Effective Brainstorming Business Articles | May 6 Cheap JaVale McGee Jersey , 2005 Most managers simply herd some people in a room with a flip chart and call it a brainstorming session. Yet there is a definite process that maximizes the size and quality of the idea pool. While there are hundreds of valid techniques for doing this, below are just some of the important concepts leaders should consider.
a) The sum of ideas produced by individuals acting alone is greater than the sum of ideas produced by those individuals acting as a group. Further, the diversity and novelty of ideas produced by individuals acting alone is greater than produced in a group. This means that asking group members to think of a set number of diverse and novel ideas before the session and then repeat the process during the session results in greater total output. Be sure to insist that individuals think of new ideas in the group session.
b) Individuals are prone to competency traps and path dependency. This means that it is hard for them to rapidly frame break unless new experience Cheap Patrick McCaw Jersey , stimuli or knowledge is introduced. One solution is to import competencies. Bring in new and dissimilar individuals. Try and ensure these new individuals score high on expression, tacit knowledge and status.
c) Brainstorming usually implies that the solution to a problem is being sought. Thus one good principle is to break the session into three parts ? problem identification, idea generation and idea selection. It is amazing how many different perceptions of a problem often exist. Each problem definition generates its own set of ideas. This stage-process allows the separation of creative from critical thinking. Writing and editing are two very different processes.
d) Set incremental goals. Incremental goals produce more output than ?do your best.? Further Cheap Nate Thurmond Jersey , they force output and trigger prolific production; it can be said with great certainty that quality is closely connected with quantity ? the single best creative product tends to appear at that point in the career when the creator is being most prolific.
There are at least two types of incremental goal: 1) short term ? this forces production of output and 2) long term ? this allows problems to incubate at various cognitive levels and results in the required insight.