Brainhacks

[Ozoda Muminova]

Apart from shoving everyone into one room and providing biscuits, does anyone have great personal tips on organising brainstorms and getting most out of them?

[fannster]

How about some alcohol?
I love bringing creatives to the pub. it relaxes them and zany things are spoken when everyone gets tipsy.

[russell davies]

always make them shorter than you were planning to. then do another quick one the next day, once everyone's slept on the problem.

[Ozoda Muminova]

Splitting it over two days is a great idea. And I'll entice them to attend the second one by promissing alcohol, or tea (either works!). Thank you very much!

[denzil meyers]

I like to break the brief or brand into chunks - single words, or phrases, or images/colors - which folks are then asked to play with, free associate, etc.

like a focus group question - what comes to mind when we say "breakfast"? encourage bstormers to write the first things that come to mind without editing! they are not trying to think up a new idea here, just associate with no goal.

give a fresh big slab of paper for each new chunk. associations can be words, images, songs, moods, weather, you get the idea.

step 1 is to generate a mess of associations without editing (this also brings up fun & embarrassing stuff which helps bond the group). step 2 is to start to re-combine stuff from one chunk with another to find new combinations. again with no editing.

step 3 is to evaluate & edit. have fun.

[Johanna Beyenbach]

lovethis.

[John Keehler]

I think one of the biggest issues with brainstorming sessions is that no matter how many great ideas are thrown out, the person in charge cherry-picks the ideas that resonate with them the most. These aren't always the best ideas. Maybe the way to get the BEST ideas out of a brainstorm is to let the group give some feedback into this aspect.

[John Lambie]

This is just basic stuff. But you gotta get the basics right

Never do them at the agency. Most work environments carry too much baggage.
Fanni's pub idea is great... big comfy chairs, shag pile carpets, beanbags.

No tables. Tables are defensive.

this is the best rule of all:
Every idea is valid. Record them ALL. Accurately.
Bring in a non-partisan "writer-downer" -- A 'stenographer-with-marker-pen' whose only job is to accurately record every single idea. Every one!

You can't facilitate AND be the writer-downer. And nothing is worse than a writer-downer who filters what gets written down based on their own bias:
"Sorry Gerry, you looked at me funny yesterday, so I'm not writing that idea down."
"Sarah's already contributed 10 ideas, so I'm not writing that one down. Give someone else a go."
"I don't agree with Paul's politics and I know where he's going with that idea, so I won't write it down."
"What a lame idea! I'm certainly not going to write that one down."
"I wonder where we're going for dinner tonight? Do you think it's going to rain? I hope I brought the washing in... woops: daydreaming. I totally missed that last idea of Adam's. Oh well, too bad."

[ProphetAndLaws]

Broadly, split the brainstorm into two parts - the first part is all about getting as many ideas as possible. Let people travel into different tangents. Explore every idea put on the table. Milk them to the fullest . Don't shoot down any ideas initially. Stop when you see the energy going down (or ideas getting repeated).
The second part is where you apply filters. There will be times when you will be able to keep the list ready beforehand. Else get the group to generate filters. One (obviously), it will help to do the feasibility test on those seemingly exciting ideas and two it will take all bias out of the process.
In brainstorm-management, the devil actually lies in the details...
> Get the right mix of people in the room. different mindsets, age-groups etc. to get a balanced view and to cover the whole spectrum.
> Keep the energy-levels high
> Know how much time to spend on one idea etc

[mark lewis]

Doug Hall has a great book on brainstorming and idea generation (of course, the title escapes me) - but it's definitely a good one to pick up.

One of my favorite exercises is called don't sell me: figure out a bunch of words associated with the category problem then ask people to free associate on the phrase: "don't sell me (insert your word), sell me _______"

[Robert Bermingham]

Agree with the pub idea - no account execs dragging your creatives out of the brainstorm and there is something mischievous about going to the pub on work time that has people being a little more uninhibited... or is that the alcohol? - Also pubs are pretty empty either side of the lunch hour so you can get the big sofa!

[russell davies]

Environment definitely important, especially if you get some traveling time / informal time. I bet Faris would call it interstitial time.

When we were working on Run London we used to do our brainstormings in a cafe in Regents Park where we could watch the joggers. Which was a niceish idea. But we never had any decent ideas in the cafe, we always had them in the 15 minute walk there or on the way back. It was in the inbetween time when we weren't 'suppposed' to be having ideas.