“None of us is as smart as all of us” is the Japanese proverb that opened a recent NY Times article citing the SIT method. The article talks about some of the downsides of the traditional brainstorming technique, within the wider recognition of the positive aspects of the meeting of minds, collective creativity, and the fact that innovation is a team sport.
In the article, Drew Boyd (Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson, one of SIT’s close friend and colleague), delineates some of the drawbacks of traditional brainstorming as it many times generates low quality ideas. Drew offers SIT’s method - a systematic method that combines creativity with a structured and predictable process as a more effective alternative for getting results.
Brainstorming according to Drew: “is the most overused and underperforming tool in business today… Among the problems are these: Throwing in an idea for public consideration generates fear of failure, and workers looking to advance their own interests often keep their best ideas to themselves until a more opportune time.”
One of the biggest challenges of brainstorming is filtering quality from quantity. At the end of a brainstorming session you are often left overwhelmed with too much information to sort from. Some of which are not relevant, others are too raw, and some are just not implementable.
My own experience as a facilitator in SIT taught me that our process is focused on generating qualitative data. At the end of an SIT process you are left with a much shorter, manageable, and easy to implement idea list. This is being done by incorporating two filters in the thinking process: the “should we do it” - market filter and the “can we do it” - feasibility filter. The filters force you to ask (and answer) for each pre-idea considered, what are the benefits of the idea (making sure it has a market) and check initial direction for implementation (making sure it can be done). Pre-ideas that fail any one of the filters are not furthered considered and do not mature to become ideas.
So how beneficial or implementable do you think the ideas in the Budget Brainstorming commercials?
To read the entire article that was published on the New York Times simply click here:
Great point, and great article,
I’ve got a question: As most organizations are still sticking to brainstoming, we should slowly lead them to embrace ‘SITstorming’. Apart from increasing their awareness, how should we design a session so that people would add value ‘almost anonymously’ without witholding their worst or best virtual products? And how should we nurture an energetic meeting climate, knowing that innovation is not always fun, but at the same time folks are used to have fun in **stoming sessions?
Dear Fabian,
Answering your first question - on how to do it almost anonymosly - we call it in S.I.T “Opportunistic Innovation”.
As you mentioned, most organizations still use brainstorming as their main method, and so are not neccesarily familiar with the possibility of “brain SITorming” as you call it.
So what can readers of this blog do, when they happen to sit in a regular brainstorming session, that is stuck, and is going no where, and are certain that using an SIT tool here, ‘annonymously’ can help ‘unstuck’ the session?
They can use “Opportunistic Innovation”. What is it?
Basicaly this means doing SIT undercover, or as a client who is also a close friend of us, an SIT coach in Bayer, calls it: “Stealth S.I.T.”
How is done?
I will give you some possibilities:
* Doing it during a meeting “In your mind” 1: Use Subtraction to raise questions that will help others overcome other participants’ fixedness and blocks. Think of ways to lead the conversation to what amounts to applying the tool, without actually using the SIT language. For example: “What if we considered not having an XYZ in this ZZ?”. Generate Virtual Products in your mind and then ask for benefits and challenges.
* Doing it during a meeting “In your mind” 2: Lead the conversation according to the FFF chart. E.g. “Wait, lets think first what could be the value of this.”, and then “Now that we realize what it can do for us, let’s see if we can implement it.”
* And now, if you started from an “in your mind” approach, and if your idea was received with enthusiasm, use the opportunity to admit that you have a method, and volunteer to present it: “Give me 5 minutes to introduce you to an interesting concept that I think we can use here.” then very briefly teach the tool or principle you want to use and apply it with the team;
- Dont forget to assign roles; make sure you have someone who knows about the subject enough and a scribe to capture ideas as they come; collect ideas and document them.
Even when you are doing Stealth SIT, and it’s going well, make sure you don’t take over the meeting. Much better that they ask you for more later or next time.
And another suggestion: Share your experiences of opportunistic innovation with your fellow “closet innovators”, learn and teach, grumble together when it doesn’t work out, and share the joy when it does.
I totally agree with the concept of the Time’s article. I have been blogging (just did this one the other day: http://zenstorming.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/reasons-brainstorming/ ) and teaching alternatives to brainstorming, not just because research shows it isn’t efficient, but because I’ve seen results that blow away typical brainstorming when implementing a few changes.