Electronic brainstorming
Electronic brainstorming technology minimizes or eliminates many of the problems with conventional ways of meeting.
Electronic brainstorming is a powerful meeting technology that was originally developed, in large part, by the University of Arizona and IBM. It plays a central role in my strategy workshops and innovation labs. As a brainstorming facilitator and virtual meeting facilitator, I also use it to facilitate brainstorming, feedback, and other types of meetings, both online and face-to-face.
You might imagine electronic brainstorming technology as an electronic whiteboard onto which the group members can type their ideas simultaneously and, if so desired, anonymously. The ideas are organized into categories that are created on-the-fly, and various voting tools can be used to select or rank order the ideas. In online meetings, the technology also enables video conferencing and screen sharing.
Watch the video to learn more.
Speed: Writing ideas one at a time on a flipchart is slow. Simultaneous entry enables the group to quickly capture dozens of ideas, comment on the ideas, and drag and drop them into categories created on the fly.
Dysfunctional Behaviors: Simultaneous entry prevents the vocal few from dominating the conversation. Anonymous entry gets people to contribute ideas they might not otherwise contribute because they fear a negative reaction from others (evaluation apprehension).
Rehearsal: In a conventional meeting, people often miss what others are saying because they are busy rehearsing what they will say when it’s their turn to speak. Talking about the ideas after they are entered minimizes this problem.
Production Blocking: People sometimes forget what they were going to say while waiting their turn to speak, or they suppress their idea because they wrongly believe it is less relevant or original than the others that have been voiced. Simultaneous entry eliminates the problem of blocked idea production.
Cognitive Interference: Cognitive interference occurs when the ideas produced by others interfere with an individual’s own idea-generation activities. Simultaneous entry eliminates this problem. A type of interference known as anchoring causes people to focus on the first idea they hear or see, which limits the diversity of the ideas generated by the group. The nominal group method, which can be implemented on the technology, counters the anchoring effect.
Group Judgment: Sophisticated voting tools are used to select or rank order the ideas according to one or more criteria (e.g., importance and feasibility). The tools enable a group to do a much better job of capturing group judgments than a simple show of hands.
Meeting Notes: It may take a week or more to transcribe and distribute the meeting notes written on a flipchart. With electronic brainstorming, the meeting notes can be printed or emailed immediately after the meeting.
One of the principal benefits of electronic brainstorming technology is that it minimizes or eliminates many of the problems with conventional meetings. Cognitive scientists refer to these problems as process losses.
Electronic brainstorming technology works for small meetings, large meetings, and online meetings. In face-to-face meetings, I supply the computers. In small, boardroom-size meetings, each person uses one of the computers. In large, ballroom-size meetings, a computer is placed at each roundtable, and one person scribes for the others at the table.
Boardroom-size Meetings
Ballroom-size Meetings
Online Meetings