“People are starved for the types of interactions that improvisers take for granted. We get to express ourselves creatively, play together, have our ideas honoured and our failures not only forgiven, but celebrated. It is impossible to miss the transformational effects of improv, even for skeptics. The links to the bottom line have become clearer and clearer. Innovation soars. Teams resolve conflicts and work more productively." Kat Koppett
Alex Osborn developed with Sidney Parnes the Creative Problem Solving Process and set up the Creative Education Foundation at Buffalo. One of the people who attended the training was Min Basadur who worked at P&G. In what could be termed a brainstorming meeting (using tools influenced by the creative problem solving training), P&G developed an effective response to Colgate’s introduction of a green striped Irish Spring. Basadur used “How might we” repeatedly to reframe the problem until they had the right problem to solve. They also assembled a diverse group separately to break through the patent challenges facing them.
Charles Warren from Google talks about the “How Might We?” approach that can lead you through any design challenge and references Basadur:
‘How might we’ enables people to frame problem definitions as challenges. Every challenge or constraint can be framed as a “How might we” question.
I have read a great deal of academic research on group creativity (for someone not at university) in preparation for a paper for Esomar on improvisation and its value for research. A spate of recent blog posts on brainstorming seemed mildly uninformed… (especially the blogs that quote blogs which quote blogs).
Sometimes I laugh when i read headlines like brainstorming doesn’t work… because more often than not the scientific basis for this is a bunch of psychology students herded into a windowless room and asked to think of ideas for solving traffic congestion. After a bit of counting and statistics – voila – people can generate more ideas on their own than in groups. Therefore, brainstorming doesn’t work…. Ok so maybe the presence of windowless rooms does match some of my experience; but the actual academic experiments cited are often locked in a 1953 practice of generating verbal lists of ideas.
I find it even more astonishing when some of this research is conducted in California where potentially Apple, IDEO, Pixar, d-school at Stanford or any of the design thinking movement might have influenced how the brainstorming was conducted. Which makes me wonder what people are referencing when they talk about brainstorming not working. I suspect when people refer to brainstorms not working, they are referring to either outdated practice or bad practice which we have all experienced. I certainly have experienced that moment of thinking I would rather walk over cut glass than be banished again to a room with equally uninspired colleagues with a large white sheet of paper with an instruction to come back in an hour. However, one could argue most organisational groups don’t ‘work’ – meetings, classes, focus groups or brainstorms.
Brainstorming equals Alex Osborn. Journalists, bloggers and academics refer to Alex Osborn and his 4 brainstorming rules. These 4 rules are then held up as how Osborn went about creating ideas. They do not typically go on to discuss his research into the creative problem solving process. Along with Sidney Parnes, Osborn developed the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process (commonly referred to as CPS). The process has different stages including problem finding as well as idea generating. It uses divergent and convergent thinking at each stage. When critics point to the lack of criticism in brainstorming, I then suspect they haven’t read much by Alex Osborn. Separating generating and evaluating ideas is part of the practice – “Judicial judgment is ruled out. Criticism of ideas will be held until the next day.” Osborn advocated diversity in brainstorming sessions, and saw brainstorming as a supplement to individual ideation, not a replacement. Preparation for brainstorming, and how the problem is framed are also critical elements. Funny how core elements of Osborn’s practice are mentioned as deficits…
When doing postgraduate research in Media Studies in London at the Institute of Education, David Buckingham taught me to read the original research. In media research, as in brainstorming research, there are some tenuous conclusions reached from some truly bizarre experiments. Much of the so called scientific evidence is only somewhat useful for organisations. For example, the recently cited Charlan Nemeth in the New Yorker article on brainstorming. Today I looked up some of his research and it suddenly does not look so conclusive. One experiment had participants (psych students) seated at tables in groups five of the same gender. They were told not to speak until the experiment began. Then they were told the topic of how to reduce traffic congestions, and given 20 minutes to come up with as many good solutions as they could to the problem. Nemeth in his conclusion is not stating brainstorming doesn’t work (though he would like to see more debate). This is typical of some of the academic research – who participates is not a diverse group with domain expertise represented, the group do not prepare, and the groups are not moderated by a trained facilitator. (My favourite task in an experiment involves thumb tacks and boxes and candles…) It makes ideation work conducted by research agencies look amazing and world leading. Astonishing – read academic research on brainstorming, then look through
this co-creation piece by Face.
Compare discussion of groupthink to how Tom Kelly describes brainstorming ” They overlook the possibility that brainstorming can be a skill, an art, more like playing the piano than tying your shoes. You’re always learning and can get continuously better. You can become a brainstorming virtuoso … Brainstorming is practically a religion at IDEO, one we practice nearly every day. Though brainstorms themselves are often playful, brainstorming as a tool – as a skill – is taken quite seriously. And in a company without many rules, we have a very firm idea about what constitutes a brainstorm and how it should be organised.” (Tom Kelly, The Art of Innovation). IDEO refers to “get physical”, “get visual” and “the space remembers.”
I have a preference for academics who have researched actual groups and performance versus psychology students completing a one off experiment with no preparation, no domain expertise and no training. Teresa Amabile is a stand out due to her longitudinal diary research of executives. Certainly the research indicates that people probably can generate lists of ideas faster when they work alone. [However, if you are using groups to just generate lists of ideas... then maybe it's time to leave 1953]. Keith Sawyer’s academic research is particularly relevant. He completed his PhD with on group flow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He has written Group Genius, and his 2012 edition of ‘Explaining creativity: the science of human innovation’. The research indicates if the problems are complex, or if they are visual or spatial, then groups usually outperform solo workers. My own experience has been in most organisations that problems are complex. Increasingly, as design thinking impacts innovation practice, they are also spatial. (Sawyer’s blog post on Does Solitude Enhance Creativity? A Critique of Susan Cain’s Attack on Collaboration is instructive especially on the topic of pair programming). Robert Sutton & Andy Hargadon completed an 18-month ethnography in the 1990s on how the innovation consultants at IDEO do creative work. The key learning is that it is not the number of ideas generated measures the efficiency of the concept, but building on ideas and combining is more important to successful ideation. (Bob Sutton’s post on his blog -brainstorming pros and cons is worth a read)
Alex Osborn would have evolved his practice – maybe we need to cite academic research which is up to date with what is practiced – by design thinkers, service designers, and those both trained in, and practicing Creative Problem Solving, Theory U etc. Using Improvisation to Enhance Brainstorming Sessions by Elizabeth Gerbner is an example of the research happening in the design field. Multidisciplinary practice and research is obviously important. Finally, for many organisations, implementing Pixar’s use of plussing or improv could potentially be more affordable and feasible than a new building designed by Steve Jobs. (Read Randy Nelson from Pixar on learning and working in the collaborative age).
I sat beside a guy from the Ministry of Education in Singapore at a presentation in the US. I realised half way through that he was creating the most amazing visual map of the key points that was actually more attractive than what was being shown. When I quizzed him about it later, he turned out not to be an artist or designer, but said he had evolved this ability as a tactic to manage the vast amount of meetings he was forced to attend in his role. This presentation from sxsw 2010 on visual note-taking is the closest I have seen to these maps. It also has some handy sketching hints, and most of us have a range of meetings where we can practice taking notes visually.
Read this article by Mike Rohde which goes into detail into using sketching as a visual tool
Where else are visual skills important for researchers?
- Frameworks used in business presentations which need to be succinct and compelling for stakeholders
- Visually attractive flip charts in workshops to involve and focus participants
- Diagrams used when working alongside other agencies to illustrate and inspire
The presentation below is from Kate Rutter at Adaptive Path, and lists useful how to’s:
What changes for MR?
The use of communities will grow; but media agencies rather than MR agencies will be the core suppliers. More clients will be starting to understand campaign success through social media monitoring. Expect to see a continued shift away from what some clients see as comparatively slow and expensive classic tracking studies – some will move into faster forms of data collection and processing; and savvy suppliers of internet data with days rather than weeks turnaround will find a senior business audience. Mobile will be the flavour of the year as clients look to get closer to behaviour; initially this will have a qualitative flavour but there will be exciting behaviour collections of mobile data in the future. Alongside this expect more discussion of cultural understanding as BRIC markets become increasingly important to marketing headquarters.
What does not change?
Multi-country U&A’s will continue to be commissioned; especially as clients look to understand fast changing environments (whether it is the technology category or emerging markets). Last year it was the low income consumer, this year expect more on the rural consumer, and on the emerging middle class in BRIC markets. Big brands will continue to use focus groups and surveys to understand strategic issues because they are familiar. We will continue to hear about those savvy prosumers, youth and early adopters who are changing categories. Finally, both research agencies and insight teams will continue to discuss the need to be more like business consultants and less like information providers.
Technology is enabling us to triangulate findings more quickly than ever before. The old U&A two step process sometimes led to qualitative assumptions or patterns that shifted with the greater volume of data gathered in a quant survey. Increasingly it is easier to use qualitative to illuminate data with context; stories and answering some of the ‘why” questions. Quant data gathered in community sessions or through netnography gives more detail about who, what and how.
Below is a presentation by Face (who continue to do very interesting work) on Augmented Research.
A week ago I handed in my Blackberry, my Dell and exited the corporate MR world. 11 years is a long time with one business but continued changes of owners and mergers ensured there was always new people, new tools and new opportunities. Alistair Gordon for me captured best the experience of working within a large MR company in his post on catching up with the big boys (and no, it is not typical for researchers to compare working for their company to working in a lolly shop). I worked with a wide range of amazing people over the last decade, as well as the privilege of working with local teams in cities ranging from Manila, to Shanghai to Cairo to Argentina.
Now I am ready to try a different pace, and a different direction. “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” ~Peter Drucker
Browsing a couple of ad agency bloggers, and came across a couple of interesting pieces. This deck uploaded by Jason Oke demonstrates the issues with connections planning:
If agencies are moving towards a new understanding of what people do, and how they use media; and towards identifying people’s real problems. Separately, Adam Ferrier comments in his blog; “We are about to see a rapid shift away from ‘emotional measures’ towards behavioural measures’ as the research industry catches up to where (only the progressive) advertising agencies are going.” His response to a research agency whitepaper on emotion is:
“We now live in a world where there is so much more available to us within the communications framework. Rather than just ‘emotional’ or ‘rational’ advertising – we can:
Make products (e.g. iphone applications) that act as communications.
Put on experiences (e.g events) that act as communications.
Provide useful content (e.g. a traffic or finance reports) that acts as communications.
Create games that act as communications (e.g. The Beatles game to sell more Beatles records).
The focus should be on a behavioural response, not an emotional response. the question therefore could become… “How do I use my advertising to stimulate a behavioural response that builds my brand?”"
I am seeing qualitative research briefs coming through that focus on behaviour. The challenge this year has been business questions needing very good ethnographic work; accompanied with focus group budgets & timelines.
Popularised by Wendy Gordon, the analogy of the bricoleur (or a ‘do-it-yourself ‘ person) was initially created by Claude Levi Strauss when discussing the concept of mythic thought. A 2002 Admap article described the shift from where
‘we use contact with consumers to generate material from which to extract insightful and useful meaning’
to:
‘we use qualitative methods of detection and analysis to extract insightful and useful meaning from all sorts of ‘texts’ relevant to consumer culture’.”
Some of these subtleties risk being lost in the current wave of enthusiasm for online qualitative methodologies. It is also a term more popular in conference papers than in actual research. Finally as Gill Ereaut reminds us:
“First, clients often want, literally, to get closer to consumers via research by direct dialogue or facilitated interactive sessions with customers. They also want proximity to the consumer disseminated throughout the business. So we will see researchers helping clients experience consumers’ lives by proxy: immersion sessions, workshops and video-clip libraries increasingly replacing PowerPoint. Second, there is ‘bricolage’ the idea that complex business challenges need complex research solutions. This means behavioural data and psychological insight alongside socio-cultural analysis; research groups alongside, or replaced by, non-group methods.”
There is a breadth of academic thinkers: Chris Kelty, Clay Shirky, Tom Boellstorf, Mimi Ito, The Daniel Miller Assemblage, Danah Boyd’s dissertation on social media, Lisa Galarneau dissertation on gaming etc.
My pick is that there will be more heated discussion over the terms “digital ethnography”, and “digital anthropology” especially after the release of the TalkTalk Digital Anthropology report
A week ago I handed in my Blackberry, my Dell and exited the corporate MR world. 11 years is a long time with one business but continued changes of owners and mergers ensured there was always new people, new tools and new opportunities. Alistair Gordon for me captured best the experience of working within a large MR company 
