Have you been in a team workshop or brainstorming meeting where you cannot share idea with your team? A meeting dominated by two or three of your colleagues where you feel it is not worth trying to share your ideas? Brainstorming methods, once a favorite tool for ideation, have been under fire lately because they are not yielding the quality or quantity of ideas they should.
Dr. Leigh Thompson, a professor of Management and Organization in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, notes in her book Creative Conspiracy, that most meetings are dominated by 2-3 people. These dominant people believe the quiet members are unprepared or un-opinionated and thus they dominate more and more leaving the quiet members out of the brainstorming process.
This uneven communication makes brainstorming, conceptualization and design meetings very inefficient, since very few new ideas are shared or developed during these events. Yet, we know we must work with others since the success of our projects depends on the ability to collaborate with the rest of the team.
Thomson proposes the “BrainWriting” process as solution to make these meetings stronger and more participative. Her research showed that teams utilizing the “BrainWriting” method generated 20% more ideas and 42% more original ideas when compared to other teams using the standard brainstorming process.
BrainWriting Process
1 Idea Generation
1.1 Pose the problem to team
Clearly convey to the team the reason of the session indicating the problem to solve or question to answer.
1.2 Team member generate ideas independently
Give 5-10 minutes to the team members to write down their ideas on index cards.
1.3 Ideas are posted on whiteboard
The meeting facilitator collects all the ideas and posts them on the wall.
2 Idea Evaluation
2.1 Ideas are shared to team
The meeting facilitator reads the ideas to the team.
2.2 Idea development
The team discusses the ideas, eliminating, modifying, clustering, and adding new ideas as the discussion progresses.
2.3 Blind Vote on the ideas
The team completes a blind vote of the ideas and selects best ones. If there is more than one strong idea can repeat the process until a clear winner arises.
This process allows for the best ideas to surface, produces more ideas while minimizes personal bias towards ideas, design or another team member. BrainWriting helps collaborative teams successfully reach full creative capability.
For Further Contact
Pedro Guillen
Managing Partner
Technology & Business Innovation
Tel: +1 248.924.5436
