Brainstorming Rules

Stay focused

Start with a well-honed statement of the problem at hand. Ideally, this should be articulated around a customer need. Don´t let the discussion stray too far; always bring it back to the problem statement.

 

Enforce rules

Clarify the brainstorming rules upfront and enforce them. The most important rules are “defer judgment”, “one conversation at a time”, “go for quantity”, “be visual”, and “encourage wild ideas”. Facilitators should enforce the rules.

 

Think visually

Write ideas down or sketch them out on a surface everyone can see. A good way to collect ideas is to jot them down on Post-it notes and stick these to a wall. This allows you to move ideas around and regroup them.

 

Prepare

Prepare for brainstorming with some sort of immersion experience related to the problem at hand. This could be a field trip, discussions with customers, or any other means of immersing the team in issues related to your problem statement.

 

Business Model Generation. A. Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur.