Brainstorming Doesn't Work -- Here's What Does

How many times have you been called into a brainstorming session and encouraged to "think outside the box!" Or maybe your manager assigned you to come up with ideas for improving an existing product.

Do these practices work? Not well.

"The problem with the first method is that most people are not very good at unstructured, abstract brainstorming," say the authors of a new Harvard Business Review article about generating truly innovative thinking. "The second method -- slicing the data in new ways -- almost always produces only small to middling insights..."

So what's a company that lives by its brains to do? Learn to ask the right questions to get people thinking in ways that are truly productive. One example the authors use is to ask participants to answer a narrower question, one that takes a path somewhere in between rigid analysis and boundless speculation.

Example: What product can we take from our childhood and transform into a more extreme, expensive form for adults?

This question has led to such products as Rollerblades, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and Spider-Man movies, the authors say. "The same notion has led to over 25 new product categories, including gourmet jelly beans, baseball fantasy camps, $200 sneakers, 20-foot-high sand castles for corporate parties, paintball, space tourism, and Disney collectibles."

The article lists 21 great questions for developing new products. Here are 5 of them:

• Who spends at least 50% of what our product costs to adapt it to their specific needs?
• Who uses our product in ways we never expected or intended?
• What major breakthroughs in efficiency or effectiveness have we made in our business that could be applied in another industry?
• What is the biggest hassle of purchasing or using our product?
• Which technologies embedded in our product have changed the most since the product was last redesigned?

(Rollerblading image by Steve Longus, CC 2.0)