Forget brainstorming sessions and suggestion boxes—they don’t work. Next time you need to think up a new and original plan, product or solution—whether it’s at home or at work—try these techniques…
In a conventional brainstorming session, group members spend most of their time sitting around listening to ideas they don’t agree with while waiting for their turn to speak. Introverts might not contribute at all. And brainstorming sessions often get stuck on the first reasonable idea mentioned, which typically is not the best.
Try “brainwalking” instead. Tape large sheets of paper to the walls around the meeting room—one sheet for each person taking part in the idea-generation session. Give each person a marker, and instruct him/her to write his best idea for the problem/topic under discussion at the top of one of the sheets. Next, ask everyone to move to the sheet of paper to the right, read what’s written there and write something under it that either builds on that idea or uses it as a stimulus to come up with a new idea.
Continue rotating around the room this way until everyone in the group has written on five sheets of paper, then have each person return to his original sheet and circle the one or two ideas he likes best for the whole group to discuss together.
This generates a lot of ideas very quickly…it lets everyone in the group contribute ideas early in the meeting while minds still are fresh…and it forces each person to consider others’ ideas instead of just lobbying for his own. Plus, it gets participants up and moving around, which tends to keep them interested and awake.
In addition to searching for solutions to problems, brainwalking can be used to think up creative new possibilities. To achieve this, ask participants to respond to a thought-provoking but fanciful topic.
Example: The leader of a cosmetics company’s brainwalking session posed the question, “How can we sell more makeup to cartoon characters?” One of the ideas this generated was creating makeup that provides two-dimensional cartoon entities with the appearance of depth—which led to a successful cosmetics line designed to give real faces added depth.
Place a large whiteboard and dry-erase markers somewhere in your home or office where everyone in the family or work group will encounter it regularly, such as a hallway, kitchen or break room. Write the problem that you would like to solve or the topic to be explored on this board. Jot down an idea or two that you have had on the subject on the board, too, to show the sorts of responses that you are looking for, then encourage others to write their ideas on the board as well.
Include a deadline and a day-by-day countdown to inject a sense of urgency. If the deadline is 10 days away, write “Day:” followed by the numbers 1–10 at the bottom of the board and cross off one number each day.
Add something new to the board yourself every day to keep it from becoming stale—perhaps a new idea, praise for someone else’s idea or words of encouragement. At the end of the designated time period, copy down the most useful or interesting ideas for further consideration, erase the board and post a new topic.
This whiteboard technique is a bit like a suggestion box—only more effective. With the whiteboard, members of the group see that others are contributing, which makes them less self-conscious about contributing…they can build on one another’s ideas…and they can be confident that their ideas actually will be read and considered.
Examples: A family might use the whiteboard technique to ponder “Where should we go on our next family outing?” or “How can we do a better job distributing household chores?” A manufacturing company uses the whiteboard technique to allow employees on different shifts to share ideas without anyone altering their work schedules or being taken off the production line for a sit-down meeting.
We don’t necessarily have to completely change what we’re doing to become more innovative and successful—we just have to add a new twist to our existing methods.
One effective way to come up with these new twists is to pose an “and” challenge to yourself or your group that gets at what could be added to make things better.
Example: “[My product/service] AND _______ would make [my product/service] more valuable to my customers.”
List at least 20 possible ways to fill in the blank in your “and” challenge before settling on one. This ensures that you don’t become so enamored with your first plausible idea that you miss out on better answers.
Example: When currency fluctuations made it difficult for Colombia’s flower growers to sell their products profitably overseas, they considered how they could fill in the blank in the sentence, “Flowers and _______ would make flowers more valuable.” Their list of answers included “Flowers and sports teams”—this led to the idea of creating boutonnieres in team colors in conjunction with popular major sporting events.
If you can’t come up with a great idea, try to think of a horrible one. What’s the least useful thing you could do, given your current situation? Ask others to contribute their worst ideas for the situation, too. Make it clear to anyone who participates that no idea is too dumb to mention—in fact, the dumber, the better.
Thinking up horrendous ideas forces people to look at the situation in a new way, which can help them break free of mental ruts. When used with groups, this technique strips away people’s fears about contributing—there’s no worry about being ridiculed for a bad idea when the whole idea is to come up with bad ideas. And groups have fun coming up with horrible ideas.
The truth is that some terrible ideas contain the kernel of good ideas. Try flipping the terrible idea—what would be the mirror opposite of this horrendous proposal?
Example: A family having trouble trimming its budget asked family members to come up with their worst ideas for financial responsibility. One family member suggested signing up for every cable channel—after all, the cable company promotes its most extravagant package as its best money-saving deal. When the family flipped this terrible idea, they realized that they could save more than $1,000 a year by canceling their cable entirely. Cable is not necessary now that we can watch TV shows and movies streamed from the Internet.
