Have you ever been called into a brainstorming session at the last minute or find halfway through one your asking what are we doing here again? I bet more of us have than successful ideas or products that have come from these sessions. Recently I attended the HOW Conference in Austin and had the pleasure of meeting the authors of “Caffeine for The Creative Mind” and “Caffeine for the Creative Team” both books available on Amazon.com and both full of exercises to use in brainstorming sessions.
This three-hour session provided exercises and principles that both invigorate and spark creative ideas that bring ideation and execution to your team and company. The session started with an exercise right out of the book and quickly we found ourselves describing Austin and what it meant to us using Play-Doh. After about 5 minutes my group had an alien with a head made out of a taco, a body that resembled a guitar, a BBQ burger and beer bottle in hand and we kept the “keep Austin Weird” message going.
Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield the authors highlighted key principles that after hearing I was ready to share back with my team and make the next big thing. Below I will highlight some of these and for a more detailed version with over 500 exercises pick up their books.
1. Have the right number of brainstormers present. Usually 4-7 is good, 5 is their magic number.
2. Don’t surround yourself around other you’s. Have many different personality types include the janitor if needed.
3. No pop quizzes – give people notice (2 days) to bring ideas to the table.
4. Value time 1.5 – 2 hours is ideal.
5. Fresh input, familiar output. Experience the brand in its environment but come back to a familiar place to meet otherwise there will be too many distractions.
6. Have something up your sleeve: bring elements into the area; this shows how important certain elements are.
7. Start the fire with a creative match. Exercises of creativity.
8. Bring in the strategic play. Have a creative catalyst Kevin Carroll at Nike has his own creative gym on their complex.
9. Leave the judge at the door. No one will speak out if they say something stupid and get judged. Have people feel they are not developing a solution but possibilities.
10. If you unroll it, they will draw. Surfaces that are drawable, Play-Doh, etc.
11. Be the coach not the owner. Look from someone else’s or things perspective, give stalls a push.
12. Capture residual ideas – come back 1 day later in an informal visit and jot down any ideas that might have come up.
13. Put on the back patter hat. We all like to be stroked so praise may make us generate more.
All in all I thought these ideas were excellent and half way through the session I had a calendar invite from my team for a brainstorming session the day I got back so I was looking forward to using these.