How to encourage creativity in the company with a brainstorm?

This is a group technique, popularized by advertising executive Alex Osborn end of the thirties, which has remained and has been perfected over time. This technique has gone from being a mere advertising tool to be used in activities such as politics, journalism or legislative debate.

Brainstorming is based on the theory that many meetings fail because, from the very outset, ideas are subjected to destructive criticism by the audience, so there is no time for them to mature and perfect themselves.

Details of a brainstorming

• Good direction. It is imperative that any veteran prepare, order, moderate, control and direct the session. Without a moderator to motivate and control attendees, the brainstorming is a waste of time, because situations like booing can be given to one of the participants.
• The composition of the group. It is best to incorporate people from other departments or areas of the company. They can see the problems from a different perspective than the usual members. It is not appropriate for those who understand a lot about an issue or are too involved. It can be counterproductive, as they could create ideas in excess similar to the original patterns.

Important points

1-. Individualization.

The moderator will ensure that all attendees are aware of the problem, the procedure, and the rules of brainstorming. Each assistant should have a blank sheet of paper and a pen to write as many solutions as possible.

2-. Exposition.

A few minutes later, each member of the group exposes the generated ideas, without debating them.

3-. Group.

Then the group is armed with Post-it, outlines and folios, and dedicates five minutes to do another brainstorming, this time collective, to add more solutions to the same problem. They are written by turns on a blackboard so that they can be seen by all members of the group.

4-. Comparison.

The next step is to combine all the solutions, so that you can generate new ideas.

The four P’s

• ‘People‘. On equal terms, a group of creative people by nature will outperform another of people who are less. They can see problems from different perspectives and have the ability to quickly produce many different types of new ideas.
• ‘Process‘. To create as many ideas as possible, it is necessary to separate the generation of ideas from the evaluation. Therefore, a good moderator will set certain minimum rules before starting the session.
• ‘Pressure‘. These are the positive and negative influences that exist around the group. External pressures, especially the time limitation for ingenious ideas, are often counterproductive.
• ‘Product‘. The last ingredient to create a session that generates effective ideas is to be very clear how they occur. The ideal is to place all ideas on the same plane: those that arise at the beginning and during the meeting, the best and the worst. Any of them can be used to solve other problems at an upcoming meeting.