MMP2: Effective Brainstorming

Kat Hollowell: Welcome to 'Effective Brainstorming'. So in this session we're going to talk a little bit about brainstorming and I'm going to introduce a technique called mind mapping, and you'll actually be creating your own mind maps in this session.

So today, when you leave the session, you should have some more ideas on how to make your brainstorming more effective and also be able to create a mind map individually and as a group.

So just by a show of hands, how many of you have brainstormed in the past three months? Oh, good. A fair amount. And brainstormers, how many of you felt that your brainstorming sessions were effective? OK. That's good. So hopefully you'll take some ideas back to the office.

So brainstorming combines a relaxed, informal approach to problem-solving with lateral thinking. It asks that people come up with ideas and thoughts that could possibly seem a little bit crazy at first, but then the idea here is that you want to take some of the ideas and you can craft it into some original creative solutions to the problem you're trying to solve, and then spark more ideas.

And this approach gets people unstuck and you kind of jolt them out of their normal ways of thinking.

And it's important that during a brainstorming session, there shouldn't be any criticism of ideas. You're trying to open up possibilities and break down the wrong assumptions that there is limits to a problem that can't be solved.

So brainstorming is a great tool in any situation to bring out ideas and stimulate the creative thought processes. And some of the benefits of brainstorming may include encouragement of creativity and expanding of thinking to see different perspectives of problem-solving and idea development.

The great thing about brainstorming is that everyone is included equally and every idea is a worthy one. And brainstorming can help ideas to grow quickly in that it can dramatically increase productivity and it can help develop your lateral thinking.

So there are several fundamental requirements for a successful or effective brainstorming session. Careful and thorough preparation is important for a successful, creative brainstorming session. You want to recognize and be able to set goals and you want to be specific with your problems and your goals.

And having a strong facilitator during your brainstorming session is essential for good results. You want them to maintain control of the session so your objectives are met. And they should also lead participants and make sure that people don't interrupt one another and never say anything negative about an idea.

It's also important to have a scribe to capture all the ideas from the brainstorming session.

You want to have a diversity of participants and you want to bring people in, people who represent different points of view. And about a group of four to six people are ideal because a larger group can be really cumbersome and hard to manage.

You also want to brief the participants so that everybody knows what you're trying to accomplish, and they must be familiar with the problem you're trying to solve.

And when you're brainstorming, you want to have an environment where it takes the people out of work and make them feel comfortable and relaxed. Make sure you leave the phones and laptops at the door.

And it's important to relax and also listen because you want to listen to the contributions of other people and build on them. But you want to also set the stage that you're not really expecting anything out of them.

And when you leave the brainstorming session, you should have an understanding of what the next step is. So it's important to have a plan of action so that when people leave the brainstorming session, they will know what's expected of them and what their next steps are.

There is a lot of different types of effective brainstorming activities out there. We're going to talk about 'brute think', 'random picture', and of course my favorite is 'mind mapping'.

And what brute think is it's a technique that you pick a random word and then you bring it into the problem that you're having. So for example, you're having a problem that's you want to improve your relationship with the manager, and then you pick the random word 'pencil'. So how do you draw the connections between the two?

So when I think of 'pencil', I might think, 'Oh, an eraser is a component of the pencil.' And to force the connections between the two, I might say, "We both keep bringing up past failures and we need to erase them, so maybe that is a possible solution to improve the relationship with the manager." 

And another technique, it's called random picture. And obviously the first thing you need for this brainstorming technique is to pick a random picture, which I did from Flicker. And you could look at the picture and extract a concept or an idea from it, and use the idea to stimulate a possible solution to your problem.

You could try and see anything in the picture that reminds you of your problem and how that might be solved, like what activity is going on, what situation is being faced, and why are people doing what they are doing and what principles are being used.

And of course, another technique is mind mapping. So the definition of mind mapping is "a mind map harnesses the full range of cortical skills--word, image, number, logic, rhythm, color and spatial awareness--in a single, uniquely powerful technique. In doing so, it gives you the freedom to roam the infinite expanse of your brain."

And that comes from Tony Buzan. He is the originator of mind maps, and it was developed in the late 1960s.

So here is a sample of what a mind map looks like. So mind map is a creative way to solve a problem, and in doing so it energizes you and makes you more creative than ever before. A mind map is a colorful visual picture of an issue at hand. And it's all on a single piece of paper.

So this frees the brain to think, see and understand in ways that can't happen with a multi-page linear document of the same information. It breaks the traditional way of linear thinking and provides a way for individuals and teams to plan, learn, increase productivity, save time, improve recall and create using the logic of association in the full range of cortical skills.

So there are three basic elements to a mind map.

The first thing you have to do is to identify keywords. And why do you want to identify keywords is that the most obvious reason is that you want to save room on your paper. So if you can condense your idea onto just one word, that would be ideal.

So maybe my problem is I want to think about maybe some new topping for a pizza. So I put the keyword 'pizza' in the middle and draw a circle around it. Then I will start creating branches. That's the second element to creating a mind map.

So I'll draw branches stemming from my keyword in the middle. And then I'll write associated keywords that I think of from 'pizza', like, say, 'cheese', 'dough', 'oven', 'topping,' and 'sauce'. Hope you can read my chicken scratch.

And then from there, I will draw sub-branches. For example, from 'cheese' I thought of 'goat', 'stinky' and 'socks'. You kind of get the idea. So you can keep going on.

You can also draw simple icons to go with your mind map. It will help you be more creative. But if you're more comfortable with just using words, then that is also fine.

So at this point, I think Eric's going to give you a mind map exercise.

Eric Smith: OK. So what we want to do next is take 10 minutes of time and just do a quick mind map exercise. Now what we're going to do is--this is just going to be an individual exercise. You're going to do this solo amongst yourselves. We just want to give you 10 minutes to practice this.

So, just going over the steps really quickly, we want you to identify a keyword, then start branching off with the next levels, and then going on from there.

Now, I think the idea here is that we want this to be meaningful for you, so feel free to pick some personal--maybe a project at work that you can think of a keyword that you'd like to start brainstorming off of. Maybe something's going on in your life that you want to use.

We're not going to have you discuss these with your neighbor or with us. We're not going to have you come up here and show them to everybody. Certainly not. This is just personal for you. So feel free to do whatever you'd like. But we want you to get a little bit of mind mapping exercise.

We do have some paper and pens if you don't have your own paper and pens. This gentleman right here in the middle of the room has those for you, so just get his attention if you need.

OK, so we're just going to give you about 10 minutes. Choose a keyword.

And like Kat was talking about, this is supposed to open the expanses of your brain. So feel free to get creative. Feel free to get a little crazy with the concepts. It does not have to make sense. It's just important that you're starting to travel down those places that your brain wants to go when thinking about these concepts.

If you can't think of anything, nothing's coming to mind right now that you'd like to brainstorm, I have an idea for you. And if you do this idea, please tell me, because it's actually a personal project of mine and I'd love to get your creative ideas.

We are at my office. We're working on a project right now where we're creating a marketing campaign for a fund raising. And we're raising funds for a museum that's going to be created in the Evantson community of Cincinnati, and it's for the old King Records studio that used to exist here in Cincinnati from about 1949 to, I think, 1971, right around there.

We had a lot of really good key musicians. It was a very important music center here in Cincinnati. The most famous recording artist at King Records that you might have heard of would be James Brown. He did a lot of his earlier stuff here. So we're creating fund raising for a museum that will be in Evanston.

So if I was going to approach this and try to get some really creative ideas, I might start with a word like 'music' or 'rock and roll' or maybe even 'museum'. And then I would just branch off from there and see where my mind went in a mind mapping technique.

So I also found that when I'm really going fast with this, I don't want to stop and draw a little piece of cheese or something else. I want to go on with the next idea. We had that feedback from our group as well.

And that's cool. I mean, do whatever is going to be useful for you, maybe in something that's not necessarily a brainstorming exercise but more of ordering thoughts. You have thoughts that you just want to get out there and you have more time to process those thoughts. Maybe drawing some small icons will help you in some way, prompt more thoughts and get those thoughts fleshed out. 'Do whatever works for you' is obviously the thing here.

Did anybody have any really strange concepts that came out from this? Some places that your brain went that you didn't think it would? You don't have to tell me what they are. I'm just curious if that happened at all.

Nods. Shakes. Nope. No one did. We didn't get weird today, huh? OK, that's fine. Maybe sometime you will. I think after that 10/10/10 party last night, we would have went pretty weird.

OK. So, the final part of our presentation, we're going to talk about a technique that you can use with groups of people, this mind mapping technique that you can use with groups.

I'm going to tell you the steps to use with a group for mind mapping. I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of the advantages of using this technique, and then we're going to close up with some tip and tricks on this technique.

OK. Pushing the slide. Again?

Kat Hollowell: What do you do from here?

Eric Smith: From here with the mind map?

Kat Hollowell: Yeah.

Eric Smith: So, essentially, just like all brainstorming exercises, now you've had a dump of creativity onto a paper. Now you take those ideas and you can assess where actual actionable items can come out of.

The whole point here is that a lot of times, when you start with "I need to do something," "I need to do a task for this project," you're kind of already starting off by eliminating a vast expanse of brain power that could be coming up with new things. So just like a lot of brainstorming exercises, it's just intended to get you thinking.

So I would say, "What do you want to do after this? How do you want to use that information? Is it helpful for you?"

So anybody have a better answer than that?

[Laughter]

Eric Smith: I would totally love to hear it. So his answer was you take those ideas that came out of that mind map and you start to outline those. You break those down into more of a traditional hierarchy outline of thoughts and ideas. That helps other people who haven't seen mind maps relate to those ideas better. Thank you for that.

OK. Steps for a group exercise involving mind mapping. The first thing that you're going to want to do, get together your project team, your creative group, whatever the case may be, and get into a room, and solo mind map. You're going to create your own individual mind map like you just did a few minutes ago. Choose a keyword so that everyone is on the same page with the keyword that you start with.

OK. So then you go through--you do just what you did where you're getting those crazy ideas, you're allowing your brain to kind of move through those various thoughts that are occurring to you. After about, say, 10 minutes like we did, stop. Come back together as a group.

Step 2 is you're going to choose your facilitator or scribe. See that up there? Oh, no. Step 2 up there. Choose your facilitator and scribe who will come up and actually capture your group mind map. It's going to be a big old mind mapping and you're going to want lots of sheets of paper on the wall to do this.

Then as a group, you're going to decide on your basic categories. The literature calls this 'the basic ordering ideas', but all it is are those initial branches that come off of the keyword. So in the example of 'pizza', you had 'cheese', 'dough', 'sauce', etcetera. This helps everyone sort of stay on the same page and kind of gives a bit of order to the ideas that are going to be coming in from the group.

OK, so you've got your solo mind maps capturing your own individual ideas. You've got your basic ordering ideas figured out. And you've got your person who's going to be writing it on the board. Then you just go to town. And this literally is just saying ideas to the scribe and the scribe capturing them.

We did this as a group and--oh, I was going to be talk about this in the tips and tricks, but I'll say it now. We did this as a group with Kat and some of our coworkers, and it went really well.

The only thing we didn't do is we didn't choose a single keyword for everyone to focus on. And that had the result of, it was very difficult to start this process because everyone was coming at it from a different angle. Still, it's pretty important that you do kind of set that initial keyword to get started.

OK, so what are some advantages of doing this this way? Well, one of the advantages is that all of the... Since you're doing this in a mind map form, there is no hierarchy of ideas. There's not one idea that is better than another. There is not contributor that's better than another, because the radial format of the mind map, there is no hierarchy. Everything is equal.

Another advantage of doing this group mind mapping technique is that you capture all the ideas from the group. Maybe you've seen the humorous poster, the--what is it? The de-motivational posters. There's one, I think it's got a lot of hands like in a huddle, they're all clutched. And the caption says, "Meetings," and then underneath it says, "None of us are as stupid as all of us," or "None of us are as dumb as all of us." That's the idea of group think, right?

So we all come up with these ideas, and they're in our head and they're really working out. Then we get into this group and those ideas start watering down because they are being blended with other things.

This technique actually allows you to capture those initial ideas. Maybe later they'll change and evolve into new things, but right now you're just getting everyone's ideas.

OK, so some tips and tricks. I already gave one away.

I do want to focus on the second-to-the-last one as well. When you're doing this, obviously, some ideas are just going to fall outside of those initial basic ordering ideas. That's OK. Definitely capture them, maybe in a miscellaneous or a parking lot. But be sure to have it on the group mind map. Don't just put it on another flip chart paper somewhere that says, 'parking lot'.

The reason is you want to be able to draw those relationships if they pop up with miscellaneous concepts, OK? So you're going to want to have those on your group mind map.

Those are the tips and tricks section, and that pretty much ends part of our presentation where we talk at you. Now what we want to do is just open it up to the floor.

One thing I've noticed about this HighEdWeb thing so far in the few sessions I've been in is I've learned a lot more from the people around me sharing ideas and sharing their experiences. So we want to give you a chance to actually talk to us a little bit.

And the question basically is, do you have any experiences brainstorming that went particularly well? Any methods or techniques that you used that you thought went well?

Or, conversely, do you have any that absolutely stunk that you wouldn't recommend people try at all? And we'll let you say mind mapping if that's one of them. That's fine.

[Laughter]

Eric Smith: I just want to open that up to the group. Does anyone have any experiences they'd like to share with everyone?

Yeah, right back here in--I'm sorry, we don't have a... Well, actually we do. I'll run around and get this mic to you.

Steve is going to bring the mic around. Thank you, Steve.

Audience 1: Yes. Do you have any particular techniques that a facilitator could use if someone in the group is overpowering and keeps promoting their own agenda?

Eric Smith: So just to repeat the question--I'm not sure if I heard the whole thing. Any tips for a facilitator a group is sort of overpowering, did you say?

Audience 1: One person in the group.

Eric Smith: One person in the group is overpowering.

I'm going to open that up to the group. Kat might have some ideas, too. But I'm going to open that up to the group.

Have you ever been in a facilitated session where there is one individual who seems to control the room? They put their ideas forward and everyone else is kind of playing polite or holding back a little bit or just not able to get a word out edgewise. What are some techniques that you could use to encourage additional participation?

Yeah. Right here in the green shirt.

Audience 2: I would probably recommend doing some negative brainstorming, which would be... I mean, because that person is trying to control the room because he or she has an issue with the foundation of the topic or some politics within the room, personal relationships.

So if you just go through like three minutes of negative brainstorming and say, "This sucks," "That sucks," "This idea will never go through because the president is going to hate it," then you get all the negativity out of the way and then you can just go on to the positive brainstorming.

Eric Smith: So that's really interesting. I've never heard that concept before. Negative brainstorming where as a group you kind of just get it out there. "I hate this idea."

How does that work? I can see a lot of feelings getting hurt the way I'm picturing it. I guess you've got to set some ground rules that you're just having fun or something. How does that work in a ...?

Audience 2: Yeah. I mean, respect--

Eric Smith: Right.

Audience 2: --is always a necessary component in brainstorming. And I think that has to be a common understanding. It's not a session to hurt each other, but it's--I mean, you are doing it with the common understanding that you're getting to constructive discussion about something.

Eric Smith: Yeah, I think that would be a ton of fun. And I could see it being really good with a group that you're already extremely comfortable with and you have those good relations with, and then maybe one person is just getting negativity out a little too often.

Cool. Thank you very much for that. Did anyone else--yeah, there's--

Audience 3: I think the simplest thing is just don't bite the next time. Send that message pretty clearly that you're looking for people that are constructive in your brainstorming sessions, and if someone is showing that attitude, try your best one-to-one to get rid of it. But then, just exclude them.

Eric Smith: Thanks a lot for that. Yeah. Set up your group to succeed initially.

Speaker: Two other thoughts on that. One, oftentimes when we want to propose something, if we exclude someone from the process, that's their primary motivation from trying to vote it down later. And so there is a risk associated with that.

To go back to the earlier question, one suggestion I would have would be as a moderator, assuming it's not the moderator who is trying to control a discussion, is to bring out the people who are silent. "We've heard a lot from you, can we ask"--"I noticed that someone else over here looks like she or he has something to say. What do you think about this?" And as you're moderator, it's kind of your responsibility to draw out the people who aren't as actively participating.

Eric Smith: Thanks, Steve.

Audience 3: Yeah. I was going to follow up on exactly what you were saying is, in the sense of as far as a facilitator needs to, again, moderate the discussion, and one way of doing that is, again, the people that are silent you need to go do a round-robin method and say, "Well, I'm hearing from you Ted a lot, but I need to hear from you Brian," or "you Gale," or whomever it is. "What are your thoughts?"

You're not trying to silence a person, but what you're trying to do is it kind of speaks to diversity in a way. You're trying to get--kind of going back to what you said at the beginning of the presentation is that you're looking for diverse mind-thinking here. You want a contextual diversity as opposed to just you have these people all in a room.

Eric Smith: Yeah, no, that's restating the purpose that why we're all here is because we all have these different points of view and we're going to come up with different things. Also, something you mentioned earlier about not chastising the person but encouraging other people to speak.

Right. Thank you for that. Yeah?

Audience 4: A comment and a question. One thought I had was that we had a brainstorming session and our VP was there. And it could be a little intimidating, can kind of damp down the free flow of ideas.

So on the one hand, it's a good thought that, well, include people who might shoot it down later, which could be the VP, but also maybe talk to him or her beforehand and say, "Hey, we'd like to do this. Do you think you could sit this out just so people don't feel inhibited?" That's a comment.

My question is, do you think it's better to give people a heads-up about the idea before the session and say, "Think about it," or do you believe they should just come completely fresh and their mind starts working right when you get them in the first session?

Eric Smith: Right. That actually plays into our pilot group that we did with our coworkers. So I have a thought about that.

But does anyone else have a strong feeling about that? Is it better to sort of prime the pump a little bit before you have your brainstorming session, or just come in and just see what happens during that session? What do you guys think?

Audience 3: As far as agendas go, instead of possibly coming into a mind mapping session or group session, have a starter list of keywords. "Here are some keywords that I think we should work on."

And then if someone wants to add to that list, that's great, but then the first part of the meeting should be agreeing on which one you're going to tackle.

Eric Smith: I think that's great. I think that when we did our pilot group with our coworkers, that technique would have helped us a lot stay on the same page, and when we were trying to put together our group map, we would have been ready to go there.

Did we fully answer that question? I think it was a great question. I just want to make sure no one else had any thoughts about that priming the pump versus clean slate.

OK. Next question? Or a comment?

Audience 5: Hi. I was just wondering if you had any experience with using different mind mapping software like MindMeister, and if computer-based mind mapping is better or not better than just paper-based?

Eric Smith: Right. So there are software. There's online software. There's also I think a couple of open-sourced projects that can be downloaded to your machine that you can use for this mind mapping practice.

Did we have any thoughts about that?

Kat Hollowell: I'd say it depends. Yeah. I would say that it depends of what you're most comfortable with, and I think the end results are the same.

Eric Smith: I noticed that one thing about mind mapping is that it is so simple in concept. The nice thing is you can do it with paper and pen. But the software often adds layers of complexity on it, and maybe slows you down just a little bit with dragging and dropping and that sort of thing.

Do you have experience with it or thoughts on that yourself?

Audience 5: Well, I'm just starting to getting into using MindMeister for some group projects.

Eric Smith: OK.

Audience 5: And I tried this exercise today using MindMeister.

Eric Smith: Oh, did you? OK.

Audience 5: And I was looking around at other people's papers and they had a lot. And I only have a few different notes or whatever. And I felt like I was a bit limited by the software because I was trying to figure out how to use it.

Eric Smith: I think that's a great observation. Thank you for sharing that.

And if I could, one other thought about that is that that notion--oh, I've seen this thing, especially in the literature, where people sort of present their beautiful mind maps with color and pictures and groupings and stuff, as if the mind map itself was the end that they were going for.

And I think that kind of misses the point, personally. I don't think you make pretty mind maps. I think you make something that allows you to capture those ideas and then springboard off of. But if you're making art, well, I guess that's OK. But make sure you're getting creative, too. And I'm wondering if maybe that software kind of gets into that where it's just making it too pretty and focusing too much on the presentation.

All right, sorry. Yes.

Audience 5: I'll agree that it's a lot more free doing it free hand. But at the same time, even if it is something messy, if it's something that you're, like, "You've got some really good ideas on here. It's something that should be shared."

I mean, for example, I took you up on doing the music thing. I'm just going to rip out the piece of paper and give it to you but it would be nice if--

Eric Smith: Awesome.

Audience 5: --I could... If it were like inter-office I could email it just really easily, something like that, so that even if it is messy it can be shared neatly. Ideally, maybe that will trigger somebody else's brainstorming or something else. I feel like it could go both ways. Easier to do on paper, but advantages of being able to share it easily.

Eric Smith: Yeah. I mean, there are maybe benefits then to actually sharing those mind maps. It really depends. And I would want to see groups using that a little bit more to understand how they're doing it. A lot of times my mind map, if I do a mind map, can't be understood by anyone else.

Yes.

Audience 6: Just a comment. Take a photo of your mind map and email it.

Eric Smith: Right.

Audience 5: Actually, I was going to kind of second what he was saying. When I do mine, my kind of sessions for me, I use--I think it's FreeMindMap or whatever, FreeMind, whatever it's called. In that sense, not only am I recording what I'm doing and then later the tool actually will help me.

I mentioned earlier about putting it into an outline. It will actually rotate it. It will go from what I call 'horizontal thinking' to a 'vertical thinking' kind of format. It will put it in that outline format. And then you can start to do ranking and categorization, that sort of thing.

The other thing that the lady was saying, too, is that pictures are sometimes worth a thousand words. And I've done it that way, too. It's a great way to record group mind mapping sessions.

Eric Smith: Yeah. Great. Thank you for that. And did you say FreeMind? Was that--

Audience 5: I believe, yeah.

Eric Smith: OK. We're going to put together a couple of lists that are a list of some of these resources that will be available in the presentation. We'll include some of these links that we're talking about in this session today in case you want to check them out yourself.

Yes.

Audience 7: So I'm wondering if there are topics or ideas or projects that are not very well-suited for this kind of an exercise, if there are things that are too big or too broad or--do you need to narrow it down before you start doing this?

Eric Smith: Yeah. Thank you for the question.

I have a response to that and I do want to open up to the floor, but I noticed in our group where we tried this, the more basic and more evocative the word, the easier it was to springboard new creative ideas off of.

For example, we started with 'pizza', and it went really quickly. People were like idea, idea, idea. It was great.  But then we tried--what was it, like fund raising for museum' or something crazy, like real specific, and it didn't get slow but it wasn't as creative. People were already going into actionable items, 'tasks that I can do when I get back to my desk,' and things like that.

So I found the more simple, basic but evocative words to work better, at least in this example. But I'd love to hear if there was a different experience or a similar one from the group.

Right over here. Thanks, Steve.

Speaker: I'm getting my exercise today.

Eric Smith: Yes you certainly are. Thank you.

Kat Hollowell: I'm just going to piggyback on what you said. We did do 'pizza', and then we talked about fund raising for the museum, we talked about King Records, but we broke it down to a very simple word. For me, I chose 'music'.

Eric Smith: Yeah.

Kat Hollowell: And it went all the way to 'costume parties', 'keyboards'. But in the back of my mind, although I was creative, I kind of kept the goal in mind. So I think you can take any project as long as you can break it down to something very simple and get you started.

Eric Smith: That was helpful, I think, to get us going.

Yeah, we've got this gentleman right here.

Audience 8: Yeah. I just want to do a--it's just a general comment. One of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard about brainstorming is 'every idea is innocent until proven guilty.'

Not to say anything about negative brainstorming--I've never heard of that term before--but when you start shooting ideas down right away, that really sucks the energy out of a brainstorming session probably more than having your vice-president sit in on the session.

A question earlier on was, where does it go from here? You could take it from here and just go in a million different ways, but if you start shooting ideas down right away, it's going nowhere. It's my two cents worth.

Eric Smith: Could you say the phrase one more time?

Audience 8: Every idea is innocent until proven guilty.

Eric Smith: Ah. Right. Good. Every idea is innocent until proven guilty. Cool.

Speaker: I had a question. As a professional, sometimes it seems like brainstorming can evoke, run its way to the impossible or something that you might have a larger context you need to pay attention to in terms of institutional policy or something.

Can you talk about briefly, in about the three minutes or so we have left--or less--how you can kind of manage that transition from the big-picture ideas of what we think we can do to the point where you're actually evaluating what's possible and technical in other ways?

Eric Smith: Right. I think when you set up the initial brainstorming session, you're looking at a very specific outcome, purpose. And you're kind of setting some ground rules, too. You're saying, "This is just about generating ideas. We're going to be creative, we're going to get the expanse of our brain covered on this sheet of paper," or however you're doing the brainstorming.

So, for starters, I believe that it's important to set a separate session to come back and maybe use some of those ideas, or at least have a big old break in between these two sessions, because you're changing the purpose now. You're going from creative idea-generation, "I want everything out there," to a more targeted, specific, "OK, now let's put these ideas in the context of the project or the task that we have.

I also like this gentleman's idea--and I'll repeat it--where you actually take those ideas then in this next session and you start to categorize them based on a more of a hierarchy, with more a sense of order, which hopefully will become apparent when you get to this part. I mean, you'll have ideas about how to organize these things. That's going to just happen. It's the way our brains work, I think.

But does anyone else have another part of that answer that they'd like to share?

Speaker: Really quick because we are almost out of time.

Eric Smith: Yeah.

I think it's a great question. It's similar to what you asked earlier about, what do you do next? You've got your creative stuff--what do you do next? And hopefully that gets you started. But maybe that's next year's topic.