Brainstorming demystified. It is a specific method developed to manage the creative process.

1. Manage your Ideas Like a Pro

2. DreamTeam and Brainstorming
● 80% of the people that use the term don't know what it means
● Specific creativity method
● Alex Faickney Osborn (May 24, 1888 – May 13, 1966)
● In 1919 founded BDO with Barton and Durstine
● In 1928 BDO + George Batten Company = BBDO
● In 1942 published How To Think Up
○ Creativity technique named Brainstorming
● In 1954 created the Creative Education Foundation
● with Sidney Parnes developed CPS
○ Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process
● co-founded Creative Problem Solving Institute
○ the world's longest-running international creativity conference
○ CPS has been taught for more than 50 years
● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Faickney_Osborn
● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming

3. 5 Reasons Brainstorming can go
wrong
1. Participants don't understand creative process and rely on
their intuition
2. Goals are too vague, and participants have differing views
what final aim is
3. Participants can't make a mental leap from day to day work
4. It is too hard to break away from group mentality and PC
thinking
5. Managers and clients don't allow team members to be
radically creative

4. 5 More Reasons Brainstorming
can go wrong
1. Environment is too much like a classroom to be good
environment for creative thinking
2. Only creatives participate, others are seen as disturbing
influence
3. Subject has been tackled too many times, free association
produces only variations on cliches
4. Participants are looking out for problems and obstacles that
stop ides getting of drawing board
5. To little time and attention is being invested in finding great
ideas

5. Idea management in Action
1.Brief and goal formulation
2.Idea generation
3.Idea development and selection
4.Implementation

6. Brief and goal formulation
Reduce all the information from the brief,
meetings, documentation and your previous
experience into a single proposition:
THE GOAL

7. Idea Generation
At this stage, most important thing is for
your imagination to run free. For your team
to be inspired, no restrictions must be
imposed. Larger the pool of ideas you
come up with the better ideas.

8. Idea development and selection
This is where creativity is required in order
to turn ideas into even better ideas. You
slowly begin to turn raw your ideas into
new ideas to bridge any gaps and improve
what you've already got. Any ideas that
just can't be taken further are thrown out

9. Implementation
Ideally selection process should have
whittled down the possibilities to just a few
great concepts. Now it's over to the
implementation team to take the ideas to
best possible level.

10. From a brief to a single goal
● The brief as a starting point
○ Brief acts as ignition to the creative team
○ Brief should be like a love letter to the product
● Restricting the search field
○ Restrictive elements should be kept in background in creative phase
○ These parameters come into force when ideas are being developed
● Enlarging the search field
○ In first brief put emphasis on parameters that stimulate imagination
○ Give detailed information to provide largest hunting ground for ideas
● To find the right answers, ask the right questions
○ The goal and solution are question and the answer
○ Only good question will result in correct answer
○ Investing in analyzing the problem means getting to the heart of the
matter, increases likelihood of finding a solution

11. What does the goal achieve?
● Formulating the goal reduces a complex brief to a clear
strategy
● Goal means that all ideas can be reduced to a single
minded proposition that can be understood by target
group in just few seconds
● Goal helps to prevent chaos in sessions and time-
wasting discussions about how to interpret the brief
● Expressed in form of a question, goal makes team
begin active mental process, and so acts as a stimulus
● Goal keeps the team on track during the meeting and
prevents them from getting snarled up in other ideas
from which it's hard to get back to task in hand

12. Everybody is nobody
If you define a target group in a brief as
“everybody”, you'll end up targeting
nobody. Same applies to other brief
parameters: emphasizing everything in a
brief is emphasizing nothing.

13. Formulating a great goal
● A goal should always involve a single-minded
proposition
● A goal should have no 'ands'
● A goal is always a question
● A goal should be short and snappy
● A goal should be simple enough for a twelve year
old to understand it
● A goal should avoid using jargon or foreign words
when possible
● A goal should be formulated in a way that team will
accept it and take it forward

14. Building your DreamTeam
● Don't have more than four people in your creative team
● Keep mixing your creative teams for different projects
● Give beginners a chance
● On large projects invite clients to creative meetings
● Make sure you include a good mix of backgrounds and
personalities
● If only for a short time, give creative meetings atmosphere in
which participants can laugh and have fun
● Establish team culture in which it's ok to make mistakes
● Creativity means exploring a new territory, people who make no
mistakes stay stuck on old paths
● Make sure your team receives constructive feedback from clients
and other departments

15. Choose right moment for criticism
It is only in subsequent evaluation stage that it
is justified to raise factors such as the brief,
and it is also the time to introduce
professional know-how or criticism, so that
raw ideas can be developed in atmosphere of
constructive discussion. To prevent
unconventional ideas being 'evaluated away'
and prematurely discarded, the team should
keep asking the same question: “How can I
improve on this idea, what can I do to really
make it work?”

16. Grab your ideas and run with them
Almost nothing inhibits the creative process
more than clinging obsessively to one single
idea – namely your own. Don't think of your
teammates as rivals in competition for the best
idea but as suppliers of raw material for your
next ideas. It doesn't matter if you think their
ideas are good or bad – just use them as
triggers and stimuli for your own associations.
Important thing is to pick up ideas, develop
them and hand them back.

17. Ping-pong with ides
It is best practiced with two players. A lot of
brilliant two person creative teams work on this
principle. A key factor is to pick a partner you
trust 100 per cent. Concentrate on getting a
rapid flow of ideas during the game, resist urge
to criticize, follow your instincts and let your self
be carried by spontaneity. You'll soon build up
a chain of associations and start churning new
ideas. The only thing that can stop this
spontaneous river of ideas is urge to censor
yourself.

18. Avoid Idea Killers
● Idea killers always work
● “That won't work”, frowns and cynical smiles should not be part of
creative meeting culture
● Research has shown that 70% of the time in meetings is spent running
down colleagues' suggestions
● Often killer phrases of our colleagues do less damage than little voice
inside our heads, whispering “Forget it, it doesn't work”
● Three effective antidotes to killer phrases
○ Turn killer phrases to constructive feedback
○ Stop killer phrases in their tracks, announce your ideas with
“craziest thing I can think of is...”
○ Identify idea killers, they will lose their lethal force in meetings, take
the time with the whole team to think of as many idea killers as you
can
● Think creatively: look for positive in other peoples ideas
○ Ask yourself: “what is in that we can use?”
○ Replace your critic with inner creative and exploit the possibilities

19. Stick with it: best ideas are yet to
come
● Don't throw in the towel and accept the first ideas
that come up, they are usually shallow, you are
missing on some brilliant ideas
● After first phase of producing ideas team may fall
into deep silence, don't end the session, team
members are immersed in search process
● It often takes only one sentence to get the
process moving again, and it will probably
produce far better ideas
● Several such phases are possible, so stick with it

20. Use doodles to visualize your
ideas
● Three advantages of doodles
○ Doodles are essential means of communication,
enabling rest of the team to see, and therefore
understand, the images in your head
○ Doodles reinforce the associations of internal images
and so trigger new ideas in a playful way
○ Doodles enable teams to develop raw ideas in gradual
stages and so prevent good ideas from being killed of
prematurely
● Not all good ideas fit on a matchbox

21. Idea evaluation and selection
From 300 ideas to 3:
● Three ways to evaluate and select ideas
○ Democratically – every team members gives
a score
○ Use brief as a yardstick
○ Boss gives the final word

22. Selection criteria
● Does the idea only work the first time?
● Let other people be the judge
● Does the whole team love the idea or just one
person?
● Does the idea embrace the values of the
product or the company?
● Does the idea contain something that has never
been seen before, something that will attract
attention?

23. Implementation
Turning ideas into reality
● How can management provide optimal support for the
concept?
● What could management add to the basic idea to makes
sure the solution really hits the bull's eye?
● What weak points does idea have, what seems
implausible?
● Is idea direct enough?
● What can I substitute or alter to improve the idea?
● What do you need to do to make the idea so appealing that
people will be happy to see it again and again?
● Make sure that designer's artistic vision doesn't take the
idea off track or make it less powerful
● Make sure that everyone involved in the next stage of the
production process understands the idea and supports it