Brainstorming alone

 In a previous post I shared my views on how to get the best results from a group session on creative thinking.


We ran another workshop last week, so perhaps it's time for a few additional reflections.  It transpires that some "rules" are more important than others, so here are my top three ...

1. Be careful who joins the exercise.  You should have a diverse group, and each participant should be open-minded and realistic about the likely outputs.
2. Take the group outside their natural environment, but make them comfortable there.
3. Keep the pace up:  If there's any criticism of ideas, or if you're spending more than two minutes on any one idea, then it's time to move on.

These workshops usually generate excellent results, and last week was no exception.  However I'd also like to draw attention to the power of using creative thinking techniques alone.  Edward de Bono is a keen advocate of this (see bibliography) and I wholeheartedly agree.  


For the last six months I've taken ten minutes a day to do exactly this, and it works every time.  I always run out of topics of interest long before I run out of ideas to address them!   And I have psychometric evidence to demonstrate that ideas aren't really my forté, so I believe this is a trick anyone can perform. 


If you're keen to discuss this then I'd welcome the conversation.