Unique Favor Tag Wording

Brainstorming

Creativity techniques

The Brainstorming is probably the most ancient and best known, at least in name. Its creator, Alex Osborn , described in his book Applied Imagination , Published in 1954, even though he already had been using since 1939.

technique quickly gained popularity in fact forcing the inventor to publish a revised version of the book 1957 (in Castilian, Applied Imagination, Alex F. Osborn , Ed Velflex, Madrid 1960), extending the content experience in this period and rearranging the chapters for teaching purposes. Despite having over 70 years, still remains valid.

Its main objectives are: to break the usual limitations of thought and produce a set of ideas from which to choose (no one wants to have a unique option to choose when buying a car or a detergent, therefore, why have only one option when trying to solve a problem?) .

The Brainstorming is useful for attacking specific problems (rather than generalists) and wherever you need a collection of good ideas, new and fresh (but not where opinion or analysis is needed to decide).

While Alex Osborn recommended that the group had twelve members, is now proven that the ideal number is 4 to 7 people, being practical also groups of two to ten members. You can also practice individually.

Basic rules

There are four basic rules:

1. Suspend trial. Delete all criticism. When they sprout ideas do not allow any critical commentary. All ideas are written down. The evaluation is reserved for later. You have to postpone the trial of adverse ideas. We've been so trained to be instantly analytical, practical, converged in our thinking that this rule is difficult to follow, but is crucial. Create and judge at the same time is like pouring hot and cold water in the same bin.
2. think freely. Freedom is very important issue. Wild thoughts are fine. The ideas are either impossible or unimaginable. In fact, in each session should have some idea crazy enough to provoke laughter to the whole group. We need to remember that the practical ideas are often born of other unworkable or impossible. Allowing you to think outside the usual limits of normal, there may be new and brilliant solutions. Some wild ideas are transformed into practice. The more strongly the idea, the best may be the results, it is easier to refine an idea to issue a new one.
3. The amount is important . We need to concentrate on generating a large number of ideas that later revisions. The larger the number of ideas, the easier it is to choose between them. There are two reasons for wanting a lot of ideas. First, it seems the obvious ideas, usual, worn, impractical come first to mind, so it is likely that the first 20 or 25 ideas are not fresh or creative. Second, the longer the list, the more you have to choose, adapt or combine. In some sessions, is to aim to achieve a number of ideas, the order of 50 or 100, before ending the meeting.
4. The multiplier effect . Look for the combination of constructs and its improvements. In addition to contributing their own ideas, participants can suggest improvements to the ideas of others or get a better idea from the other two. What the idea is good about themselves? What can be done to improve it or make it wild? Use the ideas of others as a stimulus for your improvement or variation. Sometimes changing just one aspect of an impractical solution can become a great solution.

A more extensive list of rules you will find in the Decalogue good brainstormiano .

Development of a session

Here find a quick overview of aspects to take into account the development of a meeting.

There are some practical issues to consider when making a session:

• Choosing a secretary Someone who will record the ideas. Preferably, it would have to write the ideas on a board or on cards hung on a wall so that the whole group can see. If not possible, write them on paper. In an ideal meeting, the secretary should be someone who just did this, it is hard to be thoughtful and be creative and be scoring at the same time. In small meetings, the secretary is usually one of the participants.

In individual brainstorming is useful to use a map of ideas in a big role. Or a poster on the wall. (The letters help keep these great ideas. In fact, it says that using paper instead of DIN A2 DIN A4 increases creativity. Why not try it?).

• moderator to organize the chaos . In groups of three or four, you need to have a moderator to choose who is next to say an idea and keep everyone talking at once. If necessary, the moderator will remind members not to inject the session evaluation (if someone questions, mock, say "hala!, Where you go!" Or the like).
• Keep relaxed and cheerful . The creative juices flow best when participants are relaxed and having fun and feeling free to be silly or playful. Even snack or to bow and paper hats while working, even if the problem itself is serious as cancer or child abuse. Should not remind people that "this is a serious problem" or "this is a bad joke."

As a help and a stimulus to creativity, it is often good to start with a warm up session for ten minutes, where an imaginary problem is addressed. Thinking about an imaginary problem frees people and makes merry. Then they can address the real problem. Some subjects imagined could be for example:

• like eating a home more effectively
• as light a home with just a light bulb
• to improve the journey from home to work
• invent a new Olympic game
• Limit session. It would have to limit the duration of a typical session for about 15-30 minutes. Longer sessions that tend to lose interest. In general, you should not exceed thirty minutes, even when the duration of a session "ideal", as recommended by Osborn.
• Backing . After the session, you need to pass to clean the list of ideas and make copies for all participants. Do not try to put the list in no particular order.
• Add and evaluate . The next day (not the same day) the group would return to find. First, it would have to share the ideas conceived on the previous session (included in the list photocopied). Then the group would have to evaluate each of the ideas and develop the most promising so they can be put into practice.

During the evaluation sessions, the wild ideas become practical or used to suggest realistic solutions. The emphasis must be put in the analysis and real-world issues. Sometimes ideas fall found that are believed useful in three groups:

1. immediately useful ideas . The ideas that you can use immediately.

2. Areas to explore more widely . These ideas need to investigate, monitor, think, discuss more broadly etc.

3. New approaches to the problem . These ideas suggest new ways of looking at the issue.

Keep in mind that evaluation is not the same day brainstorming session . This makes the session more free ideas (without fear of immediate assessment) and allowed an incubation time of more ideas and a time to think about the ideas that have emerged.

variants brainstorming

Since their establishment they have derived a considerable number of variants and there are some variants that has been given its own name:

• Stop-and-go brainstorming .
• Brainstorming sequentially.
• Brainstorming constructive-destructive.
• Brainstorming individual.
• Sandwich-brainstorming .
• Brainstorming with Post-it (TM). .
• Method Phillips 66.

According Czichos (1993), Schlicksupp (1992) and Werneck and Ullmann (1973), we can distinguish, for example, the following variants:

• Brainstorming Anonymous .
• Brainstorming Guided .
• Brainstorming imaginary.
• SIL ( Sukzessive Integration von Lösungen successive integration-Method Solutions) .
• Method 635 .
• collective Notebook (Notebook Collective ) .
• brainwriting Pool.
• Technical of "index cards ( Kärtchentechnik ).

common underlying feature of these techniques is the exchange of proposals from participants in a session for ideas. They differ in whether made orally or in writing.

Since

terminology is not uniform all use the concept brainstorming for all of them as overarching concept