Those of us at the Stanford d.school are all pretty obsessed with brainstorming and the role it plays in the creative process. And I've thought about the effects of brainstorming and how to run a good brainstorming session for years, as this was one of the main themes that emerged from the research that Andy Hargadon and I did at IDEO -- you can read about some of the main lessons we learned here and here in BusinessWeek. But I will never think of brainstorms in quite the same way again after seeing this picture!
I love the 8 rules to Brilliant Brainstorming.
One rule that may serve well as a ninth rule is get warmed up. Just as any of our other muscles need stretching before a big time workout so does the brain. Start off with something simple that can be silly or weird that way when you get into the heavy lifting no one gets injured. When I've facilitated without doing a warm up activity to get people thinking the results are always disappointing...
Posted by: Jeff | March 31, 2008 at 01:53 PM