it is also important to quickly enter “rapid prototyping” mode shortly after brainstorming to leverage this momentum (more on this topic later).
6. Be Visual
A picture is worth a thousand words. Draw a sketch of your idea whenever possible. Visual aides substantially increases understanding of a concept and memory recall of that concept during voting. Don’t worry about artistic quality- go quick and sketchy and then get to your next idea. In the time-pressured game of Pictionary, it’s the professional artists who tend to do worse at the game when competing against non-artists. Stick figures are more than appropriate- its getting the concept across that matters.
7. Go for Quantity
The best way to have really good ideas, is to have lots of ideas. In order to do this, you need to ideate fast. A good goal is around “100 ideas per hour.” With group practice and depending on the topic you should eventually be able to exceed double that amount. Ideating this fast means that there will be lots of ideas that seem to be superficial. This is okay, because these ideas are really just starting points and it’s what you do next with the ideas that counts- combining them, expanding them, and making them real through rapid prototyping. It’s better to have lots of starting points to use as fodder when it comes time to start prototyping.
8. Everyone Participates
Brainstorming is as much a social activity as it is a mental one. People not participating in a brainstorm are not allowed to be present. Particularly creativity-stifling is when the non-participant is a boss or someone else of influence- brainstorming is not a “presentation” of ideas, it’s “generation” of ideas. Contributing wild and unevaluated ideas to a group is inherently a risky activity and you are potentially exposing yourself to judgement and ridicule. A way to get over this is to level the playing field by enforcing that everyone in the room is required to participate. No one likes to show up to a costume party where they were the only one who dressed up!
9. Record & Number Every Idea
Make sure that every single idea gets written down AND numbered. There is a tendency for lots of ideas to get blurted out in rapid succession and some of them get lost in the fray. It is the responsibility of the group to make sure the facilitator captures every single idea. If she or he didn’t hear it, make sure it gets repeated and captured. Numbering the ideas has two major functions. First, it gives a realtime indication of the progress of the session- remember that you should be aiming for 100+ ideas per hour. Second, when it comes time to vote and the facilitator reads back all of the ideas to the group, voters can use the numbers to identify and create a shortlist of their favorites before everyone crowds the idea boards.