Tag Archives: Brainstorming

Brainstorming

I’ve had the privilege of listening to Dr. Firestien on several occasions when attending a webinar from the Center for Applied Imagination at Buffalo State in New York. He’s quite interesting and very personable.

What do a kingfisher, a hazard light and a waffle iron have in common? A creativity technique called Forced Connections, which leads to break through innovations. Brainstorming and coming up with new ideas is easy, we do it every day. Or so we think. The truth is we barely scratch the surface with our ”more of the same ideas”. We fall extremely short with quantity and quality of really good ideas. We miss the mark on really good innovations, because “More of the Same” does not break into big time innovation. Time to shift ideation gears with Dr. Roger Firestien and find out how to use a really simple ideation tool called ‘forced connections’. Not a new technique and certainly not a secret to those who work in the field of creativity, marketing or the business of creating ‘new and different’. However, new to most of us. Game changer. Creativity changer. Innovation changer.

Dr. Firestien is an associate professor and senior faculty member at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State and President of Innovation Resources, Inc. He is the author of six books, including Leading on the Creative Edge and Why didn’t I think of that? His expert views on creativity have been reported in Fast Company, Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily and The New York Times. When Roger is not traveling, he lives in Buffalo, New York, and regularly works cattle on the SK Hereford Ranch near Medina, New York This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.

Seth and Secrets (to good ideas)

I’m a follower of Seth’s Blog. You may be, too. If not, you ought to be.

That’s Seth, as in Seth Godin. He’s a very prolific writer and blogger and best-selling author.

Recently, I read a post he submitted about ideas. I’ve posted it below for reference.

Two simple secrets to good ideas

Secret #1 is the biggest one: More bad ideas. The more bad ideas the better. If you work really hard on coming up with bad ideas, sooner or later, some good ideas are going to slip through. This is much easier than the opposite approach.

Secret #2 is more important: Generosity. It’s much easier and more effective to come up with good ideas for someone else. Much easier to bring a posture of insight and care on behalf of someone else. It lets you off the hook, too.

My take.

Relative to Secret #1, seems that most brainstorming sessions tend to shut down people who come up with any idea that someone else finds stupid, offensive or one sounding similar to something presumably already tried. That. Is. Dumb. That’s the worst thing anyone could do: Stifle someone else’s thought and idea.

There is a process for generating ideas, all kinds of ideas. There’s also a process for weeding out the so-called good ones. And these processes are not one and the same.

A bad idea is just a good idea awaiting an appropriate execution. Or is it? Is there an appropriate execution for any “bad” idea? Oh, by the way, what makes the idea “bad” in the first place?

Before you can generate a list of ideas, good or bad, you should first agree on a specific question to be answered or addressed. Once that’s done, it’s much easier to devise a list of ideas generated in a short period of time, say five minutes, and then “edit” them later.

I’d suggest giving everyone in the session a stack of sticky notes and instruct the folks to write down a word or two on each sticky that attempts to answer the question. People are being forced to think quickly and not compose sentences, just thoughts. The sticky notes can later be easily organized to further benefit the brainstorm.

Oh, and don’t forget the trash can! You have to collect all the so-called “bad” ideas for disposal later. (Hint: Don’t actually dispose of them right away, but for this one exercise, they no longer exist, which will freak out some people.)

It’s interesting to do this same exercise but go back to review and edit the ideas that were discarded in the first exercise. You’re now attacking the same question with answers or ideas that are derived from an opposite perspective.

One could call this generosity that Seth refers to in Secret #2. Rather than assuming that all ideas previously discarded are no good, a generous mindset is to review them, discuss and edit down to only one that could be plausible.

Who’s to say which idea is good or bad. They’re different. True, one may be more applicable than the other but you won’t know that until further due diligence is done.

Creativity Tip #4

How do you know when you’ve hit THE idea? There are different approaches but this one is sort of like thinking in reverse. I call it the Drill Down Technique.

Begin with writing a one or two word idea on a small “sticky note.” These ideas address or answer a specific question that attempts to solve a problem.

coloredstickies

This works better in a group of about four or five, and is a timed exercise of about ten minutes.

So have a timer (electronic or a person) monitor closely.

Once you have, say, 25 or more ideas (“stickies”), choose what you consider to be the best five ideas . . . and ELIMINATE THEM.

At this point, most likely whoever is keeping time will come by and collect the now-discarded ideas. They no longer exist for (for now).

Choose five more from your “sticky notes” and ELIMINATE THEM.

Continue this process in increments of five until you have five best ideas left. Then eliminate three, then one.

Maybe this last idea you have is the best one; maybe not. However, it’s one to which you may not have paid much attention if you had gone through these ideas in a more traditional way.

Now, go do your due diligence and find out.

You never know.