Creative Streak

Who Should Be Invited to a Brainstorm?

One of the easiest ways to improve your brainstorms is to give some thought to inviting the right people to a brainstorm.

A brainstrom should not be a cattle call ("let's invite everybody!"), nor should it be random ("invite whoever's here today"). You want specific people, or people with specific skills. Personally, I believe four to eight people is ideal. Anything more becomes a hostage situation.

So who should be the invite list? First and foremost, you want to find ...

1. Prolific idea people. These are individuals who can let fly a dizzying volume of ideas, 90 percent of which will be utterly useless, silly, unnecessary, illegal or unimplementable – and 10 percent which will be terrific, WOW, shocking, thrilling and compelling ... in other words, exactly what you want.

2. People who fit the target profile. They might actually be the target audience, or second-best, they immediately understand, appreciate or communicate how the ideas may be perceived or implemented. This might include people who have similar or relevant experience.

3. People with considerable knowledge of either or both the purpose or key issues. This is not necessarily people who are members of the department or the account team. Look to other departments or other account teams - but preferably those people who can reduce all of the arcane information down into the key insights which are useful in a brainstorm. Again, find fresh brains.

And, last but not least ...

Developing a Brainstorm Agenda

A brainstorm is a meeting like any other, which means an agenda is extremely helpful to keep order and focus. Give yourself a few minutes to think through in advance how you want to spend the time. This is especially true if you're using a facilitator: if you do, you can relax and participate in the brainstorm without trying to control the flow at the same time.

Here’s a basic agenda template that you can adapt to suit your needs, location, participants or brainstorm topic. The clock timings starting at 9.00 am are used simply to show order.

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In Advance of the Brainstorm

• Work with your team to prepare a creative brief. (See the related post on 5 June 2009.)
• If possible, try to share the brief with one of the brainstormers in advance to see if they have any suggestions which the writing team might have overlooked. It also saves you time at the beginning of the brainstorm answering questions which should have been in the brief in the first place.
• Distribute the brief at least one day in advance to your brainstorm participants.

Is this you? "But no one reads the brief in advance!" See far below for suggestions.

9.00 am - 10 Minutes

• Define the problem
• Review the creative rules (See related post: Creative Rules for Brainstorms)
• Quickly answer any questions from your participants, but don’t waste time re-reading your brief. (That’s why you sent the brief in advance.)

Group Brainstorming

The idea of generating ideas in a group setting is a relatively youthful concept, introduced in 1948 by Alex Osborn in his book, Your Creative Power, with further elaboration in 1953 in his second book, Applied Imagination. In both books, Osborn outlined how brainstorming could inspire creative thinking among a group of people by creating an atmosphere where ideas could be generated in a setting uninhibited of interruptions, judgement and censure.

According to Osborn, "Brainstorm means using the brain to storm a creative problem ... in commando fashion (where) each stormer audaciously attacks the same objective."

Beyond the obvious objective – to generate ideas – group brainstorming actually has several objectives:

• To generate ideas
• To create better solutions and ideas
• To combine and leverage the talents of several people (“Two heads are better than one”)
• To get support for ideas internally and externally
• To increase efficiency and productivity

Today, brainstorms are beyond being universal. But despite being a pervasive part of any manager in the world of business, it doesn’t mean they’re effective or productive. In fact, some of the world’s most well-known creative experts have spoken about how brainstorms are maligned to the point of damnation, some proclaiming their untimely 'death.'