NPD Resources
Effective Brainstorming in Three Easy Steps
Step 1 - Tools and Props
How many meetings have you attended that seemed to have an agenda like this (8)?
- Presentation,
- Presentation,
- Coffee,
- Presentation,
- Presentation,
- Lunch, etc.
Meetings are the single biggest time wasters in American business today (9). There are only three situations in which brainstorming meetings should be pursued (6) (9); every other meeting covers consensus, directives, or other tasking to operate the business day-to-day.
- Current Solutions are Not Working.
- Problem is so Critical that it Needs an Innovative or New Solution.
- New Product Development (NPD).
For any productive meeting, including a brainstorming session, preparation is invaluable. For every hour planned in the brainstorming session, the team leader or facilitator should invest 10-100 hours in preparation (10). Prior to the innovation session, the facilitator should solicit the “challenges,” as well as identifying speakers, their roles, (8) and the responsibilities for team participants.
Each participant should be invited individually (not as a part of a mass-distribution e-mail, for example) where his or her role and significance to the innovation effort is enthusiastically communicated (9). Whenever possible, allow autonomy in the creative process by “walling it off” from the corporate culture by holding the brainstorming session away from the normal office work environment (7) (9). As a rule of thumb, the meeting room should accommodate three times the number of invited participants, or about 80-100 ft2 per person (7) (10). Tables should be arranged in a semi-circle to eliminate “power positions” and to eliminate side conversations – the team should work on only one problem at a time. Some companies furnish “team rooms” with comfortable chairs and sofas to encourage flexibility, motivation, and curiosity in the creative process (7).
Additionally, the meeting room should have plenty of wall space to accommodate flip charts (9), along with a storehouse of colored markers and adhesive tape so all ideas are recorded and viewable at all times (11). Participants should be provided with note pads to jot down idea “headlines”. A team of approximately eight people can yield as many as 200 ideas in just a single day (10) of brainstorming! In the next section, we will identify the roles and required attitudes of the team members for successful innovation.
Read about STEP 2 - ATTITUDES AND TEAMS here.
References for this article are available here or download the full white paper here.
