Preparation

• Read the background and instructions

• Material:

  Paper / documents to work on together like „notion“

  Pencil

Check-In (5 minutes)

Overview:Brainstorming in the team, trying two different excercises for divergent thinking and trying brainwriting

Goal: Getting to know the pitfalls of brainstorming and ways to improve it

Step 1 (5 minutes)

The Brainstorming excercise is a little Warm Up.

Step 2 (10 minutes)

Example

1. Social loafing: you have the feeling that your contribution to the result is not important, maybe because you think others have better ideas, so you try less to come up with new ideas yourself
2. Production blocking: you had a good idea but the person that speaks before you says something similar, so you don’t share your idea even thouh you think your version is more helpful
3. Evaluation pressure: you don’t want to say some of your ideas because you fear that your colleagues might laugh about them, you feel more self-concious and inhibited
4. Similar categories: you keep brainstorming in a similar direction because that category is something everybody already agreed, is good, so you keep searching for ideas there instead of thinking about something completely new

Step 3 (5 minutes)

Making breaks while brainstorming has two benefits: the cognitive one is, that a break can eleminate functional fixedness on a certain category or being stuck. To have this positive effect of a break, participants have to do a unrelated activity during their break. The other benefit is motivational, a break simply remotivates the participants (Coskun, 2005).

Divergent thinking is helpful for brainstorming, divergent thinkers for example offer more divers ideas or opinions (Engelmann & Gettys, 1985; Nemeth & Nemeth-Brown, 2003) and scan a larger number of categories. You can create this effect during you brainstorming session, if you do a short divergent thinking task

Step 4 (15 minutes)

Everybody should write (on their own) as many alternative uses as they can come up with for this common object. (4 minutes)

Expamples: brick, pencil, towel etc.

Everybody should generate (on their own) as many words as they can from this set of letters and write them down. (4 minutes)

Examples: A D L F A U R, K S E F S I E E N I T

You can always use these tasks in the middle of a brainstorming session, when you feel stuck or just want some fresh ideas.

Step 5 (7 minutes)

An alternative to the classic brainstorming is brainwriting.

Every participant gets a sheet of paper and a pencil in a different colour. Everybody writes their first idea on the paper and give it to the person on the left.

Now everybody read the existing idea on their new paper and try to think of another. If you have no new ideas, just read the ones on your paper and give it to the person on your left.

Ending (5 minutes)