BRAINSTORMING (20 m)

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution to a problem. It works by focusing on a problem, and then deliberately coming up with as many solutions as possible and by pushing the ideas as far as possible. One of the reasons behind its effectiveness is that the brainstormers not only come up with new ideas in a session, but also spark off from associations with other people's ideas by developing and refining them.
The method was first popularized in the late 1930s by Alex faickney Osborn, an advertising executive in a book titled Applied Imagination.
Brainstorming is done in sessions.One of the most important things to do before a session is to define the problem. The problem must be clear, not too big, and captured in a definite question such as "What service for mobile phones is not available now, but needed?
After that a background memo is created.The background memo is the invitation and informational letter for the participants, containing the session name, problem, time, date, and place. The problem is described in the form of a question, and some example ideas are given.
The chairman of the session composes the brainstorming panel, consisting of the participants and an idea collector. Ten or fewer group members are generally more productive than larger groups. Then the process of idea generation is carried out.
There are four basic rules in brainstorming, intended to reduce the social inhibitions that occur in groups and therefore stimulate the generation of new ideas.These are 1)focus on quantity,2)no criticism,3)unusual ideas are welcome, and 4)combine and improve ideas.