Lec. Brainstorming Technique

Prof. Chang Duk, Jung

Example(Future IT ): CPS Created Opportunities

Electric Power Grid

• Current picture:

Equipment protection devices trip locally, reactively

Cascading failure

• Better future?-using Brainstorming

Real-time cooperative control of protection devices

Self-healing, aggregate islands of stable bulk power

Coordinate distributed and dynamically interacting partcipants

Issue: standard operational control concerns exhibit wide-area characteristics (bulk power stability and quality, flow control, fault isolation)

What is Brainstorming?

• creativity technique Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which a group tries to find a solution for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members. Brainstorming was developed and coined by Alex Faickney Osborn

Brainstorming

• Brainstorming has become a popular group technique and has aroused attention in academia. Multiple studies have been conducted to test Osborn’s postulation that brainstorming is more effective than individuals working alone in generating ideas .

Brainstorming

• Focus on quantity: This rule is a means of enhancing divergent production, aiming to facilitate problem solving through the maxim quantity breeds quality. The assumption is that the greater the number of ideas generated, the greater the chance of producing a radical and effective solution.

• Withhold criticism: In brainstorming, criticism of ideas generated should be put 'on hold'. Instead, participants should focus on extending or adding to ideas, reserving criticism for a later 'critical stage' of the process. By suspending judgment, participants will feel free to generate unusual ideas.

• Welcome unusual ideas: To get a good and long list of ideas, unusual ideas are welcomed. They can be generated by looking from new perspectives and suspending assumptions. These new ways of thinking may provide better solutions.

• Combine and improve ideas: Good ideas may be combined to form a single better good idea, as suggested by the slogan "1+1=3". It is believed to stimulate the building of ideas by a process

Factors Affecting Creativity • Dispositional Factors

– Intelligence – Personality – Expertise

• Structural/Process Factors

– Incentives – Freedom – Resources – Diversity – Supervisory Encouragement

• Environmental Factors

– “Fun” environment – Types of people – Serendipitous Interactions

Freedom

• Was it clear what product the team was working on?

• Freedom…From Process, not Goals

• How to Kill creativity:

– Change Goals Frequently

– Prescribe process/Unclear Goals

Resources

• Where is the prototyping shop located in IDEO? Why is it important that it be located so close?

• DC3 Wing

Diversity

• Who is most capable of coming up with insights about widgets?

Supervisory Encouragement

• Is it important to respect “practicality” of ideas ?

Supervisory Encouragement

• Are crazy/wild ideas welcomed at IDEO?

• Is it important to respect “practicality” of ideas at ?

Agenda

• Brainstorming: Deductive Approach

Example

New Idea # 1: Travel Context Comments about the Idea

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Example

New Idea # 1: Commute Context Comments about the Idea

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Creativity Exercises

Deductive and Inductive Approaches

• Overall Purpose:

– Come up with Ideas about how to improve the Customer Experience in your Project Contexts, starting with Needs (gathered from Exp. Audit, Depth Interview, and Introspection)

• Deductive:

– Think Logically through the Needs, Organize them by Importance and Types

• Inductive:

– Convert Customer Needs into Ideas for Improving Customer Experiences

Overview of Deductive Approach

Step # Activity Allotted Time

Step 1 “Clean Slate”: Yogic Breathing ~ 5 minutes

Step 2 Working individually, create a “Long List” of Needs

~ 5 minutes

Step 3 Working individually, shorten list to “Critical Needs,” based on Summarizing

~ 5 minutes

Step 4 Working with group, come up with product ideas

~ 10 minutes

Yogic Breathing

• Ujjaya Breath

Long List of Needs (5 Minutes)

• Sit with your team members • Collect the booklet being passed around • Working Individually, go over the information from:

– Experience Audit, – Depth Interview and – Introspection & Observation

to create a list of needs that customers experience your context

• Remember: – Ambiguous statements should be clarified; discarded if not

understood – Duplicates should be removed, and multiple thoughts

expressed in one statement should be separated • Write these needs down on the first page of the booklet

Critical List of Needs (5 minutes)

• Create a “Critical List of Needs” based on:

– Clumping similar needs into a “summary need”.

– Make sure you don’t have more than 10 or so Needs in the Critical List

– Write the critical list down on page 2 of the booklet

Brainstorming (10 minutes)

• Take 3 sheets being passed around, and collect 2 marker pens

• Assign a “scribe” for your group (who will write down all the ideas being generated by the other group members”)

• Start generating ideas

• Remember:

– Only one conversation at a time; finish an idea before moving on to the next

– Don’t shoot down other’s ideas (even if they sound stupid); rather, find a way to build on them

• The new model of information technology

• Open up internal systems and flow of information to prospects, customers, partners, suppliers, employees

Case study Global Networked Business using Brainstorming