Spill out all your ideas about the problem you want to solve. This first step in brain storming is called "The Mess." This popular problem-solving technique was refined into a science by Alex Osborn and Sidney J. Parnes, experts in the practice of creative problem-solving, or CPS, in the 1950s and '60s. The Mess is followed by steps 2 through 4: Idea-Finding, Solution-Finding and Action-Planning. Exercises have been created to facilitate each step.
Conversation
Do not brain storm alone. The simplest brain storming exercise, conversation with a collaborator, was described by the cognitive science researcher, Daniel L. Schwartz, in a 1995 edition of the Journal of the Learning Sciences. Traditionally, educators reasoned that individuals would excel over groups at abstract reasoning and problem solving due to freedom from distractions and independence of thought. Schwartz's research, however, documented that a dyad, a group of two, was up to five times as productive at problem solving and abstract reasoning as an individual.
Visualization
Visualize your solutions with the exercise called visual brainstorming, using images, objects and actions. Jeffrey Paul Baumgartner, founding partner and manager of JPB, an international marketer of management services and software, created this exercise to improve on verbal brainstorming. This exercise uses multiple groups of six to 12. Each group works independently on a common problem. Participants discuss problems and solutions, then depict them by building models of improved products, role-playing improved services or drawing pictures of better operations. Visualizations and actions flow freely and spontaneously. Finally, each group presents its creation to the others. Solutions are synthesized from the combined output.
Brain Dump
Educators at the University of Washington, Tacoma, teach brain storming exercises to students beginning complex projects. The "Brain Dump" is also called freewriting. Set a time or space limit, for instance 15 minutes or five pages. Write everything that comes to your mind on your topic. Disregard grammar, spelling, sentence structure and distractions. This exercise helps you weed out bad ideas, identify good ideas, detect relationships between concepts and it simply starts your motor if you have trouble beginning a project. Freewriting creates an internal dialog to make up for the collaborative conversations you will miss if you are working alone.
Clustering
Map clusters of concepts into a web of ideas in the exercise called clustering. University of North Carolina educators teach this to individual students or groups brainstorming complex problems and issues. Begin with a large sheet of paper or an entire blackboard. State the core issue or problem succinctly in the center and circle it. As quickly as possible jot down, anywhere in the space surrounding the concept, words and phrases related in any way to the topic. After filling up the space link similar ideas together into clusters. Finish by naming and organizing the idea clusters into a framework progressing from problems to solutions.
