Early in the design process, teams must commit to the free formation and flow of ideas. Locking on particular designs too early blocks innovation before it can happen. However, getting stuck in brainstorming frustrates the successful resolution of the R&D phase and will negatively affect future phases of development. Here’s a few ideas on how to structure brainstorming and successfully and efficiently bring it to a close when required.

Brainstorming is a process of open-ended idea generation. Done appropriately and at the right time, brainstorming can provide a team with more than enough potential avenues of investigation to consider. Done inappropriately, brainstorming can provide the trappings of creative investigation but arbitrarily shut out good ideas from the start. Done at the wrong time, it can simply confuse a team by injecting too much complexity into a process that at times can appear chaotic.

Brainstorming Essentials

Brainstorming is relatively:

• Unstructured: Brainstorming should be as free of structure as possible at the beginning. The time to make sense of potential avenues of investigation comes at the close of brainstorming, not at the beginning.

• Unconstrained by external influence: Brainstorming should be conducted free of known constraints (e.g., competition rules, resource availability, etc.). Although feasibility is important to consider, the time to do so is after brainstorming is complete.
• Democratic: Good ideas can come from the least likely sources. Everyone from the newest to the most experienced team member should be encouraged to participate and share ideas openly. Again, the time to assign responsibility and duties is after brainstorming is complete.

All these are noted as relative principles because it’s clear that most teams (and established teams in particular) will find it difficult to abandon their history, practices, limitations, and social relations. This is not to say that living up to these principles is impossible or shouldn’t be tried; indeed, limitations to creative investigation should be taken into account and controlled at first to ensure as free a creative space as possible.

Timing of Brainstorming

Brainstorming should happen very early in the design phase. In fact, it should be the first thing done in any design effort, even before people break up into subteams to investigate issues further. In some cases, it even happens before the team convenes—the Formula SAE team, for example, brainstorms ideas for the next car on the last day of competition and continues this discussion on the way home.

Brainstorming should be done when everyone is immersed in new ideas and relatively unencumbered by competing priorities. When real life interferes, the quality and quantity of ideas generated will suffer.

Brainstorming should not be done all the time, though. Coming up with new ideas a week before a team’s competition is rarely a good idea: the team inevitably has pressing details to consider, and new energies and priorities will compound what is likely already a confusing situation. There are times when free investigation of ideas and options must be curtailed in favor of the best possible alternative available, and, at such times, new ideas can be counterproductive.

Bringing Brainstorming to a Close

In any brainstorming session, ideas should be offered and recorded for future discussion. There should be no initial vetting of the list; any and all ideas should be offered as equal.

That said, all ideas are not created equal. Some are simply impossible. Others ignore the rules and regulations under which the team must operate. Some are impractical given human, time, and financial resources. Some are not very well thought out and easily bettered by competing ideas.

Once a complete list of ideas exists, the team must select and eliminate ideas. Brainstorming is closed by reintroducing certain elements of reality to the situation; many ideas are cancelled out by a simple appeal to the team’s goals, rules, resources, etc.

Some ideas will survive this first step of elimination but require considerable work to develop into something fruitful. This is where ideas gained through brainstorming should be subjected to the design review process to ensure that potentially valuable ideas are sufficiently developed.

Whatever the case, it is good to document ideas that did not make the cut and explain briefly why they did not. Should the reasons change, knowing that an idea has already been discussed can be a good departure point for future investigation.

References

Creativity Techniques
Thinking outside the box can be a difficult experience. The site above offers tips on many established techniques to foster creative thinking. Some may be more suitable than others given the problem and people at hand, so choose techniques wisely based on your perceptions of what would work best given the context.