The American Heritage Dictionary defines Brainstorming as a noun that is a “method of shared problem solving in which all members of a group spontaneously contribute ideas.”
Brainstorming is usually a group activity undertaken to rapidly generate a variety of ideas or solutions to a problem. It’s a quick exercise that can be accomplished in less than 15 minutes and request little or no preparation.
Here’s the process to conduct a Brainstorming session:
Setup
- Prepare a conference room with a white board, flip chart or other means to collect the ideas that are generated by the session
- Set a time limit to generate the ideas, usually 5 to 10 minutes
- Nominate a scribe to write the ideas on the white board or flip chart
- Limit group size to 8-10
Process
- The group leader presents a topic, question or problem to all group members
- Group members verbally state ideas either in turn or free-form
- Members may piggyback or expand on ideas generated earlier or by other members
- Don’t censor any ideas
- Think freely; wild ideas are okay
- No evaluation or criticism of ideas is allowed during the idea generation portion of the process
- Continue until ideas are exhausted or time limit is reached
Analysis
- Clarify each of the ideas on the list
- Combine ideas where appropriate
- Eliminate redundancies
- Categorize ideas where possible
- Select ideas for further investigation
Advantages
- This process quickly generates many creative ideas
- The freedom from evaluation encourages participation and contribution of less safe ideas which may prove valuable
- The process fosters group ownership of the list of ideas
Disadvantages
- The process may tend to be dominated by quick thinkers or strong personalities
- Increases pressure on individuals to produce ideas, especially if the group is taking turns