In order to come up with innovative solutions you need ideas. If you
only have a few ideas, the chance of identifying a good solution is
unlikely. In general, if you have more ideas you will improve the chance
that you will hit upon a good solution. However, you want not just more
ideas, but better ideas. This chapter describes a range of techniques
that will enable groups and individuals to improve the quality of their
idea generation enormously.
For many years the typical approach
to generating ideas has been “Brainstorming”. This is a technique from
the 1950’s where ideas are generated within a group setting. The rules
are that the group should be multi-disciplinary and that all ideas
should be expressed freely without discussion, debate or ridicule. The
ideas are then posted to a flip chart or wall. However, there is
substantial evidence that this technique, however popular, is not very
good at generating ideas. Research has shown, repeatedly, that it is
much less effective than individuals working on their own. The reason
why it continues to be popular lies in the belief that the “sum is
greater than its parts” – that it must be better to pool the knowledge
of a group and rely on one or two individuals. Unfortunately this is not
the case. Groups are not very good at coming up with ideas unless the
rules of traditional brainstorming are changed.
There are three main reasons why traditional brainstorming is not effective:
- Trial and Error. Generating ideas randomly is by its very nature a
trial and error process. This is both inefficient and ineffective.
- Psychological Inertia. These are the barriers we all have in coming up
with ideas. Our background, culture, previous experiences and education
all constrain our thought patterns. We only know what we know.
- Assertive Participants. It is a fact that the most powerful, assertive
and confident people in the group propose the most ideas. The rest of
the group tacitly accept them with very few additional ideas generated;
it is extremely difficult for quiet and introverted people to make a
difference even if they might have the best ideas!
These
shortcomings, however, can be addressed to significantly improve
brainstorming sessions (which are probably better referred to as Group
Working). Trial and Error can be replaced with structured thinking
processes. Psychological Inertia can be addressed with tools that
encourage “out of the box” thinking and improved group working processes
will ensure that all participants can contribute effectively.
Techniques
for generating ideas vary between those that are suitable for a broad
focus (where you need a lot of ideas) to those that require a narrow
focus (where you need better ideas). The focus area is established
during Framing/Problem Definition stage and it cannot be stressed enough
that you need to have an adequate definition before attempting to
generate ideas – otherwise different people will have different views
and the ideas that are generated won’t have much relevance.
There
is one technique, called Brain Writing, that is less associated with
generating ideas per se but is more about how to improve working within a
group. It will resolve the issue of assertive participants.
Techniques
for generating ideas for a broad focus (lots of ideas) come from
“creativity”. These tools break down the psychological inertia that
prevent individuals from generating ideas. There are a huge number of
creativity tools and there’s no reason to know them all. The ones
described in this chapter provide a good range to suit most groups and
problems:
- Themes
- Questioning
- Random Connections
- Superheroes
- Analogy
Techniques
for generating ideas for a narrow focus (better quality ideas) come
exclusively from “Triz”. These tools are based on the principle that
somewhere, someone has already solved a problem similar to yours.
Therefore, if you can access this prior information you can find a
solution. It requires a good problem definition but is guaranteed to
generate a range of high quality solutions in a very short period of
time. Again, there are many different tools available and the selection
below provides coverage for most:
- Inventive Principles
- Technical Contradictions
- Physical Contradictions
- Standard Solutions
- Trimming
When
generating ideas, these are best placed into an “Ideas Bank”. This is
simply a repository that holds all the ideas in one place. Once ideas
have been generated the final step is to refine the ideas in order to
develop the options that will provide the best solution.
Future blogs will examine these techniques in more detail.
Promax is specialist software for problem solving, innovation and decision support. It includes all the tools mentioned above for generating ideas. It has
prompts for creativity tools and over 2,000 examples for Triz tools.
