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Priming the pump
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Knowing that ideas spark new ideas, the trend of allowing students to indulge in lateral thinking is catching on, says G.B.S.N.P. Varma
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Photo: Mohammed Yousuf
No brainstorming session this Brilliant ideas come instantly and spontaneously
Major software companies employ ethnographers to find out how common people interact with technology, computers and software. As major corporations go surfing changes in technology, innovation has become a key for survival, not a luxury. Innovate or
be an extinct species. Innovative product or service ideas can come from any source, which may not be seemingly related. With the rapidly changing and expanding field of their activity, companies are looking for ‘ideas people’ to manage change, if not usher it in.
Alex Osborn, co-founder of an advertising agency, researched why certain creative teams in companies are immensely productive and why some others simply go up in smoke. He also went into the contributive factors of creativity and invented a simple method called ‘brainstorming.’ It’s a way of coming up with as many alternatives as possible, and keep the neural synapses firing for certain amount of time.
Generating ideas
Ramana K., a lecturer teaching marketing approaches to M.B.A. students, facilitates brainstorming sessions among his students. “I give them an imagined product or service," he says, “and ask them to come up with as many ideas as possible for about 20 minutes to half an hour.”
He makes sure there is “absolutely no criticism while this is on.” Sometimes, this group brainstorms “what products and services are more useful and so marketable to people at large.” While generating ideas, as Osborn says, we cannot simultaneously be creative and critical. “Damn the internal critic,” screams Akil D., a first year M.B. A. student. “It kills off new ideas in the bud.” Chipping in with the insights from this process, Ramana says: “Get a group, and pitch them a problem to solve, note down whatever ideas, no matter however outlandish and outrageous, on a piece of paper or board.”
These sessions produce varieties of ideas, some of which are downright crazy and wacky, but there is no such as a bad idea. “Here, our goal is quantity of ideas, not quality,” notes Ramana.
Roger Van Oech in his book A Whack on the Side of the Head talks about problem solving as having “two main phases…. an imaginative phase and a practical one. In the imaginative phase, you generate and play with ideas. In the practical phase, you evaluate and execute them.”
“I always feared talking about my ideas to friends,” says Umesh, a budding engineer, adding, “They may make fun of me or ridicule me.” He, along with like-minded friends, started discussing various ideas that pop up in their heads, “for we cannot think in a vacuum.” They feel “this bouncing ideas off each other and noting them for a review liberated our spirits.” Ideas sparked other ideas. “Without any criticisms allowed in this process, we have free flow of thought and ideas,” says Vasanth S., a second year engineering student. “We make use of our experiences in life to create ideas,” chips in Deepak. Fooling around with ideas has its own kick. “We laugh out loud, mind you not criticize, when certain things come up,” adds the ‘liberated’ Akhil, “we feed off each other’s ideas and generate more.”
The brainstorming process has opened up and deepened their friendship. “We pretty well know what’s going on with each other,” says Deepak. “We are no longer aparichitulu (strangers).”
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
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Kochi
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Visakhapatnam
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