Need New Ideas? How to Brainstorm for Innovation
We live in a fast-paced, continually changing world. The need for new ideas to address challenges and obstacles is never ending. How do you ensure you can build a steady stream of ideas and then flesh them out in a way you can act on them? Over the course of the next few articles I am going to look at the brainstorming process (idea generation), taking action on those ideas, and building a process for ensuring you always have a way to innovate.
Brainstorming can elicit different emotions from people when they hear it. Some people love it and are eager to engage. Others bristle at the concept and do not see or understand the value in doing it. Depending on how you conduct a brainstorming session, I understand how either feeling could emerge. Brainstorming doesn’t have to be lengthy, complicated, or agitating. It starts with knowing what you need or want to accomplish. Then it comes down to assembling the right people for the situation.
Even if you are gathering your team and conducting a brainstorming session to capture the team’s feedback, there are some upfront considerations.
Know your group
You’ll need to have a good understanding of who will be participating in your session. You do want diversity of thinking whenever that is possible. Depending on the situation, you may want or need people from cross-functional groups. As important as the make up of the group is, you should also have a good understanding of how they work best. This can help set up your session to support the way they work best. Some people are not energized by sharing ideas in a rapid-fire way. They want more time to think about their responses. Others are happy to share quickly and often. Take that into consideration as you build your discussion agenda.
Setting the stage
Everyone will mention two things when talking about effective brainstorming — there are no bad ideas, and this is an exercise in quantity over quality. You are going to want to ensure everyone knows what you are solving for. Why have you gathered the group together? Reinforce the two items mentioned before — you want many ideas, you’ll solve for quality and logistics later. Give everyone a little time to prepare mentally for the discussion once you share the topic(s) and the general expectations of the groupthink.
And while it's important to start with a structured, analytical process when solving problems, this can lead a group to develop limited and unimaginative ideas. 1
No bad ideas
This sounds completely cliché, and of course there are bad ideas sometimes, but not in brainstorming. You need to ensure that you have an environment where everyone feels safe to share ideas quickly. We have all had those moments where we were speaking quickly and hadn’t given what we said a lot of thought. The next thing we know, that idea is coming out of our mouth. You want that in brainstorming. You do not want people worried about being judged on what they say or share. Capture even the weirdest ideas and explore them later. If you truly do not understand what someone is thinking about, have them define it a little further. That alone could spur new thinking and ideas from others in the group.
Using different forms of brainstorming techniques
There are various types of techniques that can be used for capturing ideas in a brainstorming session. Some of these lend themselves to different types of groups. Understanding the common processes can help tailor your session to the types of people you have assembled.
Quick idea generation
This may be the one most people are familiar with and really involves just sharing a topic that you want to gather ideas on and start throwing out words and concepts. This is rapid-fire sharing and simply capturing the information on a whiteboard or notepad. I would recommend establishing a time frame to go through the sharing. Then build in time for everyone to review and digest what was just shared. This will also allow some folks who may not be as quick with ideas to adjust to what they have seen or heard and then share more of their own ideas. Make time to allow for additional thoughts, maybe even touching on each person as you go, to ensure everyone has the opportunity.
Round-robin
This involves moving from person to person, allowing each to share an idea in order. This allows everyone to participate and slows the pace a little. It will also help to reduce duplicates, yet still allow for others to share their own perspective which may seem similar to what someone else has said.
Step ladder
I find this to be an interesting approach to idea generation. You explain to the full group what you are solving for, so everyone has the same central topic. Then you have all but two people leave the room. Those two begin to share ideas with each other and capture them. Then after a specified period of time, a new person enters the room, the three people briefly discuss and catch the new person up. Then one of the initial two leaves and the other two complete the same exercise. This continues until all the group have participated. You can even encourage people to continue discussing once they have left the room. Then capture those in an ‘after session.’
This can really help people who may not function as well with a larger group or want some extra time to think through or discuss their ideas.
Brain writing
This is another option that will work well for people who want an opportunity to think through responses and not have to answer quickly while keeping up with what everyone else is saying. With brain writing, you share the topic and have everyone else capture their ideas on paper (or digital form) and then you review person by person sharing their ideas with the group.
I like to think of this as the Scattergories approach to brainstorming. If you have ever played the game, you’ll know what I mean. For those who have not, a letter is selected by rolling a die, then you have a list of topics that you have to use that letter to start your word. Then everyone shares what they came up with. Scoring is done based on whether you have duplicate ideas. This is a similar approach to generating ideas on your topic. The big difference will be no scoring, and there are no right or wrong answers.
Benefits of brainstorming
There are several benefits that can come from conducting brainstorming sessions. If you have ever participated in one, especially as the participant role, versus the leader role, these will likely sound familiar.
Getting people to share ideas is a great way to create engagement. People feel like they are being heard when you conduct an effective brainstorming session. It helps them feel as though they are part of the solution. They are sharing their ideas on things they are likely very familiar with. That will generate a lot more interest and buy-in when you need to put the ideas into action for results.
Brainstorming is more than just throwing words on the whiteboard and picking one to work on. Effectively working through an issue with multiple new ideas from different perspectives can really help accelerate your issue resolution, growth, and ability to outperform your competition.
In the next article, we’ll look at how you can take the ideas from your session and begin to put them into action.
How can you use brainstorming to help generate innovative ideas for your specific needs?
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Brainstorming
Generating Many Radical, Creative Ideas