BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. BrainReactions also provides innovation training to help companies and individuals generate more and better ideas. 

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In This Issue

• Beyond a contest for the “best idea”: A case of crowdsourcing through a brainstorming competition
• What’s All the Fuss About Engagement?
• Knowledge Sharing Tool SnapAnswers.com insures against knowledge calamities
• Owl Analysis: A Metaphor for the first round of analyzing ideas for innovation
• Training Webinar for Innovation Through Ideation
• Frost & Sullivan conference on Growth, Innovation and Leadership

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Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph. D., Chief Operating Officer, BrainReactions LLC

Open innovation is valuable because it can harness the perspectives, needs, and ideas of a large amount of individuals, whether they be current consumers of a product or potential users of a website. In order to innovate based on the perspectives of many people, a shift from acquiring the best idea to acquiring idea themes derived from hundreds of ideas from many users or consumers is needed. BrainReactions.net has just launched their first significant open innovation crowdsourcing effort in the form of a brainstorming competition where awards are offered not for the single best idea but for the top brainstormers. In the first few days of the competition there are 500 ideas from 60 different brainstormers. This competition is open for just under two weeks and closes on July 3rd, 2008. This specific competition offers an emerging case of crowdsourcing for the brainstorming purpose of generating multiple new ideas on the launch of a web application, including both marketing and feature development.

This case offers an opportunity to learn about the process of crowdsourcing for brainstorming. This competition has already generated different outcomes than a traditional closed room in person brainstorming session offers or what a contest where “the best idea wins” offers. First, who is brainstorming? Notably there are more brainstormers than in your typical closed room session and they come with and a more global perspective. For this competition, brainstormers come from throughout the globe with heavy representation from the U.S. and the UK. Since most web applications have a global audience and seek the perspectives, needs, and ideas of a wide range of users, crowdsourcing through brainstorming offers unique advantages. Also, new web applications want an opportunity to generate buzz. The brainstorming competition allows this through the marketing of the idea contest while a closed room in-person brainstorm does not because it is more private in nature. The crowdsourcing offers residual benefits, not just the ideas gathered and the ability to validate the direction and decisions through the voice of the user but the marketing of the competition helps to build awareness and launch the web application.

Important consideration is given to what happens before and after the competition. Most of the time spent with preparing the competition actually involves framing the challenge, creating background information (in this instance a free web based video), and identifying questions for brainstormers to generate ideas on. This takes much thought amongst organizers and the client as well as multiple iterations to finalize the questions and background. Alerting the network of brainstormers to begin was the easiest part as BrainReactions has a large network of creative brainstormers who can be readily notified with an email. It also important to consider what the final product of the competition could look like. BrainReactions brainstorming has slightly different desired outcomes then other contests which seek to generate a best idea. Rather than a single best idea, the goal of the competition is to generate hundreds of ideas from many brainstormers so that ideas could be synthesized and analyzed. The themes that emerge amongst many ideas from multiple brainstormers are often times more valuable than a “best idea” and often marketing and product development directions move forward from these themes. After the competition a team of judges with different expertise bases will also spend time at the end to select the top brainstormers based on the quantity of good ideas they provide. Since a goal of brainstorming is to gather a large number of good ideas to synthesize and generate themes around, going beyond just selecting the best idea is needed. This is a current and emerging example of crowdsourcing meeting brainstorming on the web.

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Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph. D., Chief Operating Officer, BrainReactions LLC

The increasing emphasis on the need to innovate is leading organizations and individuals to collect more ideas to start down the innovation pipeline. The increase of brainstorming sessions, idea submissions, and contests to fuel ideas for innovation are leaving individuals with significant lists of ideas. Many ask us where to start and what to do next with their idea lists. This calls for a story and a metaphor.

When I was in elementary school my class took a trip to small state park in Minnesota, Forestville. When one goes to Forestville it is natural to go into a forest, so that is what this group of 30 youngsters did. I remember the park ranger telling the kids that he would give a quarter to the first one that could find a grey ball in the forest. This was unusual to us, we had never heard of such a thing. But, we were up for the challenge and a quarter was a quarter and they had hard stick candy for only 10 cents at the old Forestville country store. As luck would have it I was the first to find this grey ball. I gave it to the ranger and he gave me the quarter. He then told us something amazing. He held up the grey ball in the woods and told us that it was once a mouse. I quickly looked at my hand and was grossed out. He then said that an owl will catch a mouse and eat the whole thing. The owl will digest all of the parts of the mouse that it needs and spit out what it doesn’t need in this grey ball of fur and bones called an owl pellet. Fascinating.

I traveled to San Diego in September for a conference for innovation professionals from a wide variety of corporations. One thing that was interesting to me was that these professionals and their organizations had large amounts of ideas, could get many ideas, but what was needed was a way to quickly screen these ideas. During my presentation I told the story of the owl and I suggest doing what the owl does to the mouse. Why not quickly take all of the ideas in, and then quickly only keep and devote energy to digesting those ideas that you need, are beneficial to you, and belong in you. These are the ideas that match your criteria and are for the reason why you gathered ideas in the first place. Everything else can be spat back out in a grey ball of fur and bones.

In my world of idea generating more is better. More ideas are better than less ideas. The nice thing about ideas is that they are short and can be quickly read and judged. I regularly review, analyze, and synthesize lists of over 700 ideas and make quick decisions on them. The first stage is an important one, your quick review and selection of ideas. Many ideas just get read over because they already exist, are way too far out, or are not aligned with what the organization is about. But there are a fair amount of ideas that get digested and developed from this long list. This is valuable. The key is to not get intimidated by so many ideas and to be process focused. Process focused means understanding that generating a lot of ideas is key to discovering something new or creating something innovative. So, consolidate all those ideas and start spitting out some grey balls. It is also quite good to have at least a couple of owls analyzing ideas. What you digest may be different than what someone else digests, and you may be spitting out something that is healthy.

When we work on our idea generation projects we have at least 2 formal owl analysts who digest everything and spit accordingly back into the idea list or bank them for future consideration. So, also important is to store all of the waste, those ideas that didn’t make the cut. You never know when they could come in handy later. So, begin the work of an owl with digesting your idea list!

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As readers of BrainWaves, you are invited to attend our exclusive “Innovation through Ideation” online webinar on Thursday, July 24th, from the convenience of your own computer. Details and registration for the event are available on our training website at:

http://training.brainreactions.com

In business, you need to make decisions, find solutions, and think up new ideas every day. Do you leave idea generation up to chance or luck, or do you use systems and tools to help you generate ideas?

BrainReactions has worked with the most innovative companies in the world. We are familiar with their methods of innovation, but we have also developed our own toolset that increases brainstormer productivity by 200-300%!

Transform your company with great ideas!

Attend the Innovation through Ideation webinar online on Thursday, July 24th and you will have the tools to transform the way you work. Register now at http://training.brainreactions.com

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Contributed by Bob Carter, Vertex Transformation Director and author of The Balanced Innovator

Innovation is so vogue in business language today that it is almost a fashion. Try to Google or Yahoo the word Innovation, and you will be amazed at the number of entries you will find. Everybody is talking about Innovation. Every company claims to be innovative, and to prove the point, there are more conferences on Innovation than the average ninja can shake a black belt at. So I asked myself a simple question: What the bleep is Innovation? Is it a verb or a noun? Is it an input or an output, or is it the process? Is Innovation imagination, inspiration, ideation, invention, creation, or improvisation? It certainly takes dedication and usually lots of perspiration! I believe that Innovation is the result of all of these things. We all know that Innovation is good, as long as it adds value in some way. It can be continuous (i.e., the progressive improvement of something) or discontinuous (i.e., the introduction of something new that takes away the need or desire for the thing it replaces). This can be a product or a service, and it can happen in every walk of life.

Most people would agree that Innovation is exciting and groundbreaking (hence, the more than 120 million Internet search results). There is no doubt that Innovation is one of the keys to growth, and everybody is rightly concerned about growth, especially revenue growth.

Balanced Innovation

The Venn diagram below shows how balanced Innovation works. Notice how the intellectual, organizational, and human factors are equally important. In other words, What we do, How we do it, and Why we do it are equally important. You will also see that the factors are all interconnected, suggesting that successful Innovation is dependent on balance.

Your intellectual strength shows that you have the capabilities to deliver the product or service that your customers need. It is about your core competencies. Your organizational strength shows that you have the ability to produce what your customers need. Your human strengths show that you understand the needs, that you empathize with your customers, and that you are focused on satisfying those needs. Your behaviors prove that you can be trusted and the way you communicate proves that you are in empathy.

Each factor validates the others. The human factors validate the intellectual and organizational, the intellectual factors validate the organizational and human, and the organizational factors validate the human and intellectual. So the What validates the How and Why, and vice versa. This What, How, Why Balance, is key to success and is used throughout The Balanced Innovator. In order to achieve success in anything we do, we must reach a minimum threshold in each of the intellectual, organizational, and human factors. If one of these factors is weak, the What, How, and Why are not balanced.

BALANCED INNOVATION

Source: THE BALANCED INNOVATOR by Robert (Bob) Carter

Unfortunately, many organizations are focused more on one area at the expense of another, like those shown in figure below:

UNBALANCED INNOVATION

Source: THE BALANCED INNOVATOR by Robert (Bob) Carter

Unbalanced Innovation occurs when Innovation is focused on one factor at the expense of the others. In example A, the Innovation is highly intellectual, focused on the technical aspects but not necessarily focused on customer needs and certainly not focused on telling the story to make the right emotional connection. Think of the Betamax videotape system. Betamax was regarded by many as technically superior to the VHS system but was a comparative commercial failure. Had the Betamax tape manufacturers adopted a more balanced approach and focused on the organizational and human factors of Innovation as well as the intellectual ones, there may have been an entirely different outcome. In example B, the story may be compelling but the solution may have little substance. This type of imbalance is usually seen in organizations that have outstanding marketing and business development professionals, but their focus is all about winning new business rather than on execution. Their success is usually short lived. Contrast this again with figure (Balanced Innovation), where all three factors are equally important. Companies that exhibit out-of-this-world performance have a balanced approach to Innovation.

The ideas behind balanced and unbalanced Innovation are equally applicable to strategies, business models, and organic growth. A good strategy is one that reflects the larger external market or macro environment as well as the micro needs of the specific market segment. A good business model is one that enables the strategy. Organizations that match their business models and strategies to the needs of the external environment are more likely to grow organically—that is, they increase revenue through the acquisition of new business. Organic growth is achieved by winning new business.

About the Contributor:

Robert (Bob) Carter

Author of The Balanced Innovator, Thought Leading Innovator, 6 Sigma Black Belt and Director of Transformation at Vertex, Manchester, United Kingdom and a good friend of BrainReactions.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

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In business, you need to make decisions, find solutions, and think up new ideas every day. Do you leave idea generation up to chance or luck, or do you use systems and tools to help you generate ideas?

Take a look at this list of 10 Accidental Product Discoveries that are still in the market today. If you simply wait around for a number of years, perhaps one day, lady luck will shine on you and make you stumble upon the next greatest innovation for the world making you and your company rich and famous! Perhaps, one day! OR… you could use a proven SYSTEM of innovation. One that works consistently and has been refined and developed over the years.

BrainReactions has worked with the most innovative companies in the world. We are familiar with their methods of innovation, but we have also developed our own toolset that increases brainstormer productivity by 200-300%!

Transform your company with great ideas! Attend the Innovation through Ideation webinar online on Thursday, May 29th and you will have the tools to transform the way you work.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

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Contributed by Peter Erickson, Senior Vice President of Innovation, Technology & Quality, General Mills
(See complete bio below the article)

For an entrepreneur, the idea of taking your innovation and sharing it with someone else – let alone a large corporation – can be an intimidating, if not daunting, task. Which company would be the best partner? How do you ensure you’re protected from a legal perspective? How will you benefit? If your goals are to take your product or technology to the next level, speed its time to market and grow its distribution to have a national or even global reach, then you may find value in exploring a partnership with a larger company.

There are several variables to consider when venturing into this type of partnership. Based on General Mills’ experience in working on a wide range of projects with partners of all sizes, we have identified the following nine tips for entrepreneurs seeking to develop a successful partnership with a larger company.

Nine Tips for Entrepreneurs

1. Create a differentiated opportunity. Articulate the unique and proprietary aspects of your product. How is it different and how is it better than anything on the market? Is there an opportunity to be first to market with a breakthrough new product? Explaining the unique benefits of your innovation up front will give the company a reason to take a closer look at your proposal.

2. Test your innovation. Develop a pedigree for the product. You will be ahead of the game if you are able to get your innovation into the hands of its end user. This will allow you to speak to the in-market performance and the consumer or retailer reaction. Some of our partners, for example, came to us with insights from selling their products on the Internet, in small regional grocery chains or on college campuses. That learning can go a long way toward helping a company understand the unique consumer benefits of your product.

3. Be selective. Focus on your lead candidate and avoid courting multiple partners at once. A company wants to know you are committed and willing to work together to ensure that the opportunity will produce competitive advantages in the marketplace. And remember, most companies, including General Mills, want to create relationships for the long term. Take the time and do it right.

4. Find a contact to be your champion. Navigating the politics and processes of a large corporation can be challenging. Having a tour guide is very helpful. For example, at General Mills your key contact will be a member of the General Mills WIN (Worldwide Innovation Network) team, our company’s external innovation group. The G-WIN team is always available to answer potential partners’ questions about our organization, our processes and about partnerships in general.

5. Do your homework on the potential partner. Use available public information to educate yourself on your potential partner’s lines of business, key strategies, industry and competitors. You should also familiarize yourself with the economics of the industry so you are well-versed in the financials before getting into any conversations about important details such as licensing fees. For example, potential partners can obtain company background and information on our approach to external partnerships from a video located on our G-WIN Web site (www.generalmills.com/WIN).

6. Connect the dots. Make the connection between your proposed innovation and the company’s business model and brand. For which product platform or division do you envision it to be a good fit? How would this help the company’s bottom line?

7. Demonstrate you can deliver. Describe your team’s experience in the industry. Prove that your product is scalable to the volume demands of the partner’s business. Have any claims you make about the product validated (e.g., health claims), and be sure to speak to the company’s priorities. For General Mills, food quality and safety are important, and our company wants to know you share the same values. If you do not have the expertise in a certain area – manufacturing, safety, etc. – don’t be afraid to tap outside consultants to develop those capabilities within your operation.

8. Have a business model in mind. Communicate the type of opportunity you are looking for, but stay flexible. Oftentimes, it makes the most sense to start with a smaller opportunity and then grow that into a broader, deeper partnership.

9. Part on good terms. If either or both companies in the partnership decide to pass on an opportunity, walk away gracefully and leave the door open to future collaborations. Often it is just a matter of timing – the best opportunity for collaboration may not be the first proposal, so maintaining rapport is an important element of eventual success.

Open innovation is an emerging trend, so be on the lookout for opportunities to grow your business through this type of joint venture. Regardless of whether you are in the food industry or another trade, stay mindful of the above suggestions and you will be well-prepared to enter into a mutually beneficial partnership with another company.

If you think your innovation is a good fit for General Mills’ business, our G-WIN team would like to hear from you. Through G-WIN, we seek external partners with patented or patent-pending technologies or commercialized products that would be complementary to our brands and businesses. Prospective partners may submit patented or patent-pending innovations to the G-WIN team through a Web portal at www.generalmills.com/WIN, or may contact the team with other inquiries by calling 763-764-4946 (GWIN).

About the author

Peter Erickson

Peter Erickson is senior vice president of innovation, technology and quality for General Mills.
As the head of General Mills’ innovation and technology organization, Mr. Erickson is responsible for the invention and commercialization of new food products and technologies that can help in nourishing the lives of its consumers by providing increasingly higher levels of health, taste and convenience. Mr. Erickson’s responsibility for the General Mills quality organization is focused on delivering brands that its consumers can trust and value through its global leadership in consumer and product safety.

Mr. Erickson has been employed by General Mills for the past 19 years. Prior to that, he worked in product development as a senior food scientist at General Foods Corporation in White Plains, N.Y. Mr. Erickson received both B.S. and M.S. degrees in food science at the University of Massachusetts, where he continues to serve as a member of the university’s food science external advisory board.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, General Mills is a leading global manufacturer and marketer of consumer foods products with significant operations located around the world. Its global brand portfolio includes Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Green Giant, Häagen-Dazs, Cheerios and more. In the United States, General Mills consumer brands are sold in every section of the retail grocery store, with a No. 1 or No. 2 leading share position in nearly every food category in which it competes. General Mills also is a leading supplier of baking and other food products to the foodservice and commercial baking industries.

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Facebook is an incredible social phenomenon that I am sure most of you have heard about. If you have not yet experienced Facebook, consider joining it at http://www.facebook.com

BrainReactions has recently launched an application within Facebook called the “Most Creative People“. It allows you to view and connect with the most creative people on Facebook and vote for your friends who are very creative. You can join the application and nominate any of your friends from Facebook to provide them further global recognition for their creativity.

The application is available at
http://apps.facebook.com/fbcreative/

Our network now consists of over 35,000 highly creative people from 142 countries. If you’d like to leverage our network for brainstorming with your target market, product testing with a particular demographic, online focus groups, product launch marketing, or any consumer-focused needs, please contact us here.

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Contributed By Darin Eich Ph.D.

Electronic ideation — coming up with multiple ideas using a computer and software or web application — offers a powerful new tool to innovators. With Web 2.0 internet technology available, a form of electronic ideation known as online brainstorming is also emerging as a “front end of innovation” tool for innovators.

Capturing ideas in a structured fashion can increase efficiency and streamline the innovation process by making the ideas easier to analyze. Electronic ideation is an alternative to traditional brainstorming within an organization, which often conjures images of lame sessions where the first ideas mentioned are often discussed for a long period of time, criticized ad nauseum, and subjected to political and power interests. Unfortunately, many such brainstorm sessions result in few ideas, because most of the time was spent analyzing the ideas and talking about why they wouldn’t work. In addition, people are hesitant to suggest their own ideas in person, especially creative or unconventional ones. Challenges like this give traditional face-to-face brainstorming a reputation for futility within organizations and their culture. Research shows that the brainwriting (writing ideas instead of saying them) approach to idea generation can be more effective within organizations, perhaps because it diminishes the repressive or stifling effects of corporate culture.

Electronic ideation or online brainstorming combines current technology and the benefits of brainwriting for an effective idea generating approach. Structured brainwriting through electronic ideation can work for groups of people, or communities of interest, who may not be in the same place at the same time. Electronic ideation is a conceptual outgrowth of the anonymous suggestion box. Anonymous suggestion boxes have been around for a long time to solicit humdinger ideas at no risk to the contributor. Now the suggestion box can become the brainstorming table for participants who are specifically invited to participate, overcoming space and time limitations. The challenge, instead of dealing with corporate culture, is to motivate people to respond to an invitation, to log into the brainstorm “room” to suggest their ideas. Electronic brainstorming is a tool that can be used in a variety of ways, producing a new surge in ideas from employees.

When brainstorming online, community of interest and response time must be managed properly; place is less relevant. You can conduct electronic ideation with many brainstormers at once; it is scalable from one to thousands of people. More than 10 people around a brainstorming roundtable are extremely difficult to manage, but you could get 1,000 people to log on and submit ideas on an ideation web page that poses your question. You define the community of interest and the brainstormers you invite to participate. These can be the usual suspects in your department or project team, all people in your company, your customers or a user group, or other people across the globe that could usefully suggest ideas. In a world that is flattening, as Thomas Friedman says, a hosted application gives you the ability to get the perspective and ideas from people anywhere in the world 24/7. Also, on the other end of the spectrum there is tremendous value with having a tool that allows people to record their ideas on their own when they generate them.

Response time matters. You can certainly use the electronic ideation tool on a no deadline basis. But having a set time for participants to contribute ideas is motivating and offers the facilitator a reasonable chance to analyze the contributions. Specifying the time limits in the e-mail invitation is very effective in a virtual brainstorming session. Complete the brainstorm in an hour or a day, and then move on with analyzing, testing and implementing good ideas. You can, of course, open follow-up brainstorm rooms to build on previous rounds of ideation.

Electronic ideation frees participants from spatial constraints. Brainstormers could be anywhere in the world, but you could also conduct a roundtable brainstorm electronically. A formal electronic ideation or online brainstorming tool like BrainReactions.net can even allow you to see fellow brainstormers ideas in real time during the session you create. This offers opportunities to build and extend on ideas and to recharge and spark creativity in new directions. What if you brought people physically together in your conference room or a stimulating location and facilitated a face-to-face brainstorm where people entered their ideas into the online software system? This may be a preferred use of ideation software. Imagine gathering a group of 7 to 10 people around a table. One computer is projecting the brainstorm question and space for ideas on the projector screen. Each person enters his or her own ideas. There is no need for the proverbial flipchart sheets and marker that slows the session down to a crawl. Since idea generators are typing their ideas as they conceive them, the pace of idea generation and the quantity of ideas are greatly accelerated. Since each person has his or her laptop the brainstorm session is no longer slowed by 1920s technology of a flip chart and pen.

When someone has a really good idea they could say it aloud as stimulus for extensions of that idea. The most creative people and the most conventional are often reluctant to share their output. Capturing them electronically avoids the tendency to suppress them out of fear or embarrassment. Ideas from the ends of the spectrum are valuable. The creative ones can spawn great innovation and the seemingly boring ideas are most easily understood and implemented.

I challenge you to open your innovation thinking to establish electronic ideation as a part of your innovation system to employ both the benefits of internet technology and brainwriting methodologies. Think of it simply as a tool to capture ideas on your own in your office on your own time. Consider the possibilities of bringing laptops to the brainstorming table. Idea generation is both art and science. Creativity is heightened in great brainstorms. The productivity of brainstorms can be supported and enhanced using tools that come closest to allowing brainstormers, working individually or in groups, to produce and record ideas at a pace much closer to “mind speed.” In group ideation process there is a high correlation between the quantity of ideas generated and the quality of ideas, so speed truly counts. Electronic brainstorming such as BrainReactions.net is an efficient, intuitive way to produce great ideas.

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Contributed By Darin Eich, Ph.D.

In the true spirit of online brainstorming, I created a brainstorm on BrainReactions.net and used it as a tool to write this article. I keep the article format as an organized list of tips. You can view the original brainstorm process I used at http://www.brainreactions.net/brainstorms/1556 and even suggest your own ideas or tips.

1. Brainstorming is different than Q&A. It is about multiple ideas instead of a single answer, so approach the process with quantity in mind.
2. Each individual submits multiple ideas.
3. Multiple individuals submit multiple ideas.
4. The person who creates the brainstorm should start it off with at least 5 ideas.
5. Follow the traditional brainstorming rule of going for a high quantity of ideas.
6. Set an individual goal to create 20 ideas (like I’m doing here).
7. Understand that a concept can be broken down into smaller ideas and these ideas can be mixed and matched…so the parts have value.
8. When creating a brainstorm invite others to join.
9. Set an actual structured time for people to log in and brainstorm live.
10. During a live brainstorm it is exciting to see other ideas being added alongside yours, this motivates people to generate more ideas.
11. Set a goal to involve at least 8 people in the brainstorm.
12. Show a previous great brainstorm example to people.
13. Allow people to click a link that shows them an example of a quality brainstorm while they are brainstorming, this will give them a model.
14. Do not judge or put down ideas while you are brainstorming.
15. Click on the “good idea” button for good ideas.
16. Take one of the good ideas you select to the next level.
17. Build and extend on ideas presented earlier in the brainstorm.
18. Quantity is needed first to be able to unleash the power of building and extending, so add a number of ideas even if they may already exist.
19. Google for insights while brainstorming.
20. Stay focused on the question and topic.
21. If an idea is off topic, though, accept it because the focus is on the process.
22. Take a risk by submitting a pretty far out idea…do this intentionally as a part of the process.
23. Submitting a far out idea is fun and motivating and can encourage creativity.
24. Put some motivating music on in the background while brainstorming (see ideas of songs to try in the most ideated brainstorm on the BrainReactions.net website).
25. Drink some coffee while brainstorming!
26. Call a friend for ideas.
27. Try to synthesize previous ideas into a theme to brainstorm from.
28. Try to synthesize a couple of ideas into a further developed concept.
29. Practice brainstorming tools to help you generate ideas, like SCAMPER.
30. Brainstorm from your laptop in a place that is creative and energizing for you…I’m doing this now from my favorite coffee shop.
31. Look around your environment for ideas.
32. Accept the same idea from multiple people, this still has value, it tells you it could be important.
33. When brainstorming online, organize your thoughts and ideas into a logical sequence and present them in that way.
34. Create a mindmap of ideas relating to the topic or question and add them online in a more developed way.
35. Focus on process, your individual process for generating a high quantity and quality of ideas, and the brainstorm process as a whole that encourages different people.
36. Seek a diversity of individuals to submit ideas.
37. Create a question that is open enough that many idea alternatives are possible.
38. Give more background to the question in the space provided; this will help people understand the desired outcome for doing the brainstorm.
39. Use a few ideas here and there to model good ideas that match the question; they can even be existing ideas.
40. Step away from the question for a moment to let your mind recharge and reload ideas and return to power them out.

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