Brainstorming - Creating bigger & better ideas III

Unstructured
The process is the same as in the structured method except that ideas are given by everyone at any time. There is no need to "pass" since ideas are not solicited in rotation.

Variations
There many ways to stimulate creative team thinking. The common themem among all of them is the stimulation of creativity by taking advantage of the combined brain power of a team. Here are three examples:

• Visual brainstorming. Individuals (or the team) produce a picture of how they see a situation or problem.
• Analogies/free-word association. Unusual connections are made by comparing the problem to seemingly unrelated objects, creatures, or words. For example: "if the problem was an animal, what kind would it be?"
• 6-3-5 method. This powerful, silent method is proposed by Helmut Schlicksupp in his book Creativity Workshop. It is done as follows:
• Based on a single brainstorming issue, each person on the team (usually 6 people) has 5 minutes to write down 3 ideas on a sheet of paper.
• Each person then passes his or her sheet of paper to the next person, who has 5 more minutes to add 3 more ideas that build on the first 3 ideas.
• This rotation is repeated as many times as there are team members, e.g., 6 team members = 6 rotations, 6 sheets of paper, 18 ideas per sheet.

This interesting process forces team members to consciously build on each other's perspectives and input.