Brainstorming and Mind Maps

The technique of generating New Product Ideas via Brainstorming is not new to the Creativity Industry. Brainstorming was conceived back in the 1930's when Alex Osborne of the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne created an unstructured method to solicit ideas. The key to this "idea aggregator" was to deferred judgement on any idea suggested. The reason for this "Except All Ideas" approach was to create a pool, thereby eliminating ones which were not suitable for the problem being solved.

Traditional brainstorming sessions consist of at least six to 12 people sitting down to freely think of ideas in a grueling fast paced session. During the session, all ideas are accepted, thereby allowing creativity to flow amongst its participants. The goal of the session is to generate an abundant of "crazy" ideas as possible within the fast paced idea generation session. Ground rules are establish where no judgements, grimaces, cringing and snickering are allowed. Using a flip chart, the facilitator of the session feverishly jotted down all ideas quickly as fast as they are being generated. After the session has ended, a critique of each idea is put through an exhaustive analysis to only capture the revelant ideas suited for the brainstorming challenge presented .

 A tool which I find quite fun to use in generating ideas is MindMapping. MindMapping is based on a Congitive Science  principle, whereby ideas can be expanded by an associative  process. One  idea (Sub-Child) is easily linked to another based on a similar attribute. By making links between these attributes, the main idea is expanded ten-fold. When constructing the Mind Map, a network of inter-linking nodes is created which looks like synapses of the brain. In creating a Mind-Map, the main idea (Parent) is symbolized by a circle centered on the page. From the center circle arrows are then drawn outward to smaller circles or nodes representing associative ideas. The Mind Map size is only limited by the imagination of ideas of the developer.

Mind Mapping  was created by Tony Buzan an educational consultant & author out of frustration of using traditional notes for creating his lectures and books. His conviction in creating Mind Maps was note taking using pen & paper was inefficient. His brother Barry saw unlimited potential behind Mind Mapping beside the application of organizing notes but to stimulate creativity in business.

In generating Mind Maps, one will feel the creative juices flowing from the brain as the network is being drawn. I use this tool exclusive in my wireless embedded designs capturing all software and hardware attributes of the target product I'm creating. A free software package called FreeMind can be downloaded from the web http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download. Let the creativity begin !