THE NEW ART OF

BRAINSWARMING

KEVIN MANEY
IDEAPAINT 2
BRAINSWARMING Brainstorming implies a short burst of energy that
quickly dissipates. Innovative organizations work more like brain swarms,
constantly moving and attacking problems. Lets call it brainswarming.
WHY SWARM? Asking the right question is key to focusing a brainswarm.
THE RIGHT SWARMERS The best ideas come out of teams that feel
comfortable with each other but not too comfortable.
BUZZ Dont just ask swarmers to prepare get them to pre-think.
THE SWARM ROOM Get out of the old conference room and into a more
democratic space.
HERDING SWARMERS Swarms may look like freewheeling affairs, but
effective ones start with structure.
THE CRITICAL SWARM Every idea might be welcome, but debating and
defending ideas makes them better.
SWARM SUCCESS Herd the best ideas together and capture them
UN-SWARM TO RE-SWARM Brainswarms dont end they just keep moving
and solving new problems.
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CON-
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CONTENTS
Weve all gone to those meetings brainstorming meetings.
Need ideas. A new direction. Something. Anything! Get people in a room. Whiteboard. Coffee.
Donuts if youre lucky. No bad ideas. Let em y. Scribble them down. Keep going! Yes! We have
tons! Wonderful! Thanks! Break it up. Take a donut with you. Back to work. Done. Over. Birds
chirping. The ideas gone.
Creative thinkers dont like the word brainstorming anymore. It relies on a thunderstorm
metaphor a sudden swirl of energy, noise, electricity and wind that gets everybodys attention
for a moment, then passes by, dissipates, and leaves nothing behind.
And that describes a good brainstorming session.
I think in most brainstorms, theres actually very little brain and hardly any storm, says
Keith Yamashita, Founder and Chairman at SYPartners, a transformation consulting rm.
Brainstorming is really the art of thinking collaboratively. And thinking takes work. It takes
preparation. And it takes a different view.
Digital agency Huge sees it the same way. The old concept of brainstorming seems outdated.
We dont just use it as a one-time thing its part of a process, says Michal Pasternak, a
Huge partner. We start with crazy ideas and rene, rene, rene.
Huge, SYP and other creative thinkers see a better way to idea-jam and a better metaphor.
Innovative companies collaborate on ideas in a process that looks more like swarming than
storming. Individuals come together to swarm over a problem, but then the swarm doesnt
break up and disappear it shifts, changes, keeps moving and re-forms, building on what its
done until it solves one problem and then carries what it knows to the next one.
Lets call it brainswarming.
IDEAPAINT 3 BRAINSWARMING
1/ BRAINSWARMING
Design rm IDEO is famous for coming up with brilliantly creative products. And it all starts
with the right objective. When a group at IDEO came together to swarm a problem that had to do
with bicycle cup holders, it didnt start by dening a solution like develop a spill-proof coffee
cup lid. It started with an objective: Help bike commuters to drink coffee without spilling it or
burning their tongues.
That opened up the brainswarm to a wider range of ideas and clearly dened what success
would look like.
Multi-industry mogul Richard Branson does the same. His mantra: Dene the problem, not the
solution. When the conversation strays, he told Entrepreneur, remind everyone about the
problem youre trying to solve, and keep working toward that objective.
So the rst rule of brainswarming is to make sure the swarm has a clearly dened goal one
that leaves as much room for creativity as possible while injecting discipline and direction into
the session.
2/ WHY SWARM?
IDEAPAINT 4 WHY SWARM?
A study of the teams that produced Broadway musicals from 1945 to 1989 yielded an
interesting insight: the relationships among collaborators were a reliable predictor of a
shows success.
If the collaborators were relatively unfamiliar with each other, they were not likely to create a
hit show. But if the bulk of the team had connections and a uency with each other, the shows
probability of success shot up. It turns out that when people know each other, they interact
efciently and feel safe enough to let ideas y.
3/ THE RIGHT SWARMERS
IDEAPAINT 5 THE RIGHT SWARMERS






To a point.
The study found that if the Broadway teams stayed together too long, they got stale and their
shows opped. The best mix turned out to be a familiar team spiced up with newcomers. They
had to be connected, but not too deeply connected.
Pasternak sees this at Huge. She has a solution: We inject new team members to get the
naivete back up again.
At Goodby Silverstein and Partners, the agency goes a step further -- injecting entirely new
disciplines into the mix. Were hiring people who bring something new and different to
the table -- stand-up comedians, rappers, says Mike Crain, who leads the agencys Doritos
account. Put those newcomers in with a connected team, and theyll spark a refreshing energy
in the thinking.
The lesson for brainswarming: Cultivate a tight-knit core swarm and get them into a room with
fresh recruits who will say something to shake up the familiar.
Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, argues that research proves that
brainstorming groups think of fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone, and
later pool their ideas, Psychology Today reported.
So once you clearly dene the problem and identify the people who will swarm it, dont just pull
everyone into a room and press the start button. Give them the problem before the brainswarm
and ask them to come up with solutions that theyll then bring to the group.
Creative leaders nd different ways to get the pre-swarm juices owing. At Goodby Silverstein
and Partners, Crain says he might map out a consumers routine when buying a bag of chips,
and ask swarmers to come in with ideas about how to alter those routines in a clients favor.
At SYPartners, pre-swarm eld trips are in order. I always nd that before you get anyone in
a room to think together, they have to experience something that challenges their beliefs
shakes them up, Yamashita says. I almost always send people out on a seeing trip of some sort
to look at the problem from a new angle.
Getting buzz going before a swarm has another benet, research shows. If no one comes
prepared with ideas, the rst good idea can become an anchor pulling all the thinking
in that direction. If everyone comes in with their own strong ideas they want to present, its
anchors away.
4/ BUZZ
IDEAPAINT 6 BUZZ
The worst place to jam on new ideas might just be the place where most companies today send
people to jam on new ideas: the traditional conference room.
Here you have a table, chairs, and a whiteboard if youre lucky or, if youre not, one of those
pads on an easel that always falls over. Its uninspiring, undemocratic (he who controls the pen
and pad controls the meeting), and isolating. It almost ensures that brainstorming sessions
are anomalous one-offs, not part of the ow of a place.
PayPals ofces in Boston are set up to eliminate the distinctions between where people work
on their own and where people think together. We designed the ofce to be very collaborative
in nature, says PayPals David Chang. Desks roll and are moved around. Instead of having
one or two conference rooms, PayPal has 40 spread everywhere, plus another ten lounges for
gathering swarming and knocking around ideas. IdeaPaint covers almost every wall so
people can spontaneously brainswarm wherever they happen to be.
Multiple writing and sketching surfaces are key. If everyone in the session has a pen and access
to a writing surface, barriers to sharing ideas fall away. Collaboration expert Dan Roam preaches
a gospel of drawing pictures to solve problems the more pictures from more people,
the better.
Keith Yamashita wants each of his brainswarmers to feel like a kid with a crayon in a house of
white walls. If I could have my ideal room for a thinking session, it would be one where you
could write on every surface of the room the walls, the tables, the oor, he says. Im not
kidding. Writing down the ideas, diagramming them, sketching themthats the secret. When
we commit the ideas in those forms, they become legitimate ideas.
IDEAPAINT 7 THE SWARM ROOM
5/ THE SWARM ROOM
When most people do brainstorming, they run all over the place and think outside the box,
Ralph Keeney, emeritus professor at Dukes Fuqua School of Business, told Forbes. I think
they should think inside the box.
Heres the problem: Too many idea sessions start with a rule that there are no rules. Think of
anything, the group is told think outrageously, no boundaries. And then everyone sits there
stumped if you have innite choices, what do you choose? Or, ideas are so all over the place,
they never focus enough to solve any problem.
If you add some process, then brains in the room feel like they know where theyre going,
says Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas
with Pictures.
A little structure is actually an enabler. Its the creative power of constraint.
Roam preaches his own brand of structure. He suggests starting brainswarms by drawing a
series of rough pictures, starting with a portrait of whos involved with the problem or goal,
then a chart of how much (money or another measurement) is involved, and on to items like a
timeline and ow chart. You end up with, essentially, a visual equation describing the situation.
By that point, ideas are owing but staying focused.
Others have their own ways of guiding the swarm. Yamashita uses time limits: Tell the team
they have 30 minutes to generate three viable ideas, he says. Or simply lay out parameters that
give the group direction. But mostly, remember that a swarm isnt a swarm if its spread all over.
But put it in a box then youve really got a swarm.
6/ HERDING SWARMERS
IDEAPAINT 8 HERDING SWARMERS
A study of brainstorming sessions by the University of California at Berkeley discovered
something counterintuitive. While the instruction do not criticize is often cited as the
important instruction in brainstorming, this appears to be a counterproductive strategy, the
studys author, Charlan Nemeth, told The New Yorker. Our ndings show that debate and
criticism do not inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them relative to every other condition.
So, basically, stop being so warm and fuzzy. The concept of every idea is a good one is nice for
kindergarten, but less so for business.
However, this requires nesse. Because the last thing you want in the swarm is fear. A swarm
works together for a common purpose, supporting each other and building on colleagues
actions. A swarm cant be a competition to see who has the best idea. One company, in fact,
actually instituted bonuses for people who generated the best ideas in brainstorms. Dysfunction
immediately set in because no one wanted to support anyone elses idea. The number of good
ideas generated fell through the oor.
Brainswarms need both an excess of ideas and constructive debate about those ideas. Bad
ideas can lead to good debates that then lead to better ideas.
So the best brainswarmers tell their colleagues: Dont be afraid to put any idea on the table,
but also dont be afraid to be critical of ideas that are on the table or to support and
build on anyones idea. We think of it as building consensus around an idea as opposed to
brainstorming, says Chang at PayPal.
Always keep the good of the swarm in mind. No individual wins. The swarm wins if all the
individuals work together.
7/ THE CRITICAL SWARM
IDEAPAINT 9 THE CRITICAL SWARM
Youve done everything right: pulled the right mix of people into the right kind of room; stirred
up pre-swarm buzz; set up parameters; and launched healthy group debate thats starting to
winnow a truckload of ideas to get to the strongest ones.
Now its time to funnel down to the very best ideas and capture them.
Yamashita, not surprisingly, gives everybody a pen at this point. I encourage people to connect
ideas, show the relationships of the ideas, draw lines between them, create a map of the ideas,
he says. Its by looking at the relationship that you gure out what a real idea is.
As the swarm coalesces around a smaller number of ideas, the democracy of the swarm has to
take a back seat. We tend to be at until the end, when someone has to drive, says Huges
Pasternak. Someone has to make the decision about what ideas to go after.
There are lots of ways to make sure the ideas dont get lost. Assign someone to synthesize and
write up the swarms best ideas. Assuming youve done this in a well-equipped swarm room, the
ideas will be all over the walls. Take photos. Better yet, dump the images into Evernote, which
can later search handwritten words just as if they were typed text. If at all possible, leave the
drawings and scribbles on the wall, so swarmers can come back to them, talk about the ideas,
touch them up, draw new connections.
If you have the power, says Richard Branson, say yes to some good ideas that come out of
brainswarms -- it energizes the swarm to keep going. Sure, you might make an occasional
mistake, but if you take a risk, youre more likely to nd success, he says.
And then, importantly -- dont stop. Thats the vital difference between brainswarms and
brainstorms. Brainswarms never end.
8/ SWARM SUCCESS
IDEAPAINT 10 SWARM SUCCESS
Go back to those Broadway teams. The best teams didnt simply do one show and then atomize.
They swarmed one show, disengaged, perhaps added a couple of new members, then
re-swarmed over the next show, bringing with them and applying what they learned both
about the problem and about each other.
This is how brainswarming works. Objectives dont go away the minute a meeting breaks up
with a few good ideas to offer. A good swarm will continue attacking the problem, naturally,
spontaneously breaking apart to work on their own and re-forming to work together.
When one objective is met, keep a good swarm together and send it after the next one.
Such swarming has a crucial benet: speed. Things are happening faster, says Crain at
Goodby Silverstein. We cant necessarily wait and sit in a room for two hours and talk. We need
it faster.
Swarms dont wait for someone to call a Thursday at 10 a.m. thinking session. Good swarms
become pre-loaded efcient problem-solving machines. Pull them into a room, give them a
target, and let the brainswarm begin.
If the conditions are right, it will never end, and the innovative ideas will keep coming.
9/ UN-SWARM TO RE-SWARM
IDEAPAINT 11 UN-SWARM TO RE-SWARM
ABOUT IDEAPAINT
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ABOUT KEVIN MANEY
Kevin Maney is an author and journalist who writes about technologys intersection
with business and society. His most recent books are The Two-Second Advantage:
How We Succeed by Anticipating the FutureJust Enough, and Trade-Off: Why
Some Things Catch On, and Others Dont.