Research: Brainstorming (1)

"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion which makes race horses."  Mark Twain

"... to the extent that hemispheric organisation is under experimental control, the cognitive repertoire of an individual may be dynamically changed to best fit the task at hand."  Eran Zaidel

A topic that Buzan refers to repeatedly is the idea of brainstorming without editing, and your related attitude concerning quantity and quality.

While these ideas are extremely relevant to the creative process, little experimental work has been conducted in this area.

However, one impressive study was conducted by Johnson, Parrott and Stratton (1968) and is reported in Anderson (1985).

In this experiment, two groups of subjects were instructed to generate ideas for a plot. Group 1 was instructed to generate one best plot title while Group 2 was instructed to generate many titles with no regard for the quality of the titles. Two other people judged the quality of the titles for both groups. The results showed, as expected, that Group 2 generated more titles overall.

However, unexpectedly, they also generated more titles of superior quality than Group 1. That is, when the group was instructed to focus on quantity rather than quality, more titles of a superior quality were generated than when the group was instructed to focus on quality rather than quantity. The results showed that as quantity rose, quality also rose.

An additional interesting finding was that, when the subjects in each group were instructed to judge which of their solutions were best, there was virtually no difference between the groups. Both groups agreed on the quality of the titles. This suggests, Anderson points out, that the subjects in Group 1, who were instructed to generate one best title, may have brainstormed internally and then edited the ideas before writing the best one down.

The above research suggests that both brainstorming and editing are important in ultimately generating quality solutions to problems. This supports Buzan's suggestion of unedited brainstorming, or associations for Mind Maps, and saving the editing process for later.

This information may be very beneficial for brainstorming problem-solving sessions for your business. As suggested earlier, it would be valuable to tape record brainstorming sessions, have someone transcribe the tape, and ultimately have all the ideas mind mapped in front of the people making the final decisions. It is very important to remember that editing and judging should be conducted after, rather than before or during, the process of idea generation.

The majority of this section involves learning, or actually 'relearning' how to draw.

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