subject: A View of Brainstorming Around the World [print this page] A View of Brainstorming Around the World A View of Brainstorming Around the World
"Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it." - Cole Porter
Just in case you had any doubts, it appears everyone is doing it - brainstorming, that is. And just how are they doing it? Actually, pretty much the same way everywhere.
The SmartStorming partners not too long ago returned from Krakow, Poland, where we conducted our two-day SmartStorming Brainstorm Leadership Workshop at the 2011 Worldwide Partners Creative Summit. And the experience was nothing other than outstanding!
Not solely did we meet and work with a gaggle of very smart, gifted and engaged professionals, we also learned a thing or two about group dynamics, multiculturalism, problem solving techniques and, of course, brainstorming.
Our workshop participants had been advertising agency pros from around the globe: Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Ukraine. Whereas there were many cultural variations, two things had been the same: they all brainstormed on a regular basis and they all faced virtually the same challenges when doing so.
The Good
The group clearly saw brainstorming to be a vital business process, and acknowledged its significance to their organizations. The direct link between brainstorming and the flexibility to innovate was clear to them.
brainstorming creative problem solving ideas innovation
And so, all had been waiting anxiously to learn how to experience better results when brainstorming with their teams and clients, and had been fully open to new and unfamiliar ideas and problem solving techniques.
The Bad
In her e-book, The Seeds of Innovation, Elaine Dundon identifies nine issues that are typically encountered with brainstorming as generally practiced.
1. Lack of process
2. Lack of a talented facilitator
3. Lack of expert participants
4. Listing of guidelines
5. No settlement on the problem
6. Lack of stimuli
7. Pressure to be inventive on queue
8. Pressure to converge rapidly
9. Lack of follow-up
And, maybe not surprisingly, nearly all of these challenges were voiced by the group during our opening discussion about just what causes brainstorms to fail.
The implications of this experience are literally fairly compelling, and we realized that no matter the differences in culture, business practices and customs, geography, character, etc., what takes place in the room when a team of people get together to generate creative ideas, in the absence of a structured process and effective problem solving techniques, is just about the identical no matter who you might be or where you are. And that "pretty much the same" is all-too-usually disappointing.
Maybe most fascinating to us at SmartStorming was that there appeared to be little or no difference among the many members when it comes to simply how much direct coaching or self-directed learning the participants had on the topic of brainstorming. One might imagine that in some countries a stronger emphasis could have been made on studying ways to help facilitate this important process. However this was not the case. As we normally find in the U.S., not one participant had received any real training in brainstorming or creative problem solving.
The Promise
The good news is that whereas brainstorming as usually practiced is clearly broken, it's not all that tough to fix.
The extent of interest, participation and enthusiasm all through the 2-day workshop was very high. Even the most seasoned creative professionals in the group reported exciting revelations, specifically about the right way to flip "bad" ideas into game-changers; how you can decrease shyness and self-consciousness amongst members and facilitate spontaneous sharing; how to use totally different problem solving techniques and brainstorming activities to achieve different goals; etc.
And already we're receiving stories from overseas in regards to the participants' first extremely successful SmartStorming sessions again, back home at their own agencies.
Their brainstorming, it seems, has been fixed.
In the 1930s, when Alex Osborn "invented" brainstorming, he knew, even then, that certain guidelines and skills were crucial for the process to be successful. Lots of those are directly related to Elaine Dundon's list of brainstorming challenges. But Osborn's new manner of generating ideas was simply so novel and exciting, it apparently took off on its own.
The legacy is a world that, as we speak, relies closely on brainstorming, even though it actually doesn't have a clue how to do it.
However with a bit of effort and investment of time and attention, Alex Osborn's vision of extremely productive ideation sessions rapidly becomes a reality. And terrific ideas can be no longer a rarity, but the norm.
