Thinking Tools 3

In the name of Allah The Beneficent The Merciful

Brainstorm

Was introduced by Alex Osborn, who was an advertising executive, in 1941.  He found the conventional meeting style inhibit the generation of new ideas.  Therefore he proposed some rules for the purpose of stimulating new ideas.  In order to trigger and to come up new with ideas, they have to be given freedom to think and freedom to act.  He explains that brainstorming is "a conference technique by which a group attempts to find a solution for a specific problem by amassing all the ideas spontaneously by its members".  The following is the rules that he had come up with

• No criticism of ideas
• Go for large quantities of ideas
• Build on each others ideas
• Encourage wild and exaggerated ideas

He discovered that significantly more ideas can be generated when these rules were followed.   Further, amassing lots of ideas helped in producing original ideas which were practical as well as realistic.

The new rules stimulate idea generation because all ideas are accepted without criticism.  This way people will not afraid of being judged as stupid or wrong.  Sometimes wild, silly and funny ideas could trigger production of ideas that work.  

Brainstorming can be used in a group or by oneself.  

Brainstorming helps in the production of the following:

• Cool Advertisements
• Strategies and methods in Marketing
• Procedures in Research and Development
• Techniques of doing researches 
• Patents
• New products
• Creative and report Writings
• Services
• Processes
• Engineering components
• Government policies
• Factories
• Management methods
• Company structure and policy
• New industries

SCAMPER

Brainstorming session can help in producing more ideas if all the members in the session are focused on the same thing. SCAMPER method can help in parallel thinking.

S ~ Substitute = Thinking is focused on substituting whole/part of product/process for something else. By looking for something to substitute we can often come up with new ideas.  Typical questions: What can I substitute to make an improvement? What if I swap this for that and see what happens? How can I substitute the place, time, materials or people?

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C ~ Combine = Thinking is focused on combining two or more parts of our product/ideas to achieve a different product/process or to enhance synergy.  Typical questions: What materials, features, processes, people, products or components can I combine? Where can I build synergy?

A ~ Adapt = Thinking is focused on parts of the product/process which could be adapted or think how we could change the nature of the product/process.  Typical questions: What part of the product could I change? And in exchange for what? What if I were to change the characteristics of a component?

M ~ Modify = Thinking is focused on changing part or all of the current situation, or to distort it in an unusual way. By forcing ourself to come up with new ways of working, we are often prompted into an alternative product/process.  Typical questions: What happens if I warp or exaggerate a feature or component? What will happen if I modify the process in some way?

P ~ Put to Other Use = Thinking is on how we might be able to put our current solution/ product/process to other purposes, or think of what we could reuse from somewhere else in order to solve our own problem. We might think of another way of solving our own problem or finding another market for our product.  Typical questions: What other market could I use this product in? Who or what else might be able to use it?

E ~ Eliminate = Thinking is on what might happen if we eliminated various parts of the product/process and consider what we might do in that situation. This often leads us to consider different ways of tackling the problem.  Typical questions: What would happen if I removed a component or part of it? How else would I achieve the solution without the normal way of doing it?

R ~ Rearrange/Reverse = Thinking on what we would do if part of our product/process worked in reverse or done in a different order. What would we do if we had to do it in reverse? We can use this to see our product/process from different angles and come up with new ideas.  Typical questions: What if I did it the other way round? What if I reverse the order it is done or the way it is used? How would I achieve the opposite effect?

Source: Creative Tool