A brainstorm session is a lot like trying to get from one place to another in a lighter-than-air balloon. With both of them, you have a destination, a vehicle, and the need to continuously make course corrections.
Fortunately, brainstorm facilitat… Continue reading
Do you have what it takes to innovate? I’m not talking IQ, degree, or job title.
I’m talking the curious confluence of behaviors that come with the territory of being someone who turns top of the line ideas into bottom line realities.
1. You co… Continue reading
Unless you’ve been living in solitary confinement for the past few years, chances are good that you are a member of some kind of organization or community — a gathering of people who have come together in service to a common goal. Whether it’s a For… Continue reading
Illustration: Gaping Void Art
Launching Project Teams
Team Innovation
Big Breakthroughs for Small Business
Drumming Up Teamwork
Continue reading
Illustration: Gaping Void Art
Launching Project Teams
Team Innovation
Big Breakthroughs for Small Business
Drumming Up Teamwork
Continue reading
Let’s assume for a moment that you and your company value BIG IDEAS — the kind of ideas that have the potential to change the game, differentiate you from the competition, and spark some major business growth. Let;s also assume that you and your com… Continue reading
Making great music together isn’t always easy, no matter how famous your band is. Nor is it easy being business partners, collaborators, teammates, or “significant others”. If you want to make some serious music together, “creative dissonance” is inevi… Continue reading
As a former student of the martial arts, I have noticed a curious phenomenon in corporate America that is becoming increasingly troubling to me — especially among “creatives” who aspire to become masterful brainstorm facilitators. I call it the “B… Continue reading
Big thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur, Idea Champions’ Director of Training, for this timely article on the importance of deferring evaluation during the ideation phase of a brainstorming session.
When Alex Osborn, co-founder of the advertising firm, BBD&O, first came up with the basic concept of brainstorming way back in the 1940’s, he stressed that during idea generation “we should hold back criticism until the creative current has had every chance to flow.” This principle of “deferring evaluation” of ideas until later has been a bedrock principle of brainstorming ever since. Osborn noted that human beings are of of two minds, what he called the “imaginative” or creative mind and the “judicial” or judging mind. These days, we tend to refer to these in the psych jargon of “right and left brains” today.
I own a huge library of books on innovation. Mostly hardcover. The $27.95 variety with big indexes and forwards by people who make more money than I do.
Some of these books are actually good. Most of them bore me. (I must confess I have a secret desire, whenever I enter a bookstore, to put glue between pages 187 & 188 in all of the new releases just to see if the publishers get any complaints).
The books attempt to describe the origins of innovation. You know, stuff like “the innate human impulse to find a better way” and “the imperative to find a competitive edge.” That sort of thing.
Corporate-speak, in other words.
In my experience, the origin of innovation is fascination — the state of being intensely interested in something. Enchanted. Captivated. Spellbound. Absorbed.
