BA Techniques: Brainstorming

Written by Malathi Dileepan | May 21, 2020 2:38:45 AM

Purpose: 

Brainstorming is an excellent way to foster creative thinking about a problem. The aim of brainstorming is to produce numerous new ideas, and to derive from them the themes for further analysis.

Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®) 

In the 19th century, a brainstorm was a sudden neurological or mental disturbance. Then in 1940s, the founder and the CEO of Marketing firm BBDO called Alex Osborn,  developed a system for generating new ideas and he called it as brainstorming. He called brainstorming as “think-up” to develop creative ideas for a problem. He wrote a book about brainstorming and he described the method as “use the brain to storm a creative problem”. IDEO, the world’s leading innovation consulting uses the brainstorming method as “design thinking” to foster their corporate culture. It is one of the most widely used method for creation and innovation of new ideas.

It is group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a solution for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas contributed by its group members. People are able to think more freely and they can suggest as many new ideas as possible. The process of brainstorming generates many questions within the group, rather than trying to come up with immediate answers and short term solutions. The different ideas generated within the group are noted down without the criticism and after the brainstorming session the ideas are evaluated one by one. It is a great technique that business professionals can use to generate new and unique ideas for their businesses.

Some of the articles related to Brainstorming techniques are as follows,

The brainstorming template are used to generate many new ideas and collaborate it to get a unique solution for a problem. Brainstorming template will help us to provide a flow and structure of ideas. It will help the organizer and the group members to start the brainstorming session. It also provides the consistency throughout the brainstorming process. The template used in brainstorming are flexible regardless of the problem. 

Some of the tools used in the industry for brainstorming are,

  • IdeaBoardz
  • Google Documents
  • Real time Board
  • us
  • Freeplane
  • Mind Map
  • Popplet
  • The Brain
  • Coggle
  • Mind Meister
  • Wise Mapping
  • Ideament
  • Mind Genius
  • Simple Mind

Some of the books and magazines for brainstorming techniques,