In order to solve various problems in different areas or write a decent research paper a lot of different methods may be used. One of the most effective ones is called “brainstorming”. In this article, the main concept of this method will be explained.
What is brainstorming?
The method of brainstorming was first created in 1941 by Alex Osborne, who was an American advertising agency employee. The method is used to solve problems quickly and is based on stimulating the creative activity of people who take part in some particular project and offer the maximum number of various possible solutions. In other words, brainstorming suggests the optimized way of finding the best options among all the others with the help of collective discussion and engagement. The prerequisites for brainstorming are the creation of favourable conditions for overcoming psychological inertia and fear of expressing ridiculous ideas because of fear of their criticism, the involvement of various specialists in the group, their tendency to creative work.
Main criteria of brainstorming
Of course, in order to get all the benefit from the brainstorming all the members of this process must follow some particular rules:
- people can not criticize the proposed ideas;
- all disputes and discussions are prohibited;
- any ideas, including fantastic ones, are welcome;
- there exist no prohibited ideas to propose;
- other people’s ideas might be combined, improved or developed;
- ideas should be summarized, there is no need for long speeches;
- the main goal is to get as many ideas as possible.
The prerequisites for brainstorming are the creation of favourable conditions for overcoming psychological inertia and fear of expressing ridiculous ideas.
During your research work, the method of brainstorming may come in handy if you are working in a group with other people and you have to generalize all the ideas you have in order to get the best ideas. This method can help you to summarize different assumptions and concentrate on the basis of your research. If you are working alone you can search for the ideas on the Internet and provide some kind of brainstorming by yourself with the help of online resources. Yet if you feel that you can not handle this kind of work yourself, you can always ask for a help in a research paper writing service, where well-qualified people are always ready to help you.
Main steps of brainstorming
In this subparagraph, the main stages of brainstorming will be described and explained.
- Formulation of the problem
This stage is considered to be a preliminary one. It implies a clear formulation of the problem, the selection of participants and the distribution of their roles (for example, who will lead the main discussion, who will sort the ideas etc.). The distribution itself depends on the specifics of the problem and the form in which the assault will take place.
- Generation of ideas
During this phase, the actual process of brainstorming takes place. As it was described above, all the ideas are welcome to be expressed and reconsidered, as it is the main point of the whole process of brainstorming.
- Selection, systematization and evaluation of ideas
This is the final, yet one of the main important stages, which shall never be overlooked; otherwise, the whole brainstorm was pointless. Throughout this stage, it is possible to select truly effective ideas and bring the whole brainstorming to a common denominator. In contrast to the second stage, evaluation and criticism are welcome here. Moreover, the success of the stage depends on the participants work coordination and the proposed solutions. In the end, the best options will be chosen.