Inside Innovation

BusinessWeek's second Inside Innovation supplement was recently published, and it's a pretty good read. There is a great article on consumer research done in China for Lenovo; another profiling Apple's Senior Vice-President for Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive, and the process he calls, "the craft of design;" a quick lesson on how to measure innovation; and insights into crowdsourcing -- the next big thing after outsourcing. The supplement also presents the Eight Rules to Brilliant Brainstorming, by Robert I. Sutton, a professor at Stanford Engineering School. The rules are pretty practical, and you can read the details online -- but I'll summarize them here for your quick reference. Eight Rules to Brilliant Brainstorming

1. Use brainstorming to combine and extend ideas, not just to harvest them.
People should be able to add-to the ideas of others. In a brainstorming session, people bring diverse knowledge, experience and experience. Creativity occurs when people can build and extend on existing ideas.
2. Don't bother if people live in fear.
If people are afraid of putting forth ideas because there may be repercussions to making bad suggestions, your brainstorming session will be ineffective.
3. Do individual brainstorming before and after group sessions.
People need time to prepare for a brainstorming session and to reflect after it has occurred for the sessions to be effective and creative.
4. Brainstorming sessions are worthless unless ideas lead to action.
The ideas are useless unless they are actioned.
5. Brainstorming requires skill and experience both to do -- and especially -- to facilitate.
Not everyone is prepared for brainstorming.
6. A good brainstorming session is competitive -- in the right way.
Competing ideas is good in a brainstorming session. It stimulates creative ideas.
7. Brainstorming sessions can be used for more than just generating ideas.
They can be used to gather input and educate.
8. Follow the rules, or don't call it a brainstorm.