Artificial Incubation

While solving problems individually or in group during BrainStorm we may stimulate generation of fresh ideas by introducing an ArtificialIncubation technique.

A good collection of these tricks and games is given in Ava. S. Butler?s TeamThink.

Describe your tricks for ArtificialIncubation here. ---MartineDevos

Try FuturePerfectThinking. I've found it to be a good technique for getting people unstuck. --DaveSmith

Two approaches used on our last project:

AgreementWithExceptions?. Sue and Tom have two differing ideas. Instead of debating which idea is better, they reword each of their ideas into two parts - one part being the shared "agreement" with the other idea, the other part being the "difference" from the other idea. They thus come to a fast, painless, educational agreement (albeit with exceptions) and walk away with a sense of accomplishment and the feeling that each of their ideas has been heard and understood. Similar to AgreeToDisagree, with a bit more feeling of cooperation.

ProblemSolutionStepsSolution?. Pam, Tim, Ann, and Rob convene a design session to come up with a name for their new product. They state the problem and define the requirements. But instead of jumping right in and throwing out candidate names, they first outline the steps they are going to follow to arrive at a solution, and then follow those steps. This allows several idea-generating passes at the problem to be pre-planned, each from a different viewpoint. It also reduces the chances of a debate starting as soon as one or two candidate solutions are chosen.

Often, this technique will bring more and more varied ideas up for consideration than will an ad hoc, random discussion, increasing the probable quality of the final solution. Sometimes, however, the formality of this approach will stifle creativity rather than enhance it, so it must be used with judgement and caution.