When leading a brainstorming session, you can move the conversation in two directions – convergent or divergent.
DIVERGENT THINKING:
The divergent session allows you to be more open-ended, with fewer restrictions, constraints, and limitations. This type of brainstorming session is often more of a blue-sky event. You think big and broad and stay at a strategic level. You think about business models and industries. The work centers on the experience your customer will have, the story they’ll tell themselves and how it will make them feel. For example, what would it be like if you could make transportation as easy as pushing a button to get from one place to another?
During your work, you find analogous situations that help you to feel and empathize.
For example, if you work at a hospital and want to understand what consumers experience in your hectic hospital environment, you might go to a restaurant to see how the experience of being greeted by a hostess could alter how you feel about your experience. You don’t try and solve a problem, but you determine and feel where an analogy can be a productive way to understand your specific situation. In divergent thinking, you stay outside of the box.
CONVERGENT THINKING:
The convergent session allows you to be more focused, more tactical in nature. This type of brainstorming is often more at ground level. You home in on products for narrow market segments. You leverage beautiful constraints to keep you within the box so that your thoughts aren’t all over the place.
In the convergent brainstorming session, you understand your category and the positioning of competitive products. You focus in on the type of product you need to create and how it will be different. In this type of brainstorming, you might focus on the taxi industry and ask what it would be like to reimagine how a taxi system works that leads you toward an Uber or Lyft-like product.
Convergent thinking pulls you toward THE idea with greater specificity. In this type of brainstorming you stay inside the box.
Brainstorming Events
If you are about to do a brainstorming workshop, make sure you define to your cohorts which type of event you want to hold. My advice is that you may need several sessions. Begin with a divergent activity so that you can gain fresh insight and perspective and toss out all of the static thinking in the category or industry. Then a future session can begin to narrow and converge at the product level.
Great brainstorming sessions set expectations for outcomes. Make sure it is clear as you begin, what you expect and what success looks like for that day. Start with divergent exercises before becoming narrow and specific.
There are some wonderful books and podcasts on this topic created by the design experience folks at IDEO. Here is one of my favorite books called Change by Design. Interested in their podcast, check it out here.
Need help with a divergent or convergent brainstorming session? Let’s talk. You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Try my new chat feature on my site if you have a quick question.
Photo by Carmine Savarese on Unsplash
