Brainstorming
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you have.
Emile Chartier, French Philosopher
Brainstorming is a useful activity that helps develop highly creative solutions to a problem. It is particularly helpful to break out of stale, established patterns of thinking, so that you can develop new ways of looking at things. This can be when you need to develop new opportunities, where you want to improve the service that you offer, or when existing approaches just aren't giving you the results you want. Used with your team, it helps you bring the experience of all team members into play during problem solving.
Brainstorming ideas is perhaps the most common use for ThinkTank. Other group processes from the list of ideas created the brainstorming process. Therefore, the first collaborative group process you encounter with your group is often brainstorming.
Suppose your team needs to solve a problem. One way to do this is to begin with a list building activity in ThinkTank's Categorizer activity to define the problem because this is essential to solving the problem. Help the participants focus on developing a comprehensive list of symptoms by encouraging them to write each idea in the form of statement.
Once the group has developed a manageable list of problems, they can comment on each statement by answering questions such as: "why is this a problem?" or "how does this happen?"
The techniques for brainstorming can generally be divided into free form and structured processes. Use a free form process for brainstorming when you want:
- Unbounded exploration by the group
- Quick burst of innovation
- Idea swapping
- Creative thinking
When you want the group to collect specific types of ideas, such as problem statements, you may want to use a more structured process.
In ThinkTank's Categorizer activity, Brainstorming is the default mode. It works like a basic instant messaging application. Simply instruct your participants to type ideas into the submission panel on the bottom of the screen and press Enter. All participants can enter their ideas simultaneously and anonymously. Ideas from other users appear Bold until you click on them to mark them as Read. Ideas can be: Edited, deleted, moved into an outline or copied.