While brainstorming has been considered a great way to generate ideas, recent research has shown it has limitations. One of these is "group think" where one person’s ideas start to dominate and others follow that path rather than branching out along a variety of paths.
A group which studies creativity and innovation (Inventium) has developed a modified form of brainstorming which seeks to overcome this problem and may be a good approach, especially when you have a team which is spread across the world.
The approach is called "Shifting" and it requires shifting between group and individual idea generation. There are four steps:
1. Instruct your group to work on the problem/task alone for 5 to 10 minutes or until you see the pens start to slow.
2. Then bring the group together and get people to share their ideas one-by-one around the table and build on each other’s ideas. This should take between 20 and 40 minutes.
3. Next, shift back into individual mode and get people to build on the shared ideas alone for 5 to 10 minutes or until you see the pens start to slow again.
4. And lastly, bring the group back together and repeat Step 2.
Obviously this is designed for a group who can be together in one room, but could be adapted for a virtual meeting. The important thing is to have everyone feeling involved and generate lots of ideas!
less
While brainstorming has been considered a great way to generate ideas, recent research has shown it has limitations. One of these is "group think" where one person’s ideas start to dominate and others follow that path rather than branching out along a variety of paths.
A group which studies creativity and innovation (Inventium) has developed a modified form of brainstorming which seeks to overcome this problem and may be a good approach, especially when you have a team which
...
more
