2.3. Brainstorming

1
2.3. Brainstorming

• 2. Inventive Engineering
• CEIE 411 Introduction to Design and Inventive
  Engineering
• Tomasz Arciszewski
• Spring, 2009

2
Justification

• It is not a formal method (no formal procedure)
• It is based on a heuristic procedure
• An informal (soft?) approach to engineering
  problems
• No significant design research effort focused on
  it
• But
• It works!!!
• It is sometimes used.
• It changed the perception of informal problem
  solving in marketing, management, and in
  engineering
• No harm to learn the basic concepts!

3
Main Concept

• A moratorium is placed on evaluation until all
  ideas of the group are in.
• A.F. Osborne

4
Main Concept

• Delayed judgment

5
Major Features

• A.F. Osborn, March 11, 1941
• Objective to stimulate an individuals
  creativity through a group work
• A group 5-12 members of different backgrounds,
  including a secretary
• A relaxing and unconstrained environment
  (Session!) to
• produce a Ping-Pong effect among participants
• release an individual from any preconceived
  notions
• No concept is judged, or evaluated, during a
  session, only fun

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Basic Rules/Assumptions

• All concepts, regardless of their quality, are
  desired
• Ping-ponging and hitchhiking concepts as well as
  modifying and combining them with previously
  stated concepts are encouraged.
• Criticism, verbally or nonverbally, is not
  allowed.
• New concepts are NOT evaluated.

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Ping-ponging and hitchhiking

• Use another's idea as stimulation for your own
  improvement or variation.
• Improve, modify, build on the ideas of others.
• Changing just one aspect of an unworkable
  solution can sometimes make it a great solution
• What's good about the idea just suggested?
• How can it be made to work?
• What changes would make it better or even wilder?
  
• It is called piggybacking, hitchhiking, or
  ping-ponging.
• Example problem
• How can we get more students to our school?
• Brainstorm idea Pay them to come here.
• That sounds unworkable, but what about modifying
  it?
• Pay them with something other than money--like an
  emotional, spiritual, or intellectual reward or
  even a practical value-added reward like better
  networking or job contacts?

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History (of Alex Osborne)

• I am sorry kid - you are fired (from the
  Buffalo Times, long time ago)
• Visit to the Buffalo Express with very little
  editing experience
• Hired, because his clippings showed IDEAS
• Realized the importance of ideas
• If ideas are that valuable, why dont I try to
  turn out more of them

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Ideas

• Ideas are called concepts in engineering
• Paradigm change from producing detailed designs
  to producing ideas
• Recognizing the importance of ideas
• Recognizing a career of an ideator

10
Results

• A career in advertising
• Starting from scratch to becoming the head of an
  organization of about 1,000 people

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Major Thoughts

• Whatever creative success I gained was due to my
  belief that creative power can be stepped up by
  effort, and that there are ways in which we can
  guide our creative thinking
• With enough creative effort, each of us could
  find the ideas that would smooth our rocky roads
• What we need is a conscious appreciation of the
  fact that ideas have been, and can be, the
  solution of almost any human problem

12
Motivation Confidence

• Most of us have more imagination than we ever put
  to use. It is too often latent -brought out only
  by internal drive or by force of circumstances
  (Kalu Uduma!!!)
• No talent is brilliant enough to create without
  conscious drive
• Self-confidence is one of the keys to increased
  creativity

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Time and Concentration Factors

• If we set aside a definite period for creative
  thinking we can best lure the muse
• Assume that creating ideas is a part of a process
  (design process)
• With proper concentration it is possible to
  track down ideas anywhere, anytime. Concentration
  (Synesthesia?) is nothing else but attention,
  sharply focused and steadily sustained. It is an
  acquired habit rather than a native gift

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Imagination

• The thesaurus lists over 50 synonyms (fantasy,
  dream, ability to generate pictures, ideas,
  music, etc.)
• Two classes of imaginations
• non-creative, run themselves, control us
• creative, we run them, we control them

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Non-creative imagination

• Unhealthy and uncontrollable forms, for example
  hallucinations, delusions, etc. A basic cause is
  the desire to run from the difficulty - to misuse
  ones imagination as a way to flee from reality.
• Healthy, normal and mostly controllable, for
  example
• day dreaming

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Visual Imagery

• is highly controllable ability to see things in
  the minds eye
• Speculative imagery - allows us to see
  something we have never actually seen before
• Reproductive imagination - enables us to bring
  pictures deliberately into our mind
• Structural visualization - an ability to
  construct 3-D forms in the minds eye from a flat
  blueprint

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Vicarious Imagination

• is a partially controllable ability to build a
  bridge by which we can put ourselves into
  anothers place
• Important in problem solving
• Widely used in Synectics
• It can be developed, but difficult

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Anticipative Imagination

• Passive - prevents children from touching live
  coals
• Active - allows us to predict various events
  (election, a candidate and his two statements
  victory or Fraud at the Polls)
• Creative expectancy - When we look forward to
  something we want to come true, and we strongly
  believe that it will come true, we can often make
  it come true (Law of Attraction)

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Truly Creative Imagination

• has a two-fold nature
• To hunt
• To change what is found
• Hunting - acquiring knowledge
• Changing - processing knowledge

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Hunting

• Jotting down everything which steps up our
  creative power
• Each alternative we list is likely to light up
  another alternative (association of ideas!!)
• Compare with the Da Vincis principles

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Creative Imagination

• A catalyst - not exactly, a catalyst speeds up or
  slows down the process
• Synthesis - not exactly, even combining
  components in a new arrangement is more than that
• Synesthesia - may be?

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Creativity

• More than mere imagination.
• It is imagination inseparably coupled with both
  intent and effort
• The action of the mind which produces a new idea
  or insight

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Memory

• Many a man fails to become a good thinker for
  the sole reason that his memory is too good
• Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzche
• Pros
• If a memory is a mental storage, he has been
  right
• Mnemonics wastes mental energy that could better
  go into creative thinking (memorization instead
  of reasoning)
• An over-active power of recall may even block
  creative thinking (Inertia vector)

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Memory

• Contras
• Imagination, like reason, cannot run without the
  gasoline of knowledge
• C. Grandgent
• Any addition to the individuals store of usable
  experience is potential material for the exercise
  of the imagination
• H. G. Schnackel

25
Memory and Creative Triangle

• Creative Triangle (Dr. Kalu Uduma)
• Motivation (Drive)
• Knowledge (Input)
• Methodology (Process)
• Memory is understood here as knowledge, which has
  to be acquired, a necessary although insufficient
  condition

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Memory/background knowledge

• First-hand experience provides the richest fuel
  for creative power
• Second-hand experience provides far thinner fuel
  (reading, listening, observation)
• Example of country children versus those raised
  in a city
• Example of the first-hand experience of Thomas
  Edison (started at twelve as candy-butcher on
  Grand Trunk trains)
• Travel is another rich source
• Reading
• Human contact
• Self-education (A.G. Bells Rule of Three 1.
  Observe, 2. Remember, 3. Compare)

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Association

• That reminds me
• It joins memory with imagination
• Association of ideas - a faculty which gears
  imagination to memory
• Extremely important in creative thinking and
  problem solving

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Greek laws of association

• Contiguity - nearness, a babys shoe reminds us
  of the infant
• Similarity - a picture of a lion reminds us of a
  cat (a metaphor implies a similarity)
• Contrast - a midget might remind us of a giant

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Laws of Association, Modern Contribution

• Humes law of cause and effect -
• a yawn may remind you that its time to retire

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Power of Association

• Especially when thinking creativity in groups,
  association is a powerful factor. We bat ideas
  around the table and one idea bumps another into
  existence
• A. Osborne
• I say, How about this? The person next to me
  listens and suddenly exclaims, That gives me an
  idea that (Chain Thinking)

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Combination the Essence of Creativity

• A creative thinker evolves no new ideas, he
  actually evolves new combinations of ideas
  (concepts - TA) that are already in his mind
• W. Easton
• Consistent with the morphological analysis
• Basic concept behind AI in design research

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Emotional Drive

• The act of association is like a momentum fueled
  by our emotions and will
• Emotional drive is self-starting and largely
  automatic, whether based on hunger, fear, love,
  or ambition
• A. Osborn
• The thinker is dominated by emotions from the
  start to the finish of his work
• W. Easton

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Emotional Factors

• To induce creative thinking we cannot dominate
  or threaten, such methods will not and cannot
  inspire (Example of the German chemists under
  the Nazi control) H.E. Fritz
• Love is a steadier and better driving power (of a
  country, of a person, etc.)
• I address myself to those among you who have
  ambition to become millionaires
• A. Carnegie
• Creative effort in times of prosperity has
  tended to ebb, why depressions brought extra
  effort that have resulted in many of the
  advancements which have put America ahead of the
  rest of the world
• A. Osborn

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Will

• Where theres a will there are ways to think up
• A. Osborn
• To generate ideas, a lot of effort is necessary
• The normal opener of deeper and deeper levels of
  energy is the will
• W. James
• Heuristic put your mind to it and make a date
  with yourself - set time and place, set a
  deadline, find a partner.

35
Judgment

• Judgment may choke ideas lets keep it in its
  place
• A. Osborn
• In creative effort, judgment is good only when
  properly timed
• In the average person, judgment grows
  automatically with years, while creativity
  dwindles unless consciously kept up
• A. Osborn
• Form the habit of reacting YES to a new idea.
  First think of all the reasons why its good.
  There will be always plenty of people around to
  tell you why it wont work
• Suits
• Premature judgment may douse our creative
  flames, and even wash away ideas already
  generated
• A. Osborn

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Delayed Judgment

• Of the ways to prevent judgment from cramping
  creativeness, we have already touched on the main
  method and that is to delay judgment - not only
  suspend it, but postpone it until our ingenuity
  has piled up all possible ideas (forget about
  judgment!!)
• A. Obsborne
• Produce your ideas first, only then evaluate
  them. Disjoin the generation and evaluation of
  ideas!!!

37
Creativity versus conformity

• The curse of conventionalism
• For fear Ill look foolish goes with wanting
  not to be seen different
• The curse of pride
• In getting going, keeping going, or giving out,
  we have every reason to sweep timidity aside and
  gird our effort with courage
• A. Osborn

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Preparation for Creativity

• A certain amount of opposition is a great help
• T. Carlyle
• Unfriendliness can make us stop trying
• The need to build self-confidence in the young
• A difference between trying 3 things - getting
  two successes and one flop - and trying only one
  thing that can be perfectly done
• Heuristic always encourage ideas - to encourage
  speaking up as well as thinking up

39
Exercising

• Creative thinking is exercise
• You must use it or you lose it
• Bishop Norman Nash
• Reading packs our memory and enriches our power
  of association (too little effort)
• Games (chess) force players to think forward
• Quizzes and puzzles (recommended by T. Edison)
• Actually doing it is, of course, the best
  exercise. The way to create is to create, just
  the way to write is to write
• A. Osborn

40
Working Mood Establishment

• Vital to purposeful creativity
• I close my office door and try to limber up. I
  try to forget everything but the job before me.
  Then I pull my typewriter to me, wrap my legs
  around it, and start to write. I write down every
  line that comes into my head. Crazy, dull,
  however it sounds. I find that if I dont, it may
  linger there and block others. I write as fast as
  I can. And then, after a long while, some cogs
  that havent worked start to whir and something
  striking begins to tap itself our of the yellow
  sheet before me - like a telegraph message.
  Thats the hard way and the only way I know on
  most days
• A. Ward

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Working Mood Establishment

• Even the open-minded may have to ward off
  influences that could close their minds while in
  quest of an idea
• A. Osborn
• Sometimes disregard advice
• Be on the alert for hunches
• Suites
• Aufgabe in the German psychology - total focus
  on the task
• So before we set our aim, lets flex ourselves,
  open our minds, intensify our intent, court
  awareness, encourage curiosity, and then tug that
  bootstrap marked concentration. Thus we can get
  into a working mood where effort is more like
  sport.
• A. Osborn

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Targeting

• Curiosity is the key to targeting creative tasks
• I wonder what would happen if molecules were
  rearranged so that they would be in lines instead
  of clusters?
• C.M.A. Stine
• Specify your problem consciously
• B. Blanshard
• Convert target into questions
• Just as one idea leads to another, one question
  often leads to another
• A. Osborn
• Present your target in a descriptive form

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Breaking Down a Problem

• Analyze your problem, divide it and acquire and
  structure the background knowledge
• Analysis of any kind can of itself bear creative
  fruit for it tends to uncover clues which speed
  up our power of associations and thus feed our
  imagination
• Osborn
• Acquiring/processing knowledge

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Analysis

• Why is always a good question
• Why-so and what-if are crucial, too.
• Use your imagination to create a flood of ideas
• Add these questions to your formula sheet

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Analysis

• Too many examples, previous cases, to study may
  shut off your creative thinking
• Instead of doing an exhaustive job of digging
  before starting to create, we might well line up
  a few fundamental facts and then start thinking
  up all the ideas we possibly can (too much is
  too much)
• A. Osborn

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Analysis

• There are two kinds of specific facts we should
  seek - those which are inherent in our problem
  and those which may have some bearing
• A. Osborn
• Be creative and use your imagination in acquiring
  knowledge (creative pegging)

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Idea generation

• How can we give directions to our imagination?
• Answer asking questions
• Examples
• Why?
• Where?
• When?
• Who?
• What?
• How?
• What about?
• What if?
• What else?
• Why? What? How? (TA)

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Idea generation

• The basic principle is variation. The active
  adjunct to the principle of variation is plenty
  of alternatives
• A. Osborn
• Quantity, quantity, and more quantity! This is
  the surest recipe for ideas.
• A. Osborn

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Stimulating Imagination Other Uses

• To what other uses could this be put?
• In what other products could this material be
  used? (300 useful articles in which peanuts could
  be used!!)
• Pure science becomes applied science by thinking
  up uses for an academic discovery
• Piling up alternatives by way of new uses can do
  much to make the most of talent

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Borrowing and Adapting Ideas

• Is there something similar I could partially
  copy?
• Football came from rugby
• Goethe claimed that there were only 36 basic
  plots
• What other process could be adapted for this job?
• Brainstorming lead to Synectics
• To step up our creative power we need to pile up
  alternatives, volume, volume, volume!!!

51
New Twist, Modifications

• What if this were somewhat changed?
• What about a new twist?
• How about changing the shape? In what way?
• Example of roller-bearings straight-sided
  cylinders, 1500-1898, converted by Henry Timkin
  into tapered cylinders

52
Addition, Multiplication, Magnification

• What strength can we add?
• How about extra value?
• Could this be multiplied?
• Additional means size and more How about more
  time? greater frequency?
• Exaggeration is but one of the many byways which
  lead off from the magnification highway. By
  sending our imagination down these trails, we can
  add more alternatives and the more numerous the
  alternatives, the better the ideas. In turn, the
  conscious effort we put into such quests tends to
  step up our creative power
• A. Osborn

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Subtraction, Division, Minification (reduction)

• One direction is of more-so,the other one is of
  less-so
• What if this were smaller?
• What could I omit?
• How about dividing?
• What can be eliminated?
• What part can be reduced?

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Substitution

• Substitution of things, places, people, emotions
• Transformation of ideas understood as
  substitution
• Archimedes he had to find out whether a crown
  was all gold, and he found out how to determine
  the density of his own body.
• The substitution trail is an endless road to an
  infinite number of ideas
• A. Osborn

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Pattern Change, Rearranging

• What about changing a sequence?
• (Cafeterias found that desserts sell better when
  shown near the start of the line.)
• What if they were transponded?
• Transponding cause and effect in trying to
  determine what is the cause and what is the
  effect.
• (People dont like me - that is why I am morose
  and sensitive)

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Brainstorming Session

• Optimal 5 - 9 participants
• Participants carefully selected with maximum 1-2
  domain experts, various backgrounds and
  personalities
• No bosses and subordinates in the same room
• Participants trained
• A leader and a recorder should be identified

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Brainstorming Session

• Participants should be rested and relaxed
• A very comfortable, relaxing environment with
  light food should be provided
• At least half a day should planned
• Awards, but not penalties should be promised
  (more cookies!!)

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Brainstorming Session

• Quasi-heuristic procedure
• 1. Prepare information about the problem to be
  solve.
• 2. Describe the problem in general non-technical
  terms.
• 3. Select and prepare the participants.
• 4. Motivate and relax the participants.
• 5. Prepare the working environment.
• 6. Select the leader and the recorder.
• 7. Present the problem and mention awards.
• 8. Ask the leader to start the session random
  generation of any concept .
• 9. Begin ping-ponging, hitchhiking, etc.
• 10. Prepare the final list of design concepts.

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Tool

• IdeaFisher PRO
• developed by IdeaFisher Systems, Inc., Irvine, CA
• a toolbox with tools
• IdeaBank a database with over 65K of concepts,
  words, etc.
• QBank library of thousands of concept-sparking
  questions

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Tool

• Three major stages
• Extraction from the user all words (concepts)
  related to the problem
• Using these words to produce a list of associated
  words (concepts) from the huge database
• Identification of useful concepts, or using this
  list to stimulate the users own creative
  thinking

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Tool

• A-pillar problem, provided by Chrysler Technology
  Center
• General Car View

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Tool, Record of a Session

• pillar
• buildings/construction Parts (of buildings)
• arcade (arched area)
• curves/arches/concave/convex Things/Places
• Gothic arch
• curves/arches/concave/convex Things/Places
• protective shell
• guard/protect Varieties/Examples (protective
  cases)
• sheath (weapon case or covering)
• guard/protect Varieties/Examples (protective
  covers)
• bicycle helmet
• headgear/masks/neckwear Varieties/Examples
  (headgear)
• miner's hat
• hard/rigid/firm Activities/Events/Processes
• hard landing
• hit/whip/collide/kick Varieties/Examples
  (hit/collide)
• bang against
• hit/whip/collide/kick Abstractions/Intangibles
  
• car's collision rating