Submitted to : Prof. Abhilash G Nambudiri In partial fulfillments of the course Submitted by : P Pou Zha PGDM : A Batch Roll No. : P14141 | | Brainstorming: Aid to creativity |

Contents:
1. Abstract ……………………………………………………………. 2
2. Introduction ………………………………………………………...3
3. Terms and concepts ………………………………………………..4
4. Brainstorming as an aid to creativity …………………………….4
5. Individual and group brainstorming ……………………………..5
6. Challenges to effective brainstorming …………………………....6
7. Advantages of group brainstorming in an organization ………...7
8. Disadvantages of group brainstorming in an organization ……..8
9. Why organizations still use brainstorming in spite of its drawbacks ………………………………………………………….....8
10. Should an organization use brainstorming? ……………………9
11. Conclusions ……………………………………………………....10
12. References ………………………………………………………..11

Abstract: In an organization, knowledge or idea exchange is an important function of groups in solving problems. Under the right conditions, the idea exchange process in groups may be an important means for enhancing creativity and innovation in organizations Creativity will help to solve a wide range of management problems. Brainstorming is use for creativity and amassing of ideas from the group. It is found that the idea sharing in groups can be productive in getting things done. Research has found that significantly fewer ideas were produced by groups than by individuals. In spite of its shortcoming organization use brainstorming for developing creative ideas to solve problems down the line till now after 60 years of its inception. It is because group brainstorming is more enjoyable than solitary brainstorming. Brainstorming also creates an esprit de corps and social needs. It also gives a sense of commitment in executing the Brainstorming helps to increase acceptance of group decisions, to pool resources and learn from specialization of others.

Introduction: Brainstorming was originated and first used by Alex F.Osborn in 1939 in the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn, which he then headed. Within recent years its use has grown rapidly. A large number of major companies, units of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and various federal, state, and local civilian agencies have employed the technique, and instruction has been given in a number of colleges and universities in its use. Although an occasional critical voice has been raised, brainstorming may be said to have achieved wide acceptance as a means of facilitating creative thinking. The purpose of brainstorming is to free individuals from inhibition, self-criticism, and criticism by others in order that in response to a specific problem they may produce as many different ideas as possible. The assumption is that the larger the number of ideas produced, the greater the probability of achieving an effective solution. Brainstorming is characterized by four basic rules: 1. Focus on quantity: This rule means that the groups are encourages extracting as many possible within given period. The more creative the person choose or a group to choose from creative ideas, the greater the chances that an innovative solution will be found to the problem at hand. 2. Without criticism: In brainstorming, no criticism should be there during ideas generation. Instead, the participant should be given emphasis on moving forwards with ideas giving encourages on other ideas and creation of new ideas. 3. Unusual ideas are allowed: Participants are encourage to get thinking ‘outside the box’ and finding a good and long list of ideas unusual ideas are allowed to find innovative ways to solve the problems. 4. Combine ideas and improvements: In additions to contributing ideas, participants are encouraged to combine ideas, build on concepts and work together to build better ideas through the ideas of associations. Brainstorming ordinarily involves not only following the four basic rules but also group collaboration in attacking the problem. Osborn emphasizes the value of group interaction in facilitating the flow of ideas. Osborn appears to support the view that group collaboration in brainstorming does increase production of ideas.'' Moreover, many practical experiences described by Osborn also seem to provide support persuasive of this view. An adequate answer to the question, however, demands adequately controlled experiments appropriately designed and with results subjected to thorough statistical analysis. No such experiment was known to the authors of the present report—certainly none has been published in sufficient detail to permit evaluation of the design, the analysis, and the conclusions reached.
Terms and concepts: Brainstorming is a process of groups or individual creativity technique of idea generation that focuses on quantity and breadth of ideas made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its member(s). The aim is to get as many different varied ideas as possible within a set space of time.

A brainstorming session involves two basic processes: Idea generation and idea recording i.e. coming up with ideas and writing them down, it means that ideas had to be recorded as fast as they can be suggested and they are evaluated for usefulness at a later time. Brainstorming encourages expressing of ideas no matter whether it is unusual ones or impractical ones are encouraged.

In brainstorming, criticism and negative feedback are not allowed. This refers that during the discussion there is no feedback or evaluation and encourages developing ideas without fear. This is applicable to both group brainstorming sessions (criticism of others’ ideas) and individual brainstorming (self-criticism). This creates creative ideas that might otherwise never be touched upon.

Free association is encouraged during group brainstorming sessions, as is using previous suggestions to augment thinking and cross boundaries. The purposed of deferred judgment is to encouraged people to propose bold unique ideas without worrying about what others think of them. This approach typically produced more ideas than the conventional of thinking and judging concurrently. Brainstorming session last from 10 minutes to 1 hour and requires no additional preparation other than knowing the general of the subject. |
Brainstorming as an aid to creativity: Brainstorming is used as a tool for developing creative tasks in the organizations like developing products, overhauling business systems, improving manufacturing and bringing solutions to problems. Brainstorming is also an essential skill to improve quality, customer service, teamwork, productivity, employee engagement and many other challenges face in today’s business. So, to be effective in taking decisions while facing these challenges, if people contribute more in finding solutions, the solutions will bring much greater results than decisions taking by few people of higher authorities. Brainstorming also reduce social inhibitions among group members, stimulate idea generation increase overall creativity of the group. Suppose, the problem was to deal with lower level management area, those people working in that area will know the problems better. Moreover, a sense of motivation among the associates or the group involvement will boost up. And in the process of implementing the solutions they will be more supportive to bring the new solutions which they themselves have taken the solutions.
Individual or group brainstorming: Brainstorming can either be carried out efficiently by individuals, groups or both: The most convenient map type for brainstorming initial phase is the mind map you can start the mind map from scratch or select the mind map template, ready made in Knowledge Master. Individual brainstorming tends to produce a wider range of ideas than group brainstorming, but tends not to develop the ideas as effectively, perhaps as individuals on their own run up against problems they cannot solve. Individuals are free to explore ideas in their own time without any fear of criticism, and without being dominated by other group members. Group brainstorming develops ideas more deeply and effectively, as when difficulties in the development of an idea by one person are reached, another person's creativity and experience can be used to break them down. Group brainstorming tends to produce fewer ideas (as time is spent developing ideas in depth) and can lead to the suppression of creative but quiet people by loud and uncreative ones. Individual and group brainstorming can be mixed, perhaps by defining a problem individually, and then letting team members initially come up with a wide range of possibly shallow solutions. These solutions could then be enhanced and developed by group brainstorming.
Brainstorming examples: Group brainstorming examples: Often brainstorming is conducted as a group with individuals contributing their knowledge and experience to the brainstorming process. Here are some examples how group brainstorming can benefit organizations. 1. A situations where a company may needs to cut costs in order to meet budgetary requirement may meet to brainstorm on how to reduce expense without spending too much on resources. 2. A company has an idea for a new product but may have problems on how to market the new product to the public. Marketing team members may brainstorm at this point of time to bring more innovative ideas that will ensure the product’s success. 3. In a class teachers may give some group assignment to bring out some solutions, members of the groups may brainstorm to develop a solution in order to bring the best solution. Individual brainstorming examples: Individual brainstorming can also be very valuable exercise for bringing creative thoughts. There are a numbers of reasons why a person needs to brainstorms. Some of them are:- 1. A professional businesswoman wants to change her career. She doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do, but she knows she isn’t happy in her current line of work. She can conduct an intense brainstorming to develop an idea to determine which fields she should pursue. 2. A person may want to get a very special gift for his friend birthday but he is not sure what to give him. So in this situations he can brainstorms different gift ideas to find a gift that will his friends just how much he mean to him.
Challenges to effective brainstorming: Several factors can contribute to a loss of effectiveness in group brainstorming. Blocking: Blocking happens because only one participant may give an idea at a time, other participants might forget the idea they were going to contribute or not share it because they see it as no longer important or relevant. Further, if we view brainstorming as a cognitive process in which "a participant generates ideas (generation process) and stores them in short-term memory (memorization process) and then eventually extracts some of them from its short-term memory to express them (output process)", then blocking is an even more critical challenge because it may also inhibit a person's train of thought in generating their own ideas and remembering them. Collaborative fixation: Exchanging ideas in a group may reduce the number of domains that a group explores for additional ideas. Members may also share their ideas to those of other members, decreasing the novelty or variety of ideas, even though the overall number of ideas might not decrease. Evaluation apprehension: Evaluation apprehension was determined to occur only in instances of personal evaluation. If the assumption of collective assessment were in place, real-time judgment of ideas, ostensibly an induction of evaluation apprehension, failed to induce significant variance. Free-riding: Individuals may feel that their ideas are less valuable when combined with the ideas of the group at large. Individually participants produced fewer ideas if told that their output would be judged in a group with others than if told that their output would be judged individually. Personality characteristics: Extraverts have been shown to outperform introverts in computer mediated groups. Extraverts also generated more unique and diverse ideas than introverts when additional methods were used to stimulate idea generation, such as completing a small related task before brainstorming, or being given a list of the classic rules of brainstorming. Social matching: One phenomenon of group brainstorming is that participants will tend to alter their rate of productivity to match others in the group. This can lead to participants generating fewer ideas in a group setting than they would individually because they will decrease their own contributions if they perceive themselves to be more productive than the group average. On the other hand, the same phenomenon can also increase an individual's rate of production to meet the group average.
Advantages of using group brainstorming in an organization: Brainstorming reduces dependence the authority of a single individual. Also as brainstorming conducts on the basis of encouraging free flow of ideas without any criticism and evaluation it creates in the mind of participants “absence of fear” which is likely to speak up and propose new ideas. Thus, it stimulates participation among group members. Brainstorming is also very time-effective because it creates a large number of potential solutions in a short period of time. Thought the ideas have to be analyzed for their potential effectiveness, the participants can have lots of ideas to choose from. Brainstorming also doesn’t need any preparation except little knowledge about the subject matter is sufficient. Brainstorming is mainly used in finding alternative problems or solutions because from the number of ideas the solutions are selected according to the needs.

Disadvantages of group brainstorming in an organization: Brainstorming has disadvantages too like many other creative methods. Some of them are given below:- 1. Brainstorm’s strength become its weakness because there is lack of criticism in brainstorming there is less self analysis which reduces the amount of thought that goes into ideas so that the ideas that are generated are not so quality. 2. In brainstorming, participants have to listen to others and may spend time repeating their ideas until they get sufficient attention. 3. An introvert person may find it difficult to express their crazy ideas. 4. Processing and evaluating ideas can be a complex depending on the generated ideas. 5. Participants with ability to speak faster may get more attention in the group. Experiment also proves that the brainstorming results in fewer ideas than if each participant’s works alone and then later pools their ideas.
Why organizations still use brainstorming in spite of the drawbacks? In spite of the drawbacks and criticism of brainstorming, many organizations continue brainstorming to facilitate creativity to use it rather to explore alternatives approaches. And many such organizations overcome some of the weakness of brainstorming. Many organizations use brainstorming because it appears to have many advantages in comparison to traditional group decision making and only a few drawbacks. There is some evidence, however, that individuals “brainstorming” alone would generate more and better quality ideas than would in a brainstorming group. Even in a relaxed atmosphere, the presence of others may still inhibit the quantity and creativity of ideas generated by brainstorming group members. Although brainstorming is not the effective means of generating truly creating ideas, it has some benefits. Three reasons why brainstorming is use in an organizations even if they know that it is not the most effective way of developing new ideas:
1. Decisions acceptance
2. Resource pooling 3. Specializations of others (1). to increase decision acceptance in the organizations: Since brainstorming session is taken part by many people, they feel they have made a real contribution to the organization to the outcome. People involve in contributing to the solutions of brainstorming, if not actually not making decisions also may be expected to understand those decisions better and to be more committed in carrying them out than the decisions made by somebody else without their involvement. In other words brainstorming can be effective as other many committees but may be seen as more creative and more fun. (2). to pool resources: many believe that people coming together can develop and increase the amount of knowledge needs to make a food decisions. Somehow the group is greater than the sum of its part together. (3). to benefit from the specializations of labor: while working in a groups whether there is brainstorming or not, it becomes possible for individuals to do only those task for which they are best suited, the quality potentials of the group’s effort improved more. Moreover, brainstorming is a team building exercise. Brainstorming is also an essential skill to improve quality, customer service, teamwork, productivity, employee engagement and many other challenges face in today’s business. Brainstorming also gives some motivations and makes them feel that they are being innovative.
Should an organization use brainstorming? As we can see brainstorming like other methods of generating ideas has both an advantages and disadvanges. Brainstorming is a useful tool to be used when many ideas are needed quickly in a short time. But the individual mental process of coming up with ideas can be hampered by lack of fear, as the individual is likely to self analysis the idea, look for week points and see if it’s appropriate. Typically, the less a company knows about the idea it needs, the more appropriate brainstorming will be useful in such a situation. Because, brainstorming is more effective in developing ideas rather than choosing alternatives from existing solution. For example, if a company is looking for a name, in such a situation brainstorming may be more appropriate. However, if there’s a problem with employee misconduct, brainstorming would not be appropriate as there are finite courses of action to take, which must fit within a framework of professional employee management.
Conclusions:
Brainstorming is thus used as an aid for creativity in an organization. It is a creative process to developing ideas and can be used in bringing any solutions. Thought brainstorming have some weakness many organizations can avoid such weakness. In spite of knowing that brainstorming is not the best way for innovative ideas use in an idea to develop creative ideas, many organization use brainstorming or doesn’t find other alternatives in developing ideas. This is because of the fact that brainstorming is productive as it is fun and enjoying doing brainstorming. Other reasons are it brings teamwork and brings collaboration to work together. The motivation that the participants get in creating a solution also brings credibility and commitment in executing the ideas. Brainstorming is best when people involve feel safe and value as they participate in the process of brainstorming sessions. More innovative ideas will come when everyone is contributing and feeding off one another’s insights and experiences. Listening is as effective as creating ideas in brainstorming because listening others will spark own ideas from the hint of others idea. Group brainstorming is an important exercise in team-building. The trick is to capture the efficiencies of an individual while making the most of the bonhomie and synergy of a group brainstorm. Brainstorming also holds unique special character as it can be used in any way any problem. We can use in class, organizations, individually; in a family or anything we can think of as long as there is creative ideas are required.

References:
1). The Brainstorming Myth
By Adrian furnham
(Business strategy review, 2010, volume 11, issue 4 pg 21-28)
2).Procedures For Managers In Idea-Deficient Situations: An Examination Of Brainstorming Approaches
By T. Rickards and b. L. Fbeedman
(The journal of management studies)
3). Brainstorming reconsidered: a goal-based view
By Robert c. Litchfield
Washington & Jefferson College
(Academy of Management Review 2008, Vol. 33, No. 3, 649–668.)
4) Beyond Brainstorming
MaryAnne M. Gobble
(Research-Technology Management-March—April 2014)
5) The Persistence of Brainstorming
MaryAnne M. Gobble
(Research-Technology Management- January—February 2014)