153 What's In A Brainstorm

Brainstorming exercises need to be less stressful. If I’m sitting down in a room that’s about to have a brainstorm session, the main thing on my mind is how embarrassed I’m going to be when somebody rejects my ideas, or worse yet I can’t come up with any at all.

Gaming can help encourage people to blurt out ideas, without a filter or worry of being judged. The game must facilitate a large amount of incoming data and be able to record or keep track of the positive ideas, and let flow past the non-applicable ones. It’s also important that it allows for people to speak when ideas hit them. If somebody is regulated to speaking only when it’s their turn or when they’re called on, it’s likely they will forget an idea. Additionally, the group is missing out on key opportunities, or “adjacent possibles” as Steven Johnson calls them, that arise each time a new idea is grown out of and expanded on from a previous idea.

Although I don’t currently have the solution to this problem, I am actively thinking about it for a future post.

#educational-game