How we make brainstorming work

I would phrase the goal of brainstorming as generating many creative ideas quickly. I like the general idea, but I've often seen it fail to achieve this goal.

But, I noticed a pattern in the times that it worked exceptionally well:

1. Shannon Soper facilitated a sketching exercise for a product exploration at Gatsby that looked like this:

   1. Everybody spends five minutes drawing a sketch of what they think the project in question could look like

   2. Everybody presents their sketch in 2 minutes, and then it gets discussed.

   3. Repeat

2. Teresa Torres introduced us at Stellate to her "brainwriting" technique, which looks like this:

   1. Everybody spends two minutes writing down their ideas

   2. Everybody comes back together, silently reads all the ideas, and then discusses for five minutes

   3. Repeat

So, what's the pattern? Multiple rapid rounds of divergence and convergence. (wet the drys, dry the wets, wet the drys, dry the wets, wet the drys,…)

The structure

The general structure of brainstorming sessions that work goes like this:

1. Silent writing: Everybody spends two minutes silently writing (or sketching or…) every single idea they can think of, going for quantity over quality

2. Review: We put all the ideas back together and spend two minutes reviewing the combined list of all the ideas

3. Discussion: We spend five minutes discussing the list, what thoughts different ideas sparked

   1. We've used comments in the combined list document (in Notion or Google Docs), which also worked nicely

4. Repeat: Go again. Repeat the whole cycle a few times.

Important guidelines

• Quantity over quality: Participants must try to come up with as many ideas as possible, not focus on "good" ideas.

  • Absolutely critical. I can't overemphasize that enough. The second people think about quality at all, the whole thing starts breaking down.

• Speed matters: keep each round short and sweet, and the facilitator needs to be moving the discussion along.

Why does it work?

• By getting every person involved and focused on quantity over quality, you quickly generate a wide range of varied ideas.

  • How to invent the future? By "getting more parts on the table." Another way to look at this technique is that it helps us get more parts from more people on the table more quickly.

• By coming back together and discussing the overall list, everybody can spot patterns and understand what they like and dislike

• By repeating the process, everybody can copy what they like and put it together in new ways with other ideas

  • “Where good ideas come from:” innovation happens by combining things we can see and touch today in novel ways

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