Brainstorming

Brainstorming as a Formal Setting for Lateral Thinking

De Bono describes brainstorming as a formal group setting for applying lateral thinking. It provides a holiday from the rigidity of vertical thinking by separating idea generation from evaluation. The core principle is to defer judgment, allowing participants to build upon each other’s suggestions without criticism. The aim is to produce many different ideas that can later be refined and assessed.

The main features of a brainstorming session are:

• Cross stimulation – participants’ ideas spark further ideas in others.
• Suspended judgement – no criticism or evaluation is permitted during the session.
• The formality of the setting – a clear structure that signals a departure from everyday analytical thinking.

To be effective, a brainstorming session follows five key rules:

1. Defer judgment – No criticism, either positive or negative, while ideation is ongoing.
2. Go for quantity – The more ideas produced, the greater the chance of hitting upon a valuable one.
3. Encourage wild ideas – Out-of-the-box, seemingly impractical suggestions can trigger practical solutions that would not otherwise have emerged.
4. Build on others’ ideas – Combine, adapt, and improve upon what others have said; use their suggestions as stepping stones.
5. Stay focused – Keep the discussion centered on the specific problem at hand, even if the ideas themselves range far.

Brainstorming does not require a teacher or external facilitator, though a session often benefits from someone keeping the group aligned to the rules. Participants can use the setting to explore a problem before deciding which ideas merit further work.

Examples

These transcripts show participants proposing ideas, building on suggestions, and occasionally being redirected from implementation details to idea generation.

Session 1: Redesigning a Teaspoon

The challenge was to reconsider the design of a teaspoon.

… A rubber spoon.

… I feel that the secondary function of a spoon — transferring sugar from basin to cup — has largely disappeared, and that a teaspoon in the shape of an egg whisk would be much more efficient.

… (Put down egg whisk.)

… And make it electrically driven.

… Incorporate a musical box for the aesthetic function.

… Have something like a pipette tube which you dip in the sugar with your finger over the top and transfer sugar that way. Then the sugar would be provided with a dispersing agent so that you would entirely lose the pleasure of stirring.

… Going back to the egg whisk, I think one ought to have a sort of screw thing, rather like an electrical swizzle stick. The axle would be hollow…

… (Can I interrupt here? You are beginning to tell us how you would make it and that is not the function of this session.)

… No, I am just describing what it looks like.

… (Could you describe it more simply?)

… A rotating spoon?

… No, it’s got a screw. You know, a propeller type screw.

… You push it up and down?

… No, it’s electric, you just press the button on the top.

… It seems to me this is too complicated. Now you have ordinary sugar tongs and each individual would have his own sugar tongs and would pick up a couple of lumps of sugar. The tongs have two ends and you could create turbulence just as easily as with a spoon.

… Doesn’t this restrict you to lump sugar?

… Yes, small lumps. But you can still get the quantity of sugar you want.

… (What shall we put down there?)

… Tongs.

… What about something like those ashtrays which spin as you press them. We could have something that you placed over a cup and as you pressed it it opened out to release some sugar and at the same time spun to stir the sugar in.

… If there is so much fun stirring in sugar then perhaps we ought to have some sort of inert sugar which people who don’t like sugar could use in order to enjoy stirring in.

… A once-off spoon made of sugar.

… A device which contains sugar and which is moved up and down in the cup. But if you don’t want sugar you keep a gate closed.

… I would like to take up the idea of electricity but not using a battery or anything like that but using the static electricity present in the body.

… This idea of a screw. One could do it on the autogiro principle. As the screw went up and down the fluid would make it revolve.

… Like a spinning top.

… A vibrating table that would agitate everything on it — whether you had sugar or not.

… What about a sugar impregnated stick.

Session 2: Improving the Windscreen Wiper/Washer Function

The session was attempting to discover a better design for the windscreen wiper/washer function — something to prevent impairment of vision by an accumulation of mud and/or water.

… A conventional windscreen wiper with water or some other washing agent coming in through the arms of the wiper itself instead of being sprayed onto the screen from another point.

… A rotating centrifugal disc…

… Like on a ship?

… Yes.

… How about doing away with the screen and just having a very fast flow of air through which no particles of dust or water could penetrate?

… A wiper that would move straight across the screen from side to side or from top to bottom, the rate to be controlled by the driver.

… Have a liquid which makes the dirt transparent so you don’t have to take it off.

… A screen that acts as a shutter and wipes itself clean as it revolves.

… An electrically heated screen that boils off the water.

… Radar control of the car itself.

… A high speed screen that ejected some liquid as it went up and wiped it off as it came down.

… Ultrasonics.

… Make mudflaps compulsory on all vehicles.

… Develop two types of magnet, one of which attracts water and the other attracts dirt and locate them on the bottom.

… Channel water off the roof of the cab and so make wipers less necessary.

… Have a liquid windscreen.

… How about a surface which is perpetually in motion?

… Vibration.

… Have a circular car with a windscreen that passes round it and through a washer on the way round.

… Windscreen wiper with jets in the wiper.

… (I think we have that down already as jets in the wiper arm itself.)

… Experiment with rotating sponges and brushes and things other than the conventional sweeper.

… Sheet of water flowing down the windscreen and get rid of the wipers altogether.

… (So far we have been trying to get rid of the wiper. Suppose we did not want to get rid of the wiper but just to improve it. Is there any way we could do things hydraulically?)

… A very high pressure jet of water that would dislodge the dirt and also provide volume for washing it away.

… Experiment with partial windscreen so that you don’t actually look through glass, you look through a gap.

… 3, 6 or 8 or any number of wipers operating along the bottom or along the top and sides of the screen.

… Have two fairly conventional windscreens that go up and down alternately and pass through wipers as they go up and down.

… Have a rotating screen, part of which went underneath where it was cleaned so you always had a fresh piece.

… Have a choice of washer tanks so you could vary the liquid according to the conditions — for instance using something special to wash off oil.

… A periscope that you could see above the dirt.

… Have a Venetian blind principle.

… Have a double thickness of glass with water in between. The front sheet would have small holes through which the water was constantly trickling.

… Some screen that would intercept most of the dirt before it reached the windscreen proper.

… Change the driving position. Turn around and drive from the back.

… Drive in tunnels.

… Television arrangement so that the driver does not have to actually look out.

… An ordinary wiper with a variable speed which is automatically adjusted according to the speed of the car or the amount of light getting through the windscreen or something like that.

… Have a multi-layer windscreen in which you just peel off the outer dirty layer.

… Have a soluble surface windscreen so that the water is constantly dissolving it and so keeping it clean.

… Have windscreen made of ice which is constantly melting and so keeping itself clean.

… You could just put a layer of the soluble stuff on before you went out.