Effective Brainstorming

Developed by Alexandros Bellos

Abstract

Brainstorming is a data gathering and creative thinking process widely used in project management, where groups of people, or teams, get together in order to generate ideas and possible solutions about a specific common problem or area of interest. It was not communicated as a formal creative process until Alex Osborn detailed the practice in the book Your creative power in 1948. Currently, as a research-based divergent thinking tool, recommended also in the PMBOK® Guide, brainstorming is considered as one of the dominant idea-generation techniques.

In almost every project, creative thinking on a daily basis is a vital element for the project success. Therefore, in order to achieve that and reach their team's common goals, project managers often organize brainstorming sessions and have the role of facilitator.

Typically, a brainstorming session is structured in a way that participants share different perspectives, experiences, lessons learned about the problem and their ideas are recorded for later analysis. All the participants need to have a clear understanding of the problem and its context and acknowledge the defined and necessary steps of the process. Moreover, it is imperative that everyone is equal and shares different perspectives.

Group dynamics can be proven crucial for the effectiveness of a brainstorming session. When individuals generate ideas alone, no one disagrees or judges the quality of an idea or its owner. On the contrary, during a brainstorming session, participants are actively engaged in discussion, increasing the amount of generated ideas and possible solutions. Ergo, the key to brainstorming is creating an environment that encourages a spectrum of ideation.

In the following article, the origin of brainstorming from the Osborn's method and the term of creative thinking will be analyzed, followed by the key aspects and their constraints, for a successful and effective brainstorming session that project managers need to take into consideration. Finally, various types of brainstorming techniques will be presented, and the importance of the facilitator as a key-role will be explained.

Overview

Creativity and Creative Thinking

Creativity is a very important skill for everyone, especially for engineers, when coming up with ideas or solutions for different problems and issues is needed, not only in extraordinary situations but also in daily life. It is considered as a soft skill and can thus be further developed and improved. Creative thinking is the art of breaking with patterns, habits and certainties and the art whereby something new is formed, which is somehow valuable. It mainly depends of 3 factors: mindset, techniques used and environment (including other people around). Some of the key factors of creative thinking are:

• Postponement of judgement, acceptance all ideas
• Openness in the team, privacy to the outside
• Innovative and radical ideas
• Associative thinking
• Good perception of what is said and what is happening
• Encouragement of imagination flow
• Many ideas mean many opportunities

Origin of Brainstorming

Creativity can thrive in an environment where the flow of ideas is encouraged, without criticism, thus, creative thinking is a core element of brainstorming. In 1939, Alex Osborn, an advertising executive and co-founder of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO), urged by the ineffectiveness that his working environment encountered during the business meetings at that time, started his research on creative-thinking and creative problem-solving methods. In 1942, his book "How to Think Up" was published, and the term "Think Up" was firstly introduced, which was later also mentioned and became widely known as "Brainstorming". Osborn, among others, suggested to use the brain in order to storm a particular problem. In 1953, his book “Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving” was published, which made the brainstorming technique widely popular.

Osborn’s method was based on the principle that people should free their minds and be encouraged to generate ideas rather than be afraid of being criticized. At his “conference technique, where a group of people generate ideas, attempting to find solution to a specific problem”, Osborne suggested four key rules, that if followed, could result in a great amount of high-quality ideas, and therefore, higher possibility for tackling the problem:

• Refrain from criticism and judgement of ideas, especially before the session is over.
• Focus should not be put on the quality, but on the quantity of ideas
• Radical ideas should be encouraged
• Improvement of existing ideas and possible combination of them should also be encouraged