Title: 
Eight Ways to Generate More Ideas in Groups

Word Count:
715

Summary:
We know that if we generate more ideas we have a better chance of finding better ideas.  Your goals should be to have a variety of approaches to help stimulate idea creation in your repertoire.  By doing this you will improve the overall quality of ideas by virtue of having more to choose from.


Keywords:
facilitation, facilitator, meeting, team meeting, team building, workshop, training, brainstorming, creativity


Article Body:
The scene is repeated in meeting rooms around the world every day.  A problem has been identified and a group has gathered to solve the problem.  When ideas are needed, the group decides to brainstorm.  And all too often this exercise leads to a short list of not-that-creative ideas.

We know that if we generate more ideas we have a better chance of finding better ideas.   This leads us to the logical conclusion that if we can find techniques to create more ideas, we will find better ones.  No one technique however will guarantee the perfect solution.  Instead your goals should be to have a variety of approaches to help stimulate idea creation in your repertoire.  By doing this you will improve the overall quality of ideas by virtue of having more to choose from.

Whether you are unhappy with the current creativity of your group or are having good success with brainstorming sessions, but would like them to be even better, any of the eight suggestions below can help. 

<b>Look at problems in different ways.</b>  Get the group to change their perspective on the problem.  Once people “lock into” one way of looking at things the idea flow will slow to a tickle.  Have people take a new persona.  Ask them to look at the issue from the perspective of another group – accounting, HR, or sales for example.  Ask them to think about how their Grandmother or an 8 year old would solve the problem.  These are simple ways to force people into a new perspective and the new perspectives will generate more ideas.

<b>Make novel combinations.</b>  The ideas that land on the flipchart or whiteboard in a brainstorming session are typically considered individually.  Have the group look at the initial list and look for ways to combine the ideas into new ones.

<b>Force relationships.</b>  Once a group is finished with their initial list, provide them with words, pictures or objects.  The objects can be random items, the words can come from a randomly generated list (email wordlist@KevinEikenberry.com