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Brainstorming: Manage your ideas like a pro

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Shaul Rosenzwieg

1. The document discusses various techniques for managing ideas and the creative process, including brainstorming and idea management. It provides tips for forming creative teams, generating ideas, developing ideas, and implementing ideas effectively. 2. Some of the key points covered include understanding brainstorming principles, avoiding things that can undermine brainstorming, formulating clear goals, mixing up creative teams, using doodles to visualize ideas, evaluating ideas against selection criteria, and ensuring proper support for implementation. 3. The overall message is that managing ideas like a process and following best practices at each stage can help teams be more innovative and successful at transforming ideas into reality.

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Manage your Ideas Like a Pro
DreamTeam and Brainstorming ● 80% of the people that use the term don't know what it means ● Specific creativity method ● Alex Faickney Osborn (May 24, 1888 – May 13, 1966) ● In 1919 founded BDO with Barton and Durstine ● In 1928 BDO + George Batten Company = BBDO ● In 1942 published How To Think Up ○ Creativity technique named Brainstorming ● In 1954 created the Creative Education Foundation ● with Sidney Parnes developed CPS ○ Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process ● co-founded Creative Problem Solving Institute ○ the world's longest-running international creativity conference ○ CPS has been taught for more than 50 years ● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Faickney_Osborn ● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming
5 Reasons Brainstorming can go wrong 1. Participants don't understand creative process and rely on their intuition 2. Goals are too vague, and participants have differing views what final aim is 3. Participants can't make a mental leap from day to day work 4. It is too hard to break away from group mentality and PC thinking 5. Managers and clients don't allow team members to be radically creative
5 More Reasons Brainstorming can go wrong 1. Environment is too much like a classroom to be good environment for creative thinking 2. Only creatives participate, others are seen as disturbing influence 3. Subject has been tackled too many times, free association produces only variations on cliches 4. Participants are looking out for problems and obstacles that stop ides getting of drawing board 5. To little time and attention is being invested in finding great ideas
Idea management in Action 1.Brief and goal formulation 2.Idea generation 3.Idea development and selection 4.Implementation
Brief and goal formulation Reduce all the information from the brief, meetings, documentation and your previous experience into a single proposition: THE GOAL
Idea Generation At this stage, most important thing is for your imagination to run free. For your team to be inspired, no restrictions must be imposed. Larger the pool of ideas you come up with the better ideas.
Idea development and selection This is where creativity is required in order to turn ideas into even better ideas. You slowly begin to turn raw your ideas into new ideas to bridge any gaps and improve what you've already got. Any ideas that just can't be taken further are thrown out
Implementation Ideally selection process should have whittled down the possibilities to just a few great concepts. Now it's over to the implementation team to take the ideas to best possible level.
From a brief to a single goal ● The brief as a starting point ○ Brief acts as ignition to the creative team ○ Brief should be like a love letter to the product ● Restricting the search field ○ Restrictive elements should be kept in background in creative phase ○ These parameters come into force when ideas are being developed ● Enlarging the search field ○ In first brief put emphasis on parameters that stimulate imagination ○ Give detailed information to provide largest hunting ground for ideas ● To find the right answers, ask the right questions ○ The goal and solution are question and the answer ○ Only good question will result in correct answer ○ Investing in analyzing the problem means getting to the heart of the matter, increases likelihood of finding a solution
What does the goal achieve? ● Formulating the goal reduces a complex brief to a clear strategy ● Goal means that all ideas can be reduced to a single minded proposition that can be understood by target group in just few seconds ● Goal helps to prevent chaos in sessions and time- wasting discussions about how to interpret the brief ● Expressed in form of a question, goal makes team begin active mental process, and so acts as a stimulus ● Goal keeps the team on track during the meeting and prevents them from getting snarled up in other ideas from which it's hard to get back to task in hand
Everybody is nobody If you define a target group in a brief as “everybody”, you'll end up targeting nobody. Same applies to other brief parameters: emphasizing everything in a brief is emphasizing nothing.
Formulating a great goal ● A goal should always involve a single-minded proposition ● A goal should have no 'ands' ● A goal is always a question ● A goal should be short and snappy ● A goal should be simple enough for a twelve year old to understand it ● A goal should avoid using jargon or foreign words when possible ● A goal should be formulated in a way that team will accept it and take it forward
Building your DreamTeam ● Don't have more than four people in your creative team ● Keep mixing your creative teams for different projects ● Give beginners a chance ● On large projects invite clients to creative meetings ● Make sure you include a good mix of backgrounds and personalities ● If only for a short time, give creative meetings atmosphere in which participants can laugh and have fun ● Establish team culture in which it's ok to make mistakes ● Creativity means exploring a new territory, people who make no mistakes stay stuck on old paths ● Make sure your team receives constructive feedback from clients and other departments
Choose right moment for criticism It is only in subsequent evaluation stage that it is justified to raise factors such as the brief, and it is also the time to introduce professional know-how or criticism, so that raw ideas can be developed in atmosphere of constructive discussion. To prevent unconventional ideas being 'evaluated away' and prematurely discarded, the team should keep asking the same question: “How can I improve on this idea, what can I do to really make it work?”
Grab your ideas and run with them Almost nothing inhibits the creative process more than clinging obsessively to one single idea – namely your own. Don't think of your teammates as rivals in competition for the best idea but as suppliers of raw material for your next ideas. It doesn't matter if you think their ideas are good or bad – just use them as triggers and stimuli for your own associations. Important thing is to pick up ideas, develop them and hand them back.
Ping-pong with ides It is best practiced with two players. A lot of brilliant two person creative teams work on this principle. A key factor is to pick a partner you trust 100 per cent. Concentrate on getting a rapid flow of ideas during the game, resist urge to criticize, follow your instincts and let your self be carried by spontaneity. You'll soon build up a chain of associations and start churning new ideas. The only thing that can stop this spontaneous river of ideas is urge to censor yourself.
Avoid Idea Killers ● Idea killers always work ● “That won't work”, frowns and cynical smiles should not be part of creative meeting culture ● Research has shown that 70% of the time in meetings is spent running down colleagues' suggestions ● Often killer phrases of our colleagues do less damage than little voice inside our heads, whispering “Forget it, it doesn't work” ● Three effective antidotes to killer phrases ○ Turn killer phrases to constructive feedback ○ Stop killer phrases in their tracks, announce your ideas with “craziest thing I can think of is...” ○ Identify idea killers, they will lose their lethal force in meetings, take the time with the whole team to think of as many idea killers as you can ● Think creatively: look for positive in other peoples ideas ○ Ask yourself: “what is in that we can use?” ○ Replace your critic with inner creative and exploit the possibilities
Stick with it: best ideas are yet to come ● Don't throw in the towel and accept the first ideas that come up, they are usually shallow, you are missing on some brilliant ideas ● After first phase of producing ideas team may fall into deep silence, don't end the session, team members are immersed in search process ● It often takes only one sentence to get the process moving again, and it will probably produce far better ideas ● Several such phases are possible, so stick with it
Use doodles to visualize your ideas ● Three advantages of doodles ○ Doodles are essential means of communication, enabling rest of the team to see, and therefore understand, the images in your head ○ Doodles reinforce the associations of internal images and so trigger new ideas in a playful way ○ Doodles enable teams to develop raw ideas in gradual stages and so prevent good ideas from being killed of prematurely ● Not all good ideas fit on a matchbox
Idea evaluation and selection From 300 ideas to 3: ● Three ways to evaluate and select ideas ○ Democratically – every team members gives a score ○ Use brief as a yardstick ○ Boss gives the final word
Selection criteria ● Does the idea only work the first time? ● Let other people be the judge ● Does the whole team love the idea or just one person? ● Does the idea embrace the values of the product or the company? ● Does the idea contain something that has never been seen before, something that will attract attention?
Implementation Turning ideas into reality ● How can management provide optimal support for the concept? ● What could management add to the basic idea to makes sure the solution really hits the bull's eye? ● What weak points does idea have, what seems implausible? ● Is idea direct enough? ● What can I substitute or alter to improve the idea? ● What do you need to do to make the idea so appealing that people will be happy to see it again and again? ● Make sure that designer's artistic vision doesn't take the idea off track or make it less powerful ● Make sure that everyone involved in the next stage of the production process understands the idea and supports it

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Brainstorming: Manage your ideas like a pro

  • 1. Manage your Ideas Like a Pro
  • 2. DreamTeam and Brainstorming ● 80% of the people that use the term don't know what it means ● Specific creativity method ● Alex Faickney Osborn (May 24, 1888 – May 13, 1966) ● In 1919 founded BDO with Barton and Durstine ● In 1928 BDO + George Batten Company = BBDO ● In 1942 published How To Think Up ○ Creativity technique named Brainstorming ● In 1954 created the Creative Education Foundation ● with Sidney Parnes developed CPS ○ Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process ● co-founded Creative Problem Solving Institute ○ the world's longest-running international creativity conference ○ CPS has been taught for more than 50 years ● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Faickney_Osborn ● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming
  • 3. 5 Reasons Brainstorming can go wrong 1. Participants don't understand creative process and rely on their intuition 2. Goals are too vague, and participants have differing views what final aim is 3. Participants can't make a mental leap from day to day work 4. It is too hard to break away from group mentality and PC thinking 5. Managers and clients don't allow team members to be radically creative
  • 4. 5 More Reasons Brainstorming can go wrong 1. Environment is too much like a classroom to be good environment for creative thinking 2. Only creatives participate, others are seen as disturbing influence 3. Subject has been tackled too many times, free association produces only variations on cliches 4. Participants are looking out for problems and obstacles that stop ides getting of drawing board 5. To little time and attention is being invested in finding great ideas
  • 5. Idea management in Action 1.Brief and goal formulation 2.Idea generation 3.Idea development and selection 4.Implementation
  • 6. Brief and goal formulation Reduce all the information from the brief, meetings, documentation and your previous experience into a single proposition: THE GOAL
  • 7. Idea Generation At this stage, most important thing is for your imagination to run free. For your team to be inspired, no restrictions must be imposed. Larger the pool of ideas you come up with the better ideas.
  • 8. Idea development and selection This is where creativity is required in order to turn ideas into even better ideas. You slowly begin to turn raw your ideas into new ideas to bridge any gaps and improve what you've already got. Any ideas that just can't be taken further are thrown out
  • 9. Implementation Ideally selection process should have whittled down the possibilities to just a few great concepts. Now it's over to the implementation team to take the ideas to best possible level.
  • 10. From a brief to a single goal ● The brief as a starting point ○ Brief acts as ignition to the creative team ○ Brief should be like a love letter to the product ● Restricting the search field ○ Restrictive elements should be kept in background in creative phase ○ These parameters come into force when ideas are being developed ● Enlarging the search field ○ In first brief put emphasis on parameters that stimulate imagination ○ Give detailed information to provide largest hunting ground for ideas ● To find the right answers, ask the right questions ○ The goal and solution are question and the answer ○ Only good question will result in correct answer ○ Investing in analyzing the problem means getting to the heart of the matter, increases likelihood of finding a solution
  • 11. What does the goal achieve? ● Formulating the goal reduces a complex brief to a clear strategy ● Goal means that all ideas can be reduced to a single minded proposition that can be understood by target group in just few seconds ● Goal helps to prevent chaos in sessions and time- wasting discussions about how to interpret the brief ● Expressed in form of a question, goal makes team begin active mental process, and so acts as a stimulus ● Goal keeps the team on track during the meeting and prevents them from getting snarled up in other ideas from which it's hard to get back to task in hand
  • 12. Everybody is nobody If you define a target group in a brief as “everybody”, you'll end up targeting nobody. Same applies to other brief parameters: emphasizing everything in a brief is emphasizing nothing.
  • 13. Formulating a great goal ● A goal should always involve a single-minded proposition ● A goal should have no 'ands' ● A goal is always a question ● A goal should be short and snappy ● A goal should be simple enough for a twelve year old to understand it ● A goal should avoid using jargon or foreign words when possible ● A goal should be formulated in a way that team will accept it and take it forward
  • 14. Building your DreamTeam ● Don't have more than four people in your creative team ● Keep mixing your creative teams for different projects ● Give beginners a chance ● On large projects invite clients to creative meetings ● Make sure you include a good mix of backgrounds and personalities ● If only for a short time, give creative meetings atmosphere in which participants can laugh and have fun ● Establish team culture in which it's ok to make mistakes ● Creativity means exploring a new territory, people who make no mistakes stay stuck on old paths ● Make sure your team receives constructive feedback from clients and other departments
  • 15. Choose right moment for criticism It is only in subsequent evaluation stage that it is justified to raise factors such as the brief, and it is also the time to introduce professional know-how or criticism, so that raw ideas can be developed in atmosphere of constructive discussion. To prevent unconventional ideas being 'evaluated away' and prematurely discarded, the team should keep asking the same question: “How can I improve on this idea, what can I do to really make it work?”
  • 16. Grab your ideas and run with them Almost nothing inhibits the creative process more than clinging obsessively to one single idea – namely your own. Don't think of your teammates as rivals in competition for the best idea but as suppliers of raw material for your next ideas. It doesn't matter if you think their ideas are good or bad – just use them as triggers and stimuli for your own associations. Important thing is to pick up ideas, develop them and hand them back.
  • 17. Ping-pong with ides It is best practiced with two players. A lot of brilliant two person creative teams work on this principle. A key factor is to pick a partner you trust 100 per cent. Concentrate on getting a rapid flow of ideas during the game, resist urge to criticize, follow your instincts and let your self be carried by spontaneity. You'll soon build up a chain of associations and start churning new ideas. The only thing that can stop this spontaneous river of ideas is urge to censor yourself.
  • 18. Avoid Idea Killers ● Idea killers always work ● “That won't work”, frowns and cynical smiles should not be part of creative meeting culture ● Research has shown that 70% of the time in meetings is spent running down colleagues' suggestions ● Often killer phrases of our colleagues do less damage than little voice inside our heads, whispering “Forget it, it doesn't work” ● Three effective antidotes to killer phrases ○ Turn killer phrases to constructive feedback ○ Stop killer phrases in their tracks, announce your ideas with “craziest thing I can think of is...” ○ Identify idea killers, they will lose their lethal force in meetings, take the time with the whole team to think of as many idea killers as you can ● Think creatively: look for positive in other peoples ideas ○ Ask yourself: “what is in that we can use?” ○ Replace your critic with inner creative and exploit the possibilities
  • 19. Stick with it: best ideas are yet to come ● Don't throw in the towel and accept the first ideas that come up, they are usually shallow, you are missing on some brilliant ideas ● After first phase of producing ideas team may fall into deep silence, don't end the session, team members are immersed in search process ● It often takes only one sentence to get the process moving again, and it will probably produce far better ideas ● Several such phases are possible, so stick with it
  • 20. Use doodles to visualize your ideas ● Three advantages of doodles ○ Doodles are essential means of communication, enabling rest of the team to see, and therefore understand, the images in your head ○ Doodles reinforce the associations of internal images and so trigger new ideas in a playful way ○ Doodles enable teams to develop raw ideas in gradual stages and so prevent good ideas from being killed of prematurely ● Not all good ideas fit on a matchbox
  • 21. Idea evaluation and selection From 300 ideas to 3: ● Three ways to evaluate and select ideas ○ Democratically – every team members gives a score ○ Use brief as a yardstick ○ Boss gives the final word
  • 22. Selection criteria ● Does the idea only work the first time? ● Let other people be the judge ● Does the whole team love the idea or just one person? ● Does the idea embrace the values of the product or the company? ● Does the idea contain something that has never been seen before, something that will attract attention?
  • 23. Implementation Turning ideas into reality ● How can management provide optimal support for the concept? ● What could management add to the basic idea to makes sure the solution really hits the bull's eye? ● What weak points does idea have, what seems implausible? ● Is idea direct enough? ● What can I substitute or alter to improve the idea? ● What do you need to do to make the idea so appealing that people will be happy to see it again and again? ● Make sure that designer's artistic vision doesn't take the idea off track or make it less powerful ● Make sure that everyone involved in the next stage of the production process understands the idea and supports it