Brainstorming Session Format

Format for brainstorming session

Size

There is no ideal size. Twelve people is a convenient number but a brainstorming session can work very well with as many as fifteen or as few as six. Less than six usually becomes an argument and with more than fifteen each person does not get enough opportunity to contribute. If there is a larger group then it can be broken down into smaller groups and notes can be compared at the end.

Chairman

It is the chairman’s job to guide the session without in any way controlling or directing it. He has the following duties:

1. The chairman stops people trying to evaluate or criticize the ideas of others.

2. The chairman sees that people do not all speak at once. (The chairman must also pick out someone who has been trying to say something but is always talked over by a more pushy character.) The chairman does not have to ask individuals to speak. They speak when they want to. Nor does he go round the circle asking each in turn for ideas. If however there is a prolonged silence the chairman may ask an individual for his thoughts on the matter.

3. The chairman sees that the notetaker has got an idea down. The chairman may find it necessary to repeat an idea or even to summarize an idea offered by a participant (this summary must be approved by the person whose idea it was.) The chairman may be asked to decide whether an idea is already on the list and so does not need listing again. If there is any doubt or the originator of the idea claims it to be different then it must be listed.

4. The chairman fills in gaps by offering suggestions himself. He may also call on the notetaker to read through the list of ideas already recorded.

5. The chairman can suggest different ways of tackling the problem and the use of different lateral thinking techniques for trying to generate different ways of looking at the problem (e.g. the chairman may say, ‘Let’s try turning this thing upside down.’) Anyone else may of course make the same suggestions.

6. The chairman defines the central problem and keeps pulling people back to it. This is a difficult task since apparently irrelevant flights of fancy may be very generative and one certainly does not want to restrict people to the obvious view of the problem. As a guiding rule it may be said that any single flight of fancy is allowed but sustained divergence so that one comes to be considering a totally different problem is not allowed.

7. The chairman ends the session either at the end of a set time or if the session seems to be flagging — whichever is earlier. The chairman must not run the risk of boring people by extending the session indefinitely if it seems to be going well.

8. The chairman organizes the evaluation session and the listing of ideas.

Notetaker

The function of the notetaker is to convert into a permanent list the many butterfly ideas that are put forward during the session. The task is a difficult one since the nebulous ideas offered must be reduced to manageable note form. Moreover the notes must not only make sense immediately after the session but some time later when the context is no longer so clear. The notetaker has to write fast for sometimes the ideas follow one another very rapidly. The notetaker can ask the chairman to hold things until he can catch up. The notetaker may also ask whether a particular summary of the idea is acceptable (e.g. shall we put this down as, ‘More flexible traffic light system’?).

The notetaker must also assess whether an idea is new enough to be added to the list or whether it is already covered by a similar idea. If in doubt he should ask the chairman. It is better to put down duplicate ideas than leave out different ones, for the duplicate ones can be removed later but the omitted ones are lost forever.

The notes must be in a form that is immediately readable, for the chairman may ask for the list to be read out at any stage. It is not a matter of carefully transcribing shorthand some time after the end of the session.

It is useful to tape record a session as the playback may set off new ideas by repeating early ideas in a new context. Nevertheless even when the session is so recorded it is still essential to have a notetaker. At some time a summary list has to be made even of a tape and there is also the need to read out the list during the session.

Time

Thirty minutes is quite long enough for a session. Twenty minutes would be enough in many cases and forty-five minutes is an outside limit. It is better to stop while people are still full of ideas than to carry on until every last idea has been forced out. The temptation to carry on if the session is going well must be resisted.

Warm up

If the members of the group are not familiar with the technique (and perhaps even if they are) a ten minute warm up session is useful. This would deal with some very simple problem (bathtap design, bus tickets, telephone bells). The idea of this warm up session is to show the type of ideas that may be offered and to show that evaluation is excluded.

Follow up

After the main session is over the participants will continue to have ideas on the subject. These can be collected by asking each participant to send in a list of further ideas. If copying facilities are available then the list of ideas generated during the session can be sent to each participant with instructions to add any further ideas of his own on the bottom.