Brainwriting or brainstorming

Many companies use brainstorming but studies have shown that it can be surprisingly ineffective. Louder people dominate, lazy people take it easy and say nothing and shy people are too scared to say anything. Another way for a group to come up with ideas is 'brainwriting.' Four group members write ideas on a piece of paper in silence. Each group member has a different colour ink so that it is possible to tell where an idea comes from. Once a piece of paper has four ideas on it it is thrown into the middle and another piece of paper is started. The second stage of the process involves group members going to the corners of the room and trying to remember as many of the ideas as possible. In the final stage of the process group members work alone for 15 minutes in an attempt to generate even more ideas. An early study found that brainwriting generated more ideas than brainstorming although more research is needed.

You can find out more about brainwriting at

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2009/02/forget-brainstorming-try-brainwriting.html