Brainstorming Power: Apples and Ideas

George Bernard Shaw once said:

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

This illustrates the power of using brainstorming techiques to generate ideas. For example, using the "Crawford Slip" technique, let's say we had ten people in a room and asked each to take one minute to answer, "What are the top three risks on our project?" Then we ask the same people to take another minute to answer the same question, except they can't reuse the same answers.

Let's say we did this for ten full minutes. We'd generate 300 potential ideas in ten minutes! Sure, there'd be some overlap and sure people might run out of ideas after a few rounds, but still there'd be well over 100 ideas in ten minutes.

Now imagine the magnitude of power when each person in the group learns about all the group's collective ideas for potential risks and then considers them on future projects. The power of brainstorming is exponential.