You refer to brainstorming as a “technique.” In fact, it is a complex process that involves a number of steps - which is exactly the way you describe it. The one thing few people have attempted to do is take the complex combination of elements and put them together in a systematic methodology.

Even Osborn, who wrote further on the subject in the 50s, felt that a number of things were critical to brainstorm success - most of which are typically lacking.

The #1 thing is facilitator training. In our work, we’ve found that fewer than 10% of people have had any formal training whatsoever in brainstorming. THIS is the the greatest failing of most brainstorming efforts.

There are many other important considerations, of course. More than I can discuss here.

Again, thank you for a very thoughtful post. Very thorough and interesting. If you’d like to discuss further offline, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Keith Harmeyer

I would also add that, to me, bad situations like this also indicate a crisis of leadership and bad hiring.

“[A] study at the University of California San Diego showed that the volunteers who entered REM during sleep improved their creative problem solving ability by almost 40%.”

I enjoyed listening to this podcast. Enjoyed the combination of ideas and how you brought them together! Look forward to your next!

Best,
Francine

A couple of quotes that resonated with me:

“Schools are educating creativity and innovation out of children, and sucking the joy out of that experience.”

“Studies show if kids choose the curriculum, they learn more.” And they have more fun doing it.

Discusses brain mirror neurons and leadership.

Discusses how emotions are related to decision making.

Robert Sutton, an organizational psychologist, is quoted: “The best groups will be better than their best individual members, and the worst groups will be worse than the worst individual.”

Another psychologist, Richard Larrick, is quoted as saying that a well-functioning group will have people with “differing perspectives and experiences who are unafraid to speak their minds.”

This article discusses how companies like to hire people who are already personally known by the company’s own employees. These referrals may be the employees’ own friends and family members. In fact, a lot of companies have a referral bonus program where the employee is paid a bonus, maybe $2,000 or so, to the employee should their referral be hired.

The upside to this practice is presumably reliable inside knowledge of the referral’s ability and fit to the company’s culture.

The drawback is that the company may not be as diversified as it could be, and thus not get a breadth of experiences and perspectives that help innovation. Another drawback, too, is that the comany can seem insular and unwelcoming to an “outsider” coming in.

The author, Leigh Buchanan, recommends a compromise of using employee referrals, but limiting the number of hires from any one employee’s circle.

This article is about a snake-like robot that can roll up a pole for doing things such as inspecting oil and gas pipelines or the underside of a bridge. The robot’s designer, Dennis Hong, says the idea for the robot came to him in a dream.

In the episode about notebooks, http://explodingcreativity.com/2008/07/notebooks, I mentioned one use for a notebook is as a dream log. The hard part of mining your dreams for ideas is remembering the dreams. Writing them down helps us remember them and then to associate the dreams with new ideas or whatever we’re working on at the time.

“”"
4. We organized around innovation. To get organic growth, we needed to innovate. Innovation enables expansion into new categories, allows us to reframe businesses considered mature, and creates bridges into adjacent segments. By running a disciplined development, qualification, and commercialization process, we have proved that we can manage a large portfolio of innovations in various stages of development. Innovation is at the core of our business model.

5. We began thinking about innovation in new ways. We started from the premise that it is possible to run an innovation program in much the same way we run a factory. There are inputs; they go through a series of transformative processes, creating outputs. It is possible to measure the yield of each process, including the quality, the end product, and the financial and market results. We also developed tools and know-how to manage the risks of innovation.

A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan: Great innovations come from understanding the consumer’s unmet needs and desires. Regardless of the market, innovation must be consumer-led.
“”"

This gets back to the lack of entrepreneurship, leadership, creativity, etc., of the education reformers. Can’t we do better than this?

Best Regards,

Chuck Frey
Founder & Editor
InnovationTools
http://www.innovationtools.com
http://twitter.com/chuckfrey

This is attributable to Warren G. Bennis, (who, BTW, is interviewed on the LeadershipTraq podcast in episode 3), with the actual quote being: “Managers have as their goal to do things right. Leaders have as their goal to do the right thing.”

I found this in Richard Nixon’s 1982 book, “Leaders,” in the first chapter. I’ve had this book for a number of years now and have read bits and pieces of it previously, and while prepping for this episode on leadership, I was inspired to read it from the beginning. Tonight I finished up to the second chapter on Winston Churchill - quite a fascinating read!