Brainstorming

Brainstorming, set forth in the 1950s by Alex Osborn, is governed by the following rules:

1. Withhold adverse judgment of ideas until later
2. Encourage unusual and even wild ideas
3. The more ideas the better
4. Combine and build on the ideas of others

These rules are based on the notion that every person in the brainstorming group, and every idea generated, has equal worth.

Classical Brainstorming Drawback

Today, we know that brainstorming often falls short of expectations, yielding only a small number of mostly low-quality ideas. (A typical brainstorming session produces 10-15 wild ideas and 1-2 valuable ones.) The ineffectiveness of classical brainstorming can be illustrated by Pareto's law: Participants have fun and actively generate ideas for the first 20% of the session. The rest of the session is spent "squeezing" ideas out of the participants, who become bored and even irritated at having to withhold their opinions.

Ideation Brainstorming Process

The Ideation Brainstorming process integrates the brainstorming environment with a guided problem-solving method. I-TRIZ software acts as the "facilitator," providing a change of focus in the form of Tasks, as well as Directions and Operators that guide the problem-solver to the area of the solution space where the best solutions are likely to reside.