Guest post by James Adams

Coming up with new ideas to keep your business thriving can be difficult, frustrating, and at times, mind-numbing. It’s when that freeze occurs and you just can’t come up with anything productive that could help your business that you might need a good brainstorming session. Here are some tips to consider that might help you free up some of those great ideas that may be stuck in limbo.

1. Structured Meetings: Sure, meetings can be a waste of time if they aren’t conducted properly. We’ve probably all been to a meeting or two where we’re left wondering why we even bothered. Brainstorming by way of a constructive and well-structured meeting can be a great way to share ideas and get the creative juices flowing.
2. Drill Down to the Root Cause: Similar to decision tree analysis, drilling down to the root cause of an issue can be a great brainstorming method. By determining the problem you are attacking and then questioning what is causing it, and in turn, what is causing that problem, and so on until you reach the root cause, you may unearth some interesting findings.
3. Facilitate New Ideas: Facilitating new ideas from your team members is a great, not to mention easy way (for you at least) to brainstorm new ideas for your business. Forming teams to tackle various issues can bring a gathering of viewpoints and ideas from within different areas of your business. Hilton Hotels utilized a form of this in their CIP (Continuous Improvement Process) program, in which teams were formed from members of various departments within larger hotels to brainstorm solutions to short, medium, and long-term problems.
4. Open Door Policy: One way in which to facilitate new ideas and encourage brainstorming is by offering an “open door policy”. You may find that team members are more encouraged to participate in and come up with new solutions when they feel comfortable being able to come to upper-level management and explain their ideas and/or problems in person.
5. Look to Others: Sometimes all you need in order to brainstorm some new tactics for your business is to look at others within your industry or field. While what other companies have done might not work exactly for your particular problem, you may be able to modify or build upon their ideas and solutions.
6. SWOT: Using SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis can be one way of brainstorming for your business. Utilizing this practice may help you recognize and identify issues to be dealt with and jumpstart the brainstorming process.
7. Write Down Ideas: Seeing ideas in writing, whether it’s on a scrap of wastepaper or on a blackboard or dry erase board, may help you to further build and draw upon those ideas. By putting your ideas in writing, you and others may be able to better conceptualize them as well as keep them as a record for further reference and idea building during the brainstorming process. You might also incorporate “freewriting” into your writing process, allowing you or your team to spew forth ideas for a pre-determined amount of time to let creativity flow unrestricted.
8. Try a Different Approach: Rather than start at the problem and work forward toward a solution, consider starting at what you might think may be the solution and work backwards. Sometimes looking at things from a different angle or taking a different approach may help you better work through a brainstorming session.
9. Dissect the Problem: At times, a problem may be just too big to tackle all at once. Consider breaking the issue down into smaller portions and brainstorming ideas on how to solve each smaller portion in order to get a better grasp on the issue as a whole.
10. Form Your Own Think-Tank: Sometimes you might need to throw a little manpower at your brainstorming. Developing a company think-tank of team members can be a great way to brainstorm and come up with new ideas for your business. This think-tank may be developed to tackle short term ideas or may be an on-going group to handle any and all issues that may arise within the company.

While brainstorming methods may vary, the goals are often the same — to find the solution to a problem or come up with new ideas. The way the human mind functions and processes information may occur in odd ways, and this means that brainstorming and its effectiveness is often dependent upon the person doing it. Therefore, utilizing the processes that works best for you and your business can be critical to the success of your brainstorming sessions and the resulting ideas.

James is a product analyst at Cartridge Save where he employs some of these brainstorming tips to review and compare products like the HP 339 to make buying decisions easier.

Technorati Tags: brainstorming, creativity, productivity

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