Successful new products start with innovative ideas. Generating new ideas, however, is often a difficult endeavor for organizations mired in the complexities of product development today. How do you fit in freewheeling brainstorming sessions when more pressing concerns (regulatory compliance, increased competition, demand for increased customization,skyrocketing raw material costs, and shortened design cycles) seem to take precedence?
An article, “Seven Steps to Better Brainstorming” by McKinsey & Company gives organizations some easy steps to follow to encourage the generation of better, more innovative ideas in-house. The consultancy has worked with over 150 companies in a range of industries to develop a pragmatic approach—they’ve dubbed “brainsteering”—that captures the energy typically lacking in traditional brainstorming sessions. The trick, the company says, is to leverage the way people actually think and work in creative problem-solving situations.
Let’s take a look at some of the best practices recommended in the article.
Know the decision-making criteria. Often ideas hatched during these sessions die a quiet death because they are beyond the scope of what the organization would be willing to consider. Start out these sessions by laying out the real criteria (limitations or restrictions) the company will use to make decisions about resulting ideas. For example, while a company might be interested in ideas for new products, ideas that would require new regulatory approvals would be a no-go, regardless of how innovative the idea was.
Ask the right questions. Use the “right” questions as the platform for idea generation. Questions should have two characteristics. One, they should force participants to take a new and unfamiliar perspective, therefore, shaking up their thinking and eliminating the chance they will focus on ideas that worked in the past. Secondly, the right question limits the conceptual space your team will explore, without being so restrictive that it forces particular answers or outcomes. Limit it to 15 to 20 such questions and choose the questions carefully as they form the heart of the session.
Pick the right team. Choose people who can answer the questions you’re asking, not based on where they are in the corporate organizational chart. Pick people with “in the trenches” knowledge. Keep the boss away as they often prevent people from expressing unproven, novel ideas. Also, avoid adding “big mouths” to the mix as they take up too much time espousing their opinions, intimidate the less confident, and give everyone else an excuse to be lazy.
Divide and conquer. Conduct multiple, discrete, highly focused sessions among subgroups of three to five people—no fewer, no more. Each subgroup should focus on a single question for a full 30 minutes. Of the total 20 questions, each group should be given five questions each. Isolate “idea crushers” in their own subgroup. These include anyone who, intentionally or not, prevents others from sharing their opinions and ideas. Can include bosses, “big mouths,” and subject matter experts.
Set your expectations. Before you divide the group into subgroups, tell them what your expectations are and what they will—and won’t—accomplish. Prepare your participants for the likelihood that each subgroup might only generate two or three worthy ideas, which can help prevent them from getting discouraged.
Wrap it up. A typical subgroup will generate perhaps 15 interesting ideas that warrant further exploration. If you’re running multiple subgroups simultaneously, your 20-person team should collectively generate up to 60 ideas.
What now? Unlike in traditional brainstorming, you should not have the full group choose the best ideas from the pile, because attendees don’t have the executive-level understanding of the criteria and considerations that go into prioritizing ideas for actual investment. Instead, have each group narrow its own list of ideas to a top few and then share all of the leading ideas with the full group, even though they will not be picking the winning ideas.
Follow up quickly. Decisions and other follow-up activities should be quick and thorough, as the odds that action will result from a brainstorming session tend to decline as time passes. Be sure and communicate the results of the decisions quickly to everyone involved, even when an idea was rejected.
The article was adapted from a book, Brainsteering: A Better Approach to Breakthrough Ideas (HarperCollins, March 2011) written by Kevin and Shawn Coyne. Read Seven Steps to Better Brainstorming in its entirety on the McKinsey and Company web site.
Brainstorming is really good especially if everyone is artistic and open minded. This kind of strategy is part of Business Development .
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