How to Build a Better Brainstorming Session

Q: Does collaboration help get ideas going, or does it quash them?

A: Both–sort of. Ideas tend to get a better boost when you apply a thought-process combo platter: Start off the thinking session solo, then bring a group together for brainstorming, then go your own ways and let the ideas marinate.

When the problem is a simple, finite one, like thinking up names for a new product, individual work is most effective. “Solitary people generate longer and better lists, but most of our problems are more complex and involve coming up with whole systems,” says Dr. R. Keith Sawyer, professor of psychology, education and business at the University of Washington and author of Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration.

For the best results, ask people to do advance work on their own and bring those ideas to a brainstorming session. “You benefit from a kind of synergy where one person might have a good idea about one component but be clueless about the rest of the system,” Sawyer says, “and another person can be inspired by that and have an idea about how those components will work together.” Just beware of “topic fixation,” the phenomenon of a group getting stuck on one idea at the cost of generating others.

An effective brainstorming session should include more than two people but no more than 10, and the makeup should reflect what researchers call “cognitive diversity”–that is, not a bunch of accountants. “What’s really important,” Sawyer says, “is that the conceptual material in your brain is different from the next person’s.”

Plan a follow-up meeting a week after the session to ask if anyone has come up with ways to move the idea forward. “In creativity research we call that ‘incubation,’” Sawyer says. “Your self-conscious mind starts working on the information you’ve gathered and bumping ideas together, and that’s when a surprising ‘aha’ moment happens.”

Some of the best ideas come from casual run-ins — what Sawyer calls “hallway encounters”–so CEOs should strive to create a company culture in which unscripted time is encouraged and collaboration is valued. After a meeting at 3M, Art Fry was chatting with a scientist about a new adhesive he was looking to take to market. One Sunday shortly after, while singing in his church choir, Fry came up with the idea for Post-it Notes — an idea that has definitely stuck around.

Google to Launch New Devices, Android 4.2 at Oct. 29 Event [REPORT]

Google will unveil several new devices and a software update at its scheduled Oct. 29 press event, according to a company video leaked from an all-hands meeting.

The Next Web is reporting Google has distributed an internal video that details and confirms speculations about what might be revealed at the upcoming event.

The video reportedly discusses the launch of a 32GB version of the Nexus 7 tablet, as well as one with 3G support. It also indicates Google is working with manufacturer Samsung to release a 10-inch tablet called “Nexus 10″ that will run Android 4.2 (“Key Lime Pie”), and a Nexus smartphone manufactured by LG.

Meanwhile, the new Android 4.2 mobile operating system will include a panoramic camera option and “tablet sharing” capabilities, which would allow more than one user to access the device with his own set of email and apps — similar to how a family or business can switch between user settings on a Windows computer.

Earlier this week, Google sent invitations to the press for an Android event to be held in New York City. Although the invitation didn’t detail what might occur, the tagline — “the playground is open” — suggests it will have to do with Google Play, the company’s newly-rebranded Andriod Market.

The news came as Microsoft prepares for its Windows Phone 8 launch event, which will also be held on Oct. 29 — and Apple gears up to unveil its rumored 7.85-inch iPad on Tuesday, Oct. 23.

Google’s new Samsung tablet is reportedly being filed under the name “Codename Manta.” The device is expected to have a 2560×1600 pixel resolution and 300ppi, which is greater than the iPad’s 264ppi.

Meanwhile, the 4.7-inch Nexus smartphone manufactured by LG is said to tout a quad-core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon processor, a 1280×768 display, 2GB of RAM and 16GB storage.

The Manufacturing of Ideas

For hundreds of years, the definition of productive required that there be a manufacturing line taking a product from raw materials to goods for market. Wealth was measured in tons and footage and inventory. Banks loaned money based on how many assets that you had. Our education system prepared our youth to show up on time, get in line to do a job, and the workers were split… blue color got their hands dirty and white collar supervised.

Our politicians lament that we’ve lost the manufacturing jobs… that they’ve gone overseas to areas with cheaper labor and no regulations. They’re all scrambling to bring them back. Bring them back to whom? Our children are deep in debt after financing the best educations on the planet. They’re graduating directly into unemployment. Businesses aren’t hiring… they’re still laying off people.

The manufacturing of goods is not returning. Even with that truth becoming a reality, our banks, our leaders, and our system still judge success based on how many widgets they deliver and the demand for those widgets. Whether it’s mobile phones or lines of code, productivity is still based off of a product. But manufacturing products is no longer what we’re great at, nor can we do it affordably given the wealth of our country.

Concurrently, with the advent of digital media, we’re witnessing a new market. The marketplace of ideas. Inexpensive computing and connectivity has created the highways for us to transport those ideas. At DK New Media, we have clients as far as Switzerland, designers in Romania, researchers in India, and we’re manufacturing ideas here in the United States. We’ve developed a unique and productized means of auditing, implementing and measuring inbound success with our clients.

We tend to think of ideation as one step leading to a product. That’s doesn’t need to be the case at all. Ideation can be the product. There are plenty of companies, including many of our clients, that invest in our ideas. Sure, there’s often a tangible deliverable that comes along with those… audits, infographics, analysis, blog posts. But many times, it’s simply an idea. And when we’re able to take that idea and convert it into a customer, that’s a business result that was worth the investment.

Our production line is packed, and the demand is growing. The problem, of course, is that the system doesn’t recognize the demand nor the product. The system still calls this a service. The system still believes that if I want to grow my business, that the only means of doing it is to grow my number of employees. There’s no loans for manufacturing ideas, no investment firms for manufacturing ideas, and no recognition on the results that were generated by those ideas.

This isn’t a complaint, this is an observation and a call to action. Everything we’ve been investing in all these years in Silicon Valley and in every University was to prepare us for this time… and we’re blowing it. We’re packing our children’s brains with the best educations but they lack the inspiration and the resources to take their ideas and run with them.

There’s no better time to do this. We have a global economy where we can manufacture our ideas with incredible efficiency… gathering resources from every corner of the globe, utilize a host of free and cheap tools via the Internet to build our production lines, and deliver our ideas to sell in the market… not in months or years… but in hours and days.

Many would guilt people into thinking that, with almost 40 million people unemployed, this is the worst time to off-shore jobs. It’s not the worst time, it’s the best time. If you can take your idea, develop it, and deliver it with off-shore resources, you can get it to market and sell it faster and cheaper. If you can sell it, you can then reinvest that revenue and grow your business. That growth is what’s enabled us to hire an entire team here in Indianapolis.

In a couple weeks, we’re going live with a content system that will allow us to connect all our clients to over 160 resources throughout the world. Our team will build the workflows, assemble the teams, curate, and publish the content that’s developed through it. The end result is the highest quality product built quickly and affordably. We’re building our manufacturing lines!

It’s time for the political powers, financial powers and business powers to recognize the opportunities we have right in front of us. It’s time for our education system to inspire and educate our students – not just on how to think, but on how to bring their ideas to market. The marketplace for ideas has no limitations, it’s the largest marketplace there is.

We need to continue improving the tools for this market, fully utilizing the information superhighway that’s in place with more social, collaboration, workflow and teamwork tools that span the globe. We need to encourage and inspire the idea market. We need to invest in the idea market. There’s no better time than now than to get in the manufacturing industry… the manufacturing of ideas.

Read more: http://www.marketingtechblog.com/manufacturing-of-ideas/#ixzz29y3prUHz