T Brainstorming Techniques

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Brainstorming Techniques

Section 1: Brainstorming Techniques


BMGI. All rights reserved. No portion may be copied, rewritten, reproduced, or published. Page 2 of 28

Module Objectives

The online reference site Wikipedia defines brainstorming as a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas in order to solve a problem. The term was made popular by a prominent American advertising executive, and today the technique is used in companies across all industries. This course is intended to help facilitators create effective, successful brainstorming sessions by introducing a variety of methods designed to address any problem a team may face.

In this module, we will:

Discuss the ground rules for brainstorming and why they are important

Define the job to be done and how it relates to brainstorming

Review six brainstorming techniques that facilitators can use to generate the best ideas from a group

Lets get started.



Establish the Ground Rules

Brainstorming sessions can produce great ideas from a variety of participants. It is a technique that leverages the creativity of a group to generate a high number of ideas. Participants bring different perspectives to a problem based on their functions, personal backgrounds and professional expertise, and the best results come from groups that involve a wide variety of individuals.

As a facilitator, its important to make the brainstorming environment as comfortable for all participants as possible. A good way to do this is to establish a set of ground rules for the session. Allow participants to recommend and agree on the rules that will allow everyone to generate ideas.

Get your team started with these guidelines:

Make sure everyone understands there is no criticism. In order for ideas to flow freely, people must feel secure about speaking their minds.

Do not evaluate or qualify ideas during the brainstorming session. This will come after ideas are generated. Brainstorming is about moving quickly and coming up with as many ideas as possible.

Limit the constraints on ideas. Depending on your brainstorming techniques, there may be some ground rules, but otherwise, dont restrict ideas to specific parameters such as cost, impact or resource usage.

Build on existing ideas. Its natural that one idea triggers another, and its OK to use someone elses idea as a jumping-off point. Make sure the team knows its all right to use each other as inspiration.

Once the rules have been established and agreed on by everyone in the group, the team will feel more comfortable in generating the best, most creative ideas possible.



Define the Job to be Done

Before you can begin a brainstorming session, its important to understand the job to be done. This is a statement of the problem that needs to be solved, otherwise known as the desired end result. Understanding the job to be done is a way for teams to connect with what customers truly want.

Consider dirty laundry as an example. Regardless of the type of washing machine, the brand of detergent or the method used, the true job to be done is to produce clean clothing on a consistent basis. If you held a brainstorming session focused on that job, rather than the job of building a better washer or formulating a better detergent, you might come up with several innovative ideas, such as a formula that can be sprayed on clothes to clean them, or even clothing that resists dirt, stains or odor.

Expressing the job to be done gets to the true root of the issue. Be sure the group agrees on the job to be done before you begin so everyone is working toward the same goal.



Section 1: Brainstorming Techniques

Introduction

Brainstorming can be used to solve a variety of problems. Whether your team is trying to improve an existing product or process or develop a new product or process, there are a variety of brainstorming techniques that can be used. Each one takes a different approach, and you may find that one works better for your team or your type of problem than another. Regardless, each technique is designed to help your team come up with lots of great ideas!

Its also important to realize that your brainstorming session might generate ideas that appear to be beyond your companys core competency. These ideas should be welcomed, as they may uncover an untapped customer need that no one else is fulfilling. Innovative problem solving is about more than incremental improvements to your existing products or services. Its also about breakthrough ideas that may move your company in a successful new direction.

Now, lets look more closely at six different brainstorming techniques:

Imaginary Brainstorming

HIT Matrix

Concept Tree

SCAMPER

Brainwriting 6-3-5

Random Stimulus



Imaginary Brainstorming - Part 1

Imaginary Brainstorming is similar to traditional brainstorming, but it removes a sense of reality from the problem you face and replaces it with something completely unrelated. This paradigm switch forces your team to think about a different problem, generate solutions for that problem and then relate those solutions back to the original job to be done. This technique is best used when your team faces an old problem it is unable to solve, or when creativity is hindered either by the nature of the project or the team dynamics. Lets look at an example.

A hotel chain that prides itself on top-notch service has developed a reputation for allowing late checkouts. Although the hotel manager is eager to please guests by granting these requests, the practice is difficult to accommodate on busy days when all the rooms need to be cleaned for incoming guests. The manager assembles a team that includes members of the front desk, concierge and housekeeping staff, and together they use Imaginary Brainstorming to generate ideas for solving this issue.

First, the team identifies the job to be done. They agree on the statement, Encourage guests to leave their rooms by checkout time.

Next, the team defines each element of the job statement. These elements include the action, the object, the context and the subject. In this example, the action, or what is happening, is encourage. The object, or who or what is the recipient of the action, is guests. The context, or where the action is occurring, is leave their rooms by checkout time. And the subject, or who is performing the action, is the hotel itself, which is implied.

The next step of the process is to replace each real element with imaginary elements. The team should list a few replacements for the action, the object, the context and the subject. Although these replacement elements can be anything, the best results of this brainstorming technique come when the imaginary elements are as different from



the real elements as possible. For example, encourage could be replaced with dictate, persuade or argue. Guests could be replaced with chickens, professors or train conductors. Generate a few replacements for each element. This step provides the imaginary elements needed to move to step four, which is to create an imaginary problem statement.

To create an imaginary problem statement, select the one element that your team is having the most trouble with. The hotel team determines that the context, or leave their rooms by checkout time, is the biggest issue they face, so they replace that with one of their imaginary elements. Thus, the imaginary problem statement becomes Encourage guests to rent bicycles while on vacation. This problem seems much easier to solve, and the team moves on to step five.



Imaginary Brainstorming - Part 2

If youve done steps three and four correctly, solving the imaginary problem becomes a fun exercise. This is the step that really gets creativity flowing. The ideas your team generates can be completely off the wall, such as offer a prize for the guest who rides the most miles or add baskets to the bikes to carry souvenirs, or they can be more realistic, such as offer free tours or place bike maps in the room. Solving the imaginary problem generates ideas that might not have emerged when addressing the original problem.

Finally, with all the imaginary solutions documented, you move to step six, which is to apply the imaginary solutions to the real problem. In this step, its important to consider the basic premise of the imaginary solution.

For example, one solution for the imaginary problem is to set up a bicycle rental desk in the lobby. This solution addresses the basic concept of convenience. If guests dont have to make numerous calls to find a bicycle rental store and check availability, they are more likely to be open to the transaction. The same concept can be applied to late check outs. Guests typically request late check outs because they have a late flight or they have time between meetings and appointments. Keeping their rooms allows them to have somewhere to go that is comfortable and private, and has amenities such as a bathroom, television or internet connection.

A real solution might be a guest lounge in the lobby designed specifically for those who checked out but need a space to work, relax or freshen up for their late departures. Putting a Guest Lounge in the lobby of the hotel may make it more convenient for guests to leave their rooms by checkout time. Additional ideas may contribute to that solution, and other imaginary solutions may trigger new ideas to solve the real problem.



Complete the exercise by reviewing each imaginary solution to develop a comparable real solution. If this exercise does not yield enough ideas, try replacing a different element in your original problem statement and go through the exercise again.



HIT Matrix

A HIT Matrix can be used to compare existing solutions to find new ideas. HIT stands for Heuristic Ideation Technique, and was developed by marketing professor Edward Tauber. This technique is best used to develop new ideas based on existing products or services. Lets look at an example.

An oil and gas company is investigating new ways to distribute gas to consumers. The project team decides to use a HIT Matrix to help it generate new ideas. This method begins by selecting two existing products or services that seem to have no connection to each other. These products or services could be related to what your company provides, what a competitor provides, or from another industry entirely. The oil and gas team decides to use two completely separate industries and chooses medical vaccine and internet banking.

The next step is to list the characteristics of each product or service. Capture these attributes in a table, with one set of characteristics along the top row and one set down the first column.

In our example, a vaccines characteristics could be:

prevention

administered by a professional

prescribed

liquid

The characteristics of internet banking could be:

secure

convenient



environmentally conscious

fast

Step three is to populate the HIT matrix. Work through each cell and combine the characteristics of each column with the corresponding row. Using the example, the first cell would be labeled as secure prevention, which combines the first two characteristics. The next cell in the row would be secure, administered by a professional. Continue to complete the matrix in this way.

Fourth, qualify the pairings in each cell, strike any ideas that describe existing products or that dont make sense. For example, the combination of an environmentally conscious liquid could refer to a number of organic cleaning products. The combination of secure and administered by a professional could describe testing, medical services or even the purchase of a safety deposit box. Continue to mark off any ideas that dont work.

Fifth, select the combinations that could describe a potential solution for the job to be done. For example, the oil and gas team discusses how they could apply the combination of environmentally conscious and administered by a professional? Using the HIT Matrix technique is a good way to move your team past traditional modes of thinking and generate innovative new ideas.



Concept Tree - Part 1

The Concept Tree builds on an existing idea in order to generate new concepts. The method is considered a tree because ideas branch off each other in the way a tree grows. You may also hear this technique referred to as a Concept Fan. Regardless of the term used, the technique is the same and builds on the Concept Abstraction and Alternatives method introduced by creative thinking visionary Edward de Bono.

The Concept Tree brainstorming technique requires us to differentiate between the terms idea and concept. A concept is a connecting point joining related ideas together. It is a general approach to doing something and is not actionable. On the other hand, an idea is actionable and is a specific way to carry out a concept.

For example, swimming is an idea, whereas exercise is the concept behind the idea of swimming. In this example, exercise is not specific, but swimming is clearly an actionable activity. The Concept Tree technique is best used in situations when you do not have a sufficient number of ideas or concepts for the project at hand. The essence of this technique is to extract ideas from a given concept and extract new concepts from a given idea.

The best way to extract a concept from an idea is to ask the question, This idea is a way of doing what? For example, to extract the concept behind the idea of swimming, we ask the question, Swimming is a way of doing what? The answer could be swimming is a way of doing exercise. Therefore, exercise becomes the concept behind the idea of swimming. To generate alternative ideas behind the concept, exercise, we ask the question, What are other ways to exercise? The answers could be jogging, biking, hiking, and boating. Now we have many alternative ideas generated from the concept of exercise.




Suppose a consulting company wants to improve the traffic to its website. Specifically, it is looking for creative ideas for attracting new, potential customers. Executives have assembled a team and brainstormed some ideas, but are not satisfied by the quantity. The team decides to use the Concept Tree technique to generate more ideas.

First, the team begins by agreeing on the job to be done. In this case, it is stated as attract potential customers to the website. The team then lists the expectations associated with measuring success in getting this job done.

Some of the expectations are:

easy to implement

low cost

reliable

easy to maintain

converts visits into meaningful interactions

increases the number of visits from potential customers

increases the number of repeat visitors

Any ideas that are evaluated for implementation should meet these expectations. The team considers this opportunity to be an unmet job since most of the potential customers do not spend any time on the website.



The second step is to start generating ideas and concepts through brainstorming. The team has come up with three thoughts: include success stories of clients from specific industry groups, get to know customer challenges, and provide a safe environment for website visitors.

The next task is to categorize these starting thoughts into ideas and concepts. Include success stories of clients from various industry groups is specific and actionable. Therefore, it is treated as an idea. Get to know customer challenges and provide a safer environment for website visitors are not specific or actionable. They are labeled as concepts.

With ideas and concepts categorized, you can organize them hierarchically. In this case, the starting idea and concepts are not directly related except through fulfilling the job to be done. Therefore, we organize them independently. Ideas that are related, meaning an idea can be used to accomplish a concept, or vice versa, would be organized with one branching to another to create a tree.




The third step is to extract one or more concepts from the starting idea and to extract one or more ideas from the starting concepts. Consider the idea include success stories of clients from specific industry groups. Ask the question this idea is a way of doing what? One answer might be demonstrating credibility. This becomes a concept that drives the idea.

The first starting concept was get to know customer challenges. Ask the question what are some specific ways to get to know customer challenges? Two possible answers include provide discussion threads to interact with visitors, and solicit emails that describe their present challenges. These become new ideas behind the concept get to know customer challenges. Similarly, the team generates ideas for the other starting concept, provide a safe environment for website visitors.

The fourth step is to generate new concepts from all the ideas generated. Consider the idea of include success stories of clients from specific industry groups. The team asks, this idea is a way of doing what? At this point, the team is looking for a concept other than demonstrate credibility. One concept might be to publicize domain expertise and specialization. With this concept, the team can now generate new ideas that are specific and actionable for the next level. These ideas could include articulate industry areas of specialization in one section of the website, and provide separate sections in the website for each specialization of industry vertical. The team continues the extraction of concepts and alternative ideas in this manner until enough ideas are generated.

The final step is to assemble all the ideas generated and process them. This includes affinitizing, shaping, and strengthening of the ideas, as well as prioritizing them according to impact, cost or resource usage.

With the Concept Tree, your team can grow a few ideas or concepts into a number of specific, actionable ideas.



SCAMPER - Part 1

SCAMPER is an acronym that stands for substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to other purpose, eliminate and rearrange. It is a tool that asks seven important questions in order to refine an existing product, service or solution. It is best used when companies want to improve their product or service, especially when competing in mature markets.

First, start with the job to be done. Make sure everyone on the team is clear about this statement.

Second, as a group, work through each question as a team and discuss the answers.

Substitute part of a product or process for something else. How can you substitute the place, time, materials or people?

Combine two or more parts of your opportunity to achieve a different product or process. Where can you build synergy?

Adapt the product or service to remove a problem. What part of the product or process could be changed?

Modify part, or all, of the current situation, or distort it in an unusual way by identifying new ways of working. What would happen if you modify the product or process in a certain way?

Put the current solution, product, or process to other purposes. How can you reuse the item for another product or service?

Eliminate various parts of the product, process, or opportunity and consider what you might do in that situation. What would happen if you remove one component or a part of one component?

Rearrange or reverse part or all of your product or process. What if you reverse the order in which this process is performed or the way the product is used?



Once all the questions have been answered, the third step is to review the ideas that have come out of the discussion to determine which ones could be applied to the job to be done? Lets apply this tool to an example.



SCAMPER - Part 2

A well-known university wants to make its Web-based degree programs stand out from the competition. Using SCAMPER, a team made up of representatives from its various educational departments, administration, accreditation, admissions and information systems could generate many new ideas in a short period of time.

The university could substitute a pure online environment with regional learning labs that students could go to for a quiet, secure connection or to get a sense of camaraderie.

For students with slow internet connections, the university could adapt its policies to allow offline learning options. Students might be required to sync their progress with the main system on a weekly basis.

The university team could put its existing platform to use in continuing education for professionals that have graduated from other programs. This would open the system to an entirely new audience.

And, perhaps the online administrators could rearrange its assessment capabilities and create pre-program exams that students could take to test out of certain classes. This may reduce the time it takes students to get their degrees. Working through the series of questions presented by the SCAMPER technique, the university team now has many new ideas to help solve the job to be done



Brainwriting 6-3-5 - Part 1

Brainwriting 6-3-5 is a traditional method of brainstorming, but rather than relying on verbal collaboration, the technique uses written idea generation. Brainwriting is a series of timed sessions during which participants write down a specified number of ideas. The term comes from the intended structure of the session, which requires six people to write down three ideas in five minutes. These ideas are captured on a worksheet and then passed around to each participant. After several rounds, the team should be able to generate a significant number of ideas.

Brainwriting encourages equal participation from all members. Brainwriting is best used in two scenarios.

First, when certain team members are likely to dominate the discussion, the technique allows all participants to submit ideas freely, which is ideal when some team members are intimidated by others.

The second situation in which Brainwriting is useful is when a group does not agree on the reason for holding the brainstorming session. Suppose a marketing team is brainstorming ideas for a new campaign. Some team members may not agree that a campaign is needed, while others believe it will be beneficial.

Brainwriting allows both sides to convey their ideas without commentary or criticism. Once the session is complete, the group can use the ideas they generated to hold a constructive discussion on the outcomes.

Ideally, the tool calls for six members, but you are not restricted to this number. If you have more than eight participants, divide your group into smaller, equal teams. If your group has less than four total participants, you may benefit from a different brainstorming technique. No matter what the number of participants is, be sure to select a diverse group that brings different perspectives to the problem.



Lets demonstrate this technique using an example. A large travel agency is experiencing a decline in sales. Direct-to-consumer airline web sites and do-it-yourself travel planning software has made travel agents less relevant, and one agency has decided to find a way to increase revenues by leveraging its existing capabilities. Based on the team dynamics, the leader decides to conduct a Brainwriting session to solve this job to be done.



Brainwriting 6-3-5- Part 2

Step one is to create Brainwriting 6-3-5 worksheets for each participant like the one shown here. Each worksheet should have three columns, which will be used to write down ideas. The number of rows on the worksheet will depend on the number of participants. The worksheet will also contain the job to be done, as expressed by the team. Make sure to include the date, the team name and any other information that might be critical to record. Dont worry about a place for team members to put their names. Each sheet will be passed around to different team members. And, one benefit of Brainwriting 6-3-5 is anonymity.

Step two is to assemble the group and begin generating ideas. Pass out the worksheets and ask each participant to write down three ideas that address the job to be done in the first row. Inform the participants that they only have five minutes to write down three ideas, and be sure to keep good time.

Next, ask team members to trade worksheets, either by passing their sheets to the right or the left, or by placing all the sheets in the middle and asking each participant to choose a different worksheet.

Give the team another five minutes to write down three more ideas, this time in row two under the original set of three ideas. Its important to stress that each round should generate new ideas, although participants can build on the ideas already on the sheet.

After round two, repeat the process, ensuring each participant has a different worksheet to write on. Encourage participants to read through the ideas generated in each subsequent round. This allows team members to build on the ideas of their colleagues, and also may trigger new ideas.



You can continue the exercise until all participants have written ideas on each sheet. If you have six people, and each participant writes down three ideas per round, you will have generated 108 ideas! If you are short on time, or if you dont need that many ideas, you can stop after three rounds and review the ideas you have so far.

The final step of this technique is to gather all the ideas generated and discuss, clarify, refine and combine the suggestions. You might even choose to affinitize the list into major categories or prioritize individual ideas based on a standard set of criteria. Either way, you have a list of ideas for solving your job to be done.



Random Stimulus - Part 1

The premise of Random Stimulus is similar to Imaginary Brainstorming and the HIT Matrix, as it uses a completely unrelated concept to generate new ideas. Random Stimulus requires teams to select an arbitrary concept, usually in the form of an image or a word, and use it as the basis for brainstorming.

For example, looking at a picture of a drawbridge may help a clothing designer come up with new ways to fasten trousers. Or the word chapter may allow a manufacturing company to rethink the way it sets up its tool crib. The point of Random Stimulus is to help teams disassociate from the original problem in order to come up with new ideas.

Random Stimulus is best used in teams that are having a hard time coming up with innovative ideas, or that need a break from the original topic. Imagine that a paper manufacturing company is trying to cut costs by reducing electricity consumption at its primary plant. The project team is struggling with solutions, so it decides to use Random Stimulus to trigger some new ideas.

The first step is to identify the job to be done, which in this case is to reduce electricity consumption at the paper companys primary plant.

Next, the team selects a random stimulus. If you are choosing a word, you can use a dictionary or thesaurus and randomly choose a page number and entry number. For example, entry number 36 on page 127 becomes your random word. You can also use this method with a book, magazine or newspaper. Any source of words will work.

If you are choosing an image as your random stimulus, there are two guidelines to follow. First, use photographs rather than cartoons, drawings or paintings. The more real the depiction, the more ideas the team can generate.



Also, refrain from using controversial or inappropriate images. If the photo could cause more discussion than idea generation, its not an ideal source to use. There are different ways to select an image. You could have each team member bring in a photo from a holiday celebration, family vacation or other activity. The team could then randomly select which image it will use. Your team could also use books or magazines to locate images and then choose one to work from.

The goal of the random stimulus method is to select something that is as far away from the problem as possible. This will ensure you come up with some really innovative ideas. For our example, the paper manufacturing team selects the random word beneficiary.



Random Stimulus - Part 2

Step three of the Random Stimulus technique is to begin brainstorming associations. Using the word or image, ask the team what they associate with the stimulus.

The paper manufacturing team associates a number of concepts with the word beneficiary:

life insurance

will

funeral

financial gain

legal document

loved one

scam

Theres no rule of thumb about how many associations to make, but the more your team can think of, the more ideas you will generate. If youre using an image as your random stimulus, ask team members what they see happening in the picture, as well as who, when, where, why and how. These questions can generate associations they might not otherwise make.

With these associations documented, step four is to generate ideas. Using each association, brainstorm actionable ideas that relate to the job to be done. As the team discusses the basic principle of each association, ideas will begin to take shape. For example, the association life insurance implies a fund that someone pays into each month, to be used or awarded in the case of an unforeseen accident. The paper manufacturing team could



translate that into an idea that sets up a credit program for each shift at the plant. Teams that use less energy each month get credits that can be used toward bonuses or rewards at the end of each quarter.

Another association, funeral, is an event. This association could lead to the idea of mandatory hour-long blackouts each day. And the association of scam implies that someone is trying to get away with something unethical or illegal. This could generate the idea of searching offices in the plant and confiscating any unapproved appliances such as space heaters, refrigerators, fans or other devices that use unnecessary electricity. Continue to generate ideas for all of your associations.

The final step in this method is to review all the ideas generated. Gather all the ideas on a white board and proceed with grouping, clarifying and prioritizing them. Not all will be feasible, but using Random Stimulus, youll find that your team has generated a high number of ideas in a short amount of time that could turn in to real solutions.



The Techniques Matrix

This module has reviewed six techniques you can use to improve the quality of your brainstorming sessions. You can use the attached matrix as a guide to help you determine which method will work best for your problem, as well as the steps required to execute each method.



Module Review

Thank you for joining our discussion of brainstorming techniques. Brainstorming is a good way to generate ideas, and now you have a number of methods you can use to get the most out of your time.

After viewing this module, you should be able to:

Set ground rules for a brainstorming session

Define the job to be done

Conduct brainstorming sessions using six different techniques including:

Imaginary Brainstorming

HIT Matrix

Concept Tree

SCAMPER

Brainwriting 6-3-5

Random Stimulus

Good luck planning your next brainstorming session. If you use the tools youve learned in this module, youre sure to generate some great ideas!

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T Brainstorming Techniques