WotD: Brainstorm
Ideas, creativity, and originality are all considered requirements for success today. So how do companies stay ahead of the game and continue developing fantastic ideas? They brainstorm.
Brainstorming occurs when many people throw out different ideas with no strict controls before they choose a few to focus on and develop further.
Brainstorming sessions can be a really energetic and somewhat chaotic experience.
Imagine a situation in which a bunch of people are sitting around a table or even just informally scattered around a living room.
Each one is trying to come up with unique ideas based on a common theme.
This type of meeting is not the time to bite your tongue.
You should try to say anything that comes to mind.
All ideas, even the bad ones, help to get the creative juices flowing, and one bad suggestion could lead to three good ones.
On the other hand, what seems like a stupid suggestion at first, could turn out to be the one that is chosen for further development.
Having a theme and using it as a general guideline is essential.
To brainstorm effectively, you can’t only say whatever comes into your head – it has to be related to whatever you are looking for.
Generally, one or two people are tasked with writing down all the suggestions on a whiteboard.
After most of the group agrees they’ve come up with enough quality ideas, they begin to discard ideas that are not helpful until they have a handful of ones that may be successful.
Then the process repeats itself again and again until a final idea or two are chosen to be developed.
Brainstorming is not exclusive to groups.
I brainstorm by myself often by typing things into Google or Yahoo to see what pops up.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 62.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.