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What Is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a technique used to generate new ideas in a group setting. It involves two phases - divergence, where judgment is deferred and all ideas are treated as valid, and convergence, where participants positively evaluate ideas. Brainstorming is useful when multiple options are needed, such as ways to gain customer insights or reward employees. The process involves writing down individual ideas, combining duplicates, voting on favorites, and discussing implementation of top ideas. Guidelines include deferring judgment, seeking unusual ideas, and using affirmative judgment during evaluation. Brainstorming works best when a problem does not have a single correct solution and requires a group space.

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52 views2 pages

What Is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a technique used to generate new ideas in a group setting. It involves two phases - divergence, where judgment is deferred and all ideas are treated as valid, and convergence, where participants positively evaluate ideas. Brainstorming is useful when multiple options are needed, such as ways to gain customer insights or reward employees. The process involves writing down individual ideas, combining duplicates, voting on favorites, and discussing implementation of top ideas. Guidelines include deferring judgment, seeking unusual ideas, and using affirmative judgment during evaluation. Brainstorming works best when a problem does not have a single correct solution and requires a group space.

Uploaded by

Yasmin khan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1.

Brainstorming
What is Brainstorming?
Brainstorming is a simple way of helping a group of people to generate new and unusual
ideas. The process is actually split into two phrases: divergence and convergence. During
the
divergent phase, everyone agrees to delay their judgment. In other words, all ideas will be
treated as valid. During the convergent phrase, the participants use their judgment but do
so in a 'positive' manner—that is, they look for what they like about the ideas before finding
flaws.
Why Use This Tool?
Brainstorming is appropriate whenever you need to generate a range of options that goes
beyond the immediately obvious set. Examples might include
• All the places one could gain customer insights from,
• Different ways to learn from competitors,
• New ways to use emerging internet tools to support our customers, and
• Different ways to reward employees for knowledge capture.
Brainstorms can be organized very quickly and require very little in the way of material. The
instructions (below) describe one method, but the tool is actually very resilient and the
basic
principles can be applied in many different ways.

How to Brainstorm
1. Agree who will facilitate the activity.
2. Make sure everyone is aware of the basic guidelines (see Guidelines for Brainstorming).
3. Ideally, give everyone sticky notes and pens so that they can write their ideas down.
4. Write the problem on a flip chart—or piece of paper, if you do not have a flip chart—so
that everyone can see it all the time.
5. Ask everyone if they understand the problem, and whether there is anything that needs
clarification. Deal with any information needs, if required.
6. Potentially, have a group discussion about the criteria that will be used for idea
selection.

7. Ask everyone to start writing down their ideas—one idea per sticky note—and hand
them to the facilitator, who then sticks them on the flip chart. If there are no sticky
notes, ask people to shout out their ideas—one idea at a time—and the facilitator can
write them down.
8. When the group has finally run out of ideas, take the flip chart page(s) and ask the
group to
1. Look for duplicates, and combine them.
2. Vote (by putting dots, tick [check mark], or some other symbol) on their favorite X
ideas (the number is determined by the requirements of the situation), based upon
the criteria that were identified in the previous step

3. Pick the highest rated ideas and have the group discuss how the ideas would be
implemented—typically this involves identifying the critical next steps.
Guidelines for Brainstorming
Divergent stage
1. Defer judgment
2. Go for quantity
3. Seek wild and unusual ideas
4. Combine and associate
5. Write everything down
Convergent stage
1. Improve ideas as you go
2. Use affirmative judgment
3. Be deliberate
4. Seek novelty
5. Check with your objectives
When to Use Brainstorming (and When Not)
Brainstorming is useful when there is a need to generate a relatively large number of
options
or ideas. It is not appropriate when a problem is known to have a single correct solution
that
requires careful analysis to determine. For example, brainstorming about possible solutions
to
a mathematical problem would probably be a poor use of time.
Where to Use Brainstorming

Brainstorming can be used in almost any situation where a group (consisting of two or more
people) can find a space to work together. This can be as simple as a shared desk with
some blank pieces of paper.

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