Hurryyyy up, we’re brainstorming….
Did you know that the first organized meeting to use the brainstorming technique took place in 1938?
Making it into the literature was not nearly as easy. Fully 15 years after the first storm, in 1953, it took its place among other creative thinking techniques when advertising executive Alex Osborn included it in his book “Applied Imagination.”
So what is the goal of brainstorming? The goal is to encourage group members to come up with new ideas and to build on their contributions to generate new, alternative, creative ideas. This makes brainstorming a very effective method for any setting where a decision has to be made, and for any topic that calls for ideas or solutions.
If you’ve said, “Let’s get a few people together and brainstorm,” but it didn’t quite work out, let us share a few helpful tips for that, too.
What do we do?
1- Write down the topic in detail.
2- List your goals.
3- Sometimes reason inductively, sometimes deductively.
4- Break the topic down. (Person by person or section by section)
5- The 5W1H questions are a great idea!