Insights for a Perfect Brainstorm

"Creative thinking is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learnt. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves teamwork, productivity and where appropriate profits!" - Edward de Bono

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which a group tries to find a solution for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members. A brainstorm session often is a good way to find possible solutions to solve an urgent problem, think of new products/services/brand names/business models, a new go-to-market-strategy, etc. Often the brainstorming is done in free format, using a set methodology, tools and/or with a facilitator. There are lots of ways to brainstorm, and lots of tools to help you, including brainstorming software programs, useful mobile apps and handy mind-mapping tools. However, in most cases brainstorming as a tool can be used much more effective....

"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires a creative imagination and marks the real advances in science." - Albert Einstein

Over the years researchers and creativity experts have made modifications or proposed variations of brainstorming in an attempt to improve the productivity of brainstorming. The best brainstorming insights I recently came across have been developed by Dutch innovator Gijs van Wulfen, who's the founder of the FORTH Innovation Methodology. His brainstorming advice and views are as follows: 

Every one of us has experienced failed brainstorms. Because 300 ideas hung on a wall and nobody knew how to go on. Or one of your vice-presidents disapproved of every idea so after a short while everybody kept his mouth shut. Or because at the end of a long day at the office you could only recycle old ideas and there was nothing new under the sun. But do not get discouraged. The perfect brainstorm exists. I have experienced several in practice. And was in the position of facilitating some of them.

So, what finally gives that 'WOW feeling'? I’ve discovered that this simple question cannot be easily answered. I do not think there is one dominant success factor. It is much more the right interplay of many small factors. It is all in the details I experience. Perhaps the metaphor of a puzzle is most striking. There are many small pieces needed, and if you lose one, the puzzle is worthless. In my practice as facilitator I have found twenty-five pieces contributing to the perfect brainstorm, which I like to share with you.

Highly Relevant 

1. Define a relevant subject, which is a challenge for the organisation and the people you invite.
2. Create with the sponsor a concrete and s.m.a.r.t. brainstorm or innovation assignment.
3. Create momentum for the brainstorm. Something important must happen now!

Diverse Group of Participants 

4. Invite people for whom the assignment is personally relevant. 
5. Invite both people for content as for decision-making reasons.

6. Invite also a couple of outsiders as outside-the-box thinkers.
7. Get a good mix between men and women, young & old, etc.
8. Let the internal top problem-owner (vice-president) participate.
Special Setting
9. Look for a peaceful and special environment (special place, special music, special food, etc).
10. Create an (emotional) safe environment where you can be yourself.
11. Do not allow ringing and flashing iPhones and Blackberry’s.
12. Never, I really mean never, brainstorm at the office.
Effectively Structured Process
13. Take at least two days for an effective brainstorm for concrete new concepts.
14. Spend twice as much time on the convergence process as on the divergence process.
15. Plan and prepare an effective combination of idea generation techniques.
16. Be open to suggestions from the group to adapt the process. Do not always try to stick to the programme you have set.
17. Make sure it is enjoyable. Fun promotes good results.
18. Time box. Make sure everybody knows what the time limits are for the different assignments. And stick to the time.
19. Hire visualisers or cartoonist to visualise the results
20. Keep the pace going; otherwise it becomes long-winded and boring.
Facilitated by a Professional
21. Hire an (internal) expert facilitator, hardly noticeable, with light controls.
22. Gives the opposite energy to the group. If the group is too active: be calm. If the group is too calm: be more energetic.
23. Don’t lose sight of sub groups, constantly check how they progress.
Concrete Output
24. Make the output very concrete and clear to anybody. Also to those who did not participate.
25. Creating the new concepts with your own colleagues generates maximum internal support.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating of course. Try to deploy the 25 rules, and you will notice that the participants will share the WOW-feeling and support the outcome. So when you organise or lead a brainstorm, check out if you’ve complete the puzzle.

Do you need to make an extra effort to 'sell' the importance of Idea Management and brainstorming within your organisation? Than I'd advise you to read the article 'How to Communicate the Value of Idea Management' for some useful insights and tips.

"Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world!" - Joel Arthur Barker

Creative regards & success,

Patrick Driessen

50 Compelling Brain Facts

"The brain gives the heart its sight. The heart gives the brain its vision." - Kall

By Patrick Driessen
Achieving success in something often depends - to a large degree - on how smart and fast you use your brain power! Thus understanding, training, expanding and nurturing your brain capacity might help you to succeed more often.

Over the last week I did a little ‘brain test’: I asked 10 adult friends and 10 children (10-16 yrs) to tell me everything they knew about their brain. Funny enough most of them really struggled trying to answer my ‘simple’ question. Most of the answers I got were quite general and could be qualified as ‘no-brainers’... My test audience admitted that they were lacking in-depth knowledge and facts about our brain.

To help all of us to increase our knowledge and understanding of our brain, please find below 50 compelling and proven facts about our mysterious brain:

1. You btteer bleivee it your biarn is clever, jsut try and see if you can raed tihs, most likely you can. Tihs is bcuseae the mind deos not raed all lteters, only the word as a wlhoe aoccdring to rscheearch at Cmabridge Uinvresity. – Great isn’t it? According to the research, as long as the first and the last letter of a word are in the right place, it doesn’t matter if the rest of them are jumbled up: most people will still be able to read and understand the text.
2. One human brain generates more electrical impulses in a single day than all the world's telephones put together. Every thought and pattern of light, sound, movement, smell and sensation is converted into a sequence of electric pulses, which is received and translated by your brain.
3. Your brain needs a continuous supply of oxygen. A 10 minute loss of oxygen will usually cause significant neural damage. Cold can lengthen this time, which is why cold-water drowning victims have been revived after as much as 40 minutes — without brain damage.
4. Your brain uses a fifth of all the blood in your body. It needs it to keep up with the heavy metabolic demands of its neurons. It needs not only the glucose that is delivered by the blood, but of course, the oxygen too.
5. Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. The brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, yet consumes more oxygen than any other organ in the body, making it extremely susceptible to damage related to oxygen deprivation. So breathe deep to keep your brain happy and swimming in oxygenated cells.
6. Your brain feels no pain. There are no nerves that register pain within the brain itself. Because of this, neurosurgeons can probe the brain while a patient is conscious. By doing this, they can use feedback from the patient to identify important regions such as those used for speech or visualisation. Although the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain, that doesn’t mean your head can’t hurt. The brain is surrounded by loads of tissues, nerves and blood vessels that are plenty receptive to pain and can give you a pounding headache.
7. The cerebellum is sometimes called the “little brain” and weighs about 150 grams (a little over five ounces). Found at the lower rear of your brain. Your cerebellum enables you to maintain posture, to walk and to perform coordinated movements. It may also play a role in your sense of smell.
8. Not gray, but pink! Your brain isn’t the firm, gray mass you’ve seen on TV. Living brain tissue is a squishy, pink and jelly-like organ thanks to the loads of blood and high water content of the tissue. So the next time you’re feeling dehydrated get a drink to keep your brain hydrated.
9. An elephant's brain is huge; about six times as large as a human brain. However, in relation to body size, humans have the largest brain of all the animals, averaging about 2% of body weight. A cat's brain weighs about one ounce, a little over 1% of body weight. I wonder if an ant has a brain. They’re quite clever, I think.
10. The brain is much more active at night than during the day. Logically, you would think that all the moving around, complicated calculations and tasks and general interaction we do on a daily basis during our working hours would take a lot more brain power than, say, lying in bed. Turns out, the opposite is true. When you turn off your brain turns on. Scientists don’t yet know why this is but you can thank the hard work of your brain while you sleep for all those pleasant dreams.
11. The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Or any other encyclopaedia for that matter. Scientists have yet to settle on a definitive amount, but the storage capacity of the brain in electronic terms is thought to be between 3 or even 1,000 terabytes. The National Archives of Britain, containing over 900 years of history, only takes up 70 terabytes, making your brain’s memory power pretty darn impressive.
12. New connections. Every time you recall a memory or have a new thought, you are creating a new connection in your brain.
    
13. On average you have about 100 billion neurons. Pity they’re not always in action. However, you'll be happy about that after reading the next item.
14. You loose approximately 85,000 neurons every day of your life. Fortunately, this goes unnoticed due to the superfluous supply of neurons with which we are endowed; and the fact that even after three years this loss adds up to less than 1% of the total.
15. Recent research proves that your brain continues to produce new neurons throughout your life. Scientists refer to this as brain plasticity or neuro-plasticity. It has also been proven that neuro-plasticity increases in response to stimulation.
16. Dream! Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream. While this may be true, don’t take it as a sign you’re mentally lacking if you can’t recall your dreams. Most of us don’t remember many of our dreams and the average length of most dreams is only 2-3 seconds–barely long enough to register. Most people have an average of 4-7 dreams each night. Five minutes after a dream, half of the dream is forgotten. Ten minutes after a dream, over 90% is forgotten. Write down your dreams immediately if you want to remember them.
    
17. Create associations. Memory is formed by associations, so if you want help remembering things, create associations for yourself.
    
18. When you are stressed, feeling hostile or angry, your brain releases a chemical known as Cortisol, which inhibits learning. So to learn effectively, you will need to be stress free within a stress free environment.
19. Laughing. Laughing at a joke is no simple task as it requires activity in five different areas of the brain.
    
20. Food and intelligence. A study of one million students in New York showed that students who ate lunches that did not include artificial flavors, preservatives, and dyes did 14% better on IQ tests than students who ate lunches with these additives.
    
21. Music. It is proven that music can synchronise your brain waves, improve your mood and help you to learn more efficiently. Music lessons have shown to considerably boost brain organization and ability in both children and adults.
22. Boredom. Boredom is brought on by a lack of change of stimulation, is largely a function of perception, and is connected to the innate curiosity found in humans.
    
23. Brain size at birth. At birth, your brain was almost the same size as an adult brain and contained most of the brain cells for your whole life. A newborn baby’s brain grows about three times its size in the first year. (FYI: Your brain stopped growing at age 18).
    
24. Yawning keeps your brain cool. It is thought that a yawn works to send more oxygen to the brain, therefore working to cool it down and wake it up.
25. Stimulation. A stimulating environment for a child can make the difference between a 25% greater ability to learn or 25% less in an environment with little stimulation. So this investment has a high return on the learning investment!
26. Reading aloud stimulates child brain development. Reading aloud to children helps stimulate brain development, yet only 50% of infants and toddlers are routinely read to by their parents.... Missed opportunity!
    
27. Every brain has a soundtrack. Its tempo and tone will vary, depending on mood, frame of mind, and other features of the brain itself. When that soundtrack is recorded and played back - to an emergency responder, or a firefighter - it may sharpen their reflexes during a crisis, and calm their nerves afterward.
28. Working memory stores 7 digits. It's no accident that telephone numbers in many countries are seven digits long. Our working memory, a very short-term form of memory which stores ideas just long enough for us to understand them, can hold on average a maximum of seven digits. This allows you to look up a phone number and remember it just long enough to dial.
29. Physical illness. The connection between body and mind is a strong one. One estimate is that between 50-70% of visits to the doctor for physical ailments are attributed to psychological factors.
    
30. Blinking. Each time we blink, our brain kicks in and keeps things illuminated so the whole world doesn’t go dark each time we blink (about 20,000 times a day).
31. Reading faces. Without any words, you may be able to determine if someone is in a good mood, is feeling sad, or is angry just by reading the face. A small area in the brain called the Amygdala is responsible for your ability to read someone else’s face for clues to how they are feeling.
    
32. Decision-making. Women tend to take longer to make a decision, but are more likely to stick with the decision, compared to men, who are more likely to change their mind after making a decision.
33. Tickles. You can’t tickle yourself because your brain distinguished between unexpected external touch and your own touch.
    
34. Baby talk increases their vocabulary. A study showed that when mothers frequently spoke to their infants, their children learned about 300 more words by age two than did children whose mothers rarely spoke to them.
    
35. 3 = the weight of your brain in pounds (1.360777 kilograms). Albert Einstein's brain may have been smaller than yours, because he was smaller than average. There is a general correlation between body size and the size of our brains. (FYI: Your skin weighs twice as much as your brain).
    
36. 273 Kilometer per hour: Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 273 km/170 miles per hour. So if you have ever wondered how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away; it’s due to the super-speedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car.
37. 4 to 6 = the number of minutes your brain can survive without oxygen before it starts to die. No oxygen for 5 to 10 minutes will result in permanent brain damage. Don’t test it!
38. 8 to 10 = the number of seconds you have before losing consciousness due to blood loss.
39. 10 to 23 = the number of watts of power your grain generates when you’re awake (that’s enough to turn on a light bulb!). Don’t save your brainpower to much, it will fuse!
40. Information travels at different speeds within different types of neurons. Not all neurons are the same. There are a few different types within the body and transmission along these different kinds can be as slow as 0.5 meters/sec or as fast as 120 meters/sec.
41. 75%-80% of the brain is water.
42. 160.000 KM / 100,000 miles: total length of blood vessels in one human brain. If they were stretched out, they would circle the earth more than four times.
43. 1.000 to 10.000 = the number of synapses for each neuron in your brain.
44. Each person has about the same number of brain cells at birth as in adulthood, but those cells grow, reaching maximum size at about age six.
45. Using brain imaging data, it is possible to tell whether a person is thinking about a face or a place.
46. Bilingual brains. Children who learn two languages before the age of five alters the brain structure and adults have a much denser gray matter.
    
47. Your brain is composed mostly of fat and needs the right kind of that fat as fuel so that it can function efficiently. This is why oily fish or fish oil containing Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) is so important in the diet; your brain needs it to run smoothly, but cannot produce it. Especially the Omega-3 fatty acid is an important ingredient for optimal brain function: It is a rich source of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a fatty acid that is found in high concentration in the gray matter of the brain. DHA is instrumental in the function of brain cell membranes, which are important for the transmission of brain signals. By making cell membranes more fluid, Omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, improve communication between the brain cells. Hence the healthy advise to take food & supplements containing Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids.
48. Brain Bank. Harvard University maintains a Brain Bank where over 7,000 human brains are stored for research purposes.
49. Thoughts. The average number of thoughts that humans are believed to experience each day is 70,000.
    
50. Keep exercising your brain, because mental activity stimulates the creation of new neurons throughout your whole life. For useful insights and tips, please read Boost Your Brain Power!.

When you have finished reading about these fun facts, please take this short brainpower quiz and see how much you learned about the human brain.

"Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Warm regards & success,

Patrick

3D Brain Circuits

As you might know or have seen by the number of stories about it on this blog; I'm facinated by the human brain!

Especially because there is still so much to explore, discover, research and develop about the brain. The more we learn about our brain (e.g. how it functions, how to increase the volume of it, how to create an artificial brain, how to improve brain functions, how to boost it, how to integrate brain power with new technology, how brain music works, how to create robots with human brains, how to get the best out of it), the bigger the impact it will have on the advanced development of medical science and technology, which in the end will impact all of us as soon the new technology is being applied in consumer products & services.

So what is the brain? The brain is a black box. A complex circuitry of neurons fires information through channels, much like the inner workings of a computer chip. But while computer processors are regimented with the deft economy of an assembly line, neural circuits are impenetrable masses. Think tumbleweed.

The latest compelling brain development I heard and read about is a new '3D-type' of technology developed by the Harvard Medical School's Department of Neurobiology. They have developed a cool new technique for unraveling our complex brain masses. Through a combination of microscopy platforms, researchers can crawl through the individual connections composing a neural network, much as how Google crawls Web links.

"The questions that such a technique enables us to address are too numerous even to list," said Clay Reid, HMS professor of neurobiology and senior author on a paper reporting the findings.

The cerebral cortex is arguably the most important part of the mammalian brain. It processes sensory input, reasoning and, some say, even free will. For the past century, researchers have understood the broad outline of cerebral cortex anatomy. In the past decade, imaging technologies have allowed us to see neurons at work within a cortical circuit, to watch the brain process information.

But while these platforms can show us what a circuit does, they don't show us how it operates.
For many years, Reid's lab has been studying the cerebral cortex, adapting ways to hone the detail with which we can view the brain at work. Recently they and others have succeeded in isolating the activities of individual neurons, watching them fire in response to external stimuli.
The ultimate prize, however, would be to get inside a single cortical circuit and probe the architecture of its wiring.

Just one of these circuits, however, contains between 10,000 and 100,000 neurons, each of which makes about 10,000 interconnections, totaling upwards of 1 billion connections -- all within a single circuit. "This is a radically hard problem to address," Reid said.

Reid's team, which included Davi Bock, then a graduate student, and postdoctoral researcher Wei-Chung Allen Lee, embarked on a two-part study of the pinpoint-sized region of a mouse brain that is involved in processing vision. They first injected the brain with dyes that flashed whenever specific neurons fired and recorded the firings using a laser-scanning microscope. They then conducted a large anatomy experiment, using electron microscopy to see the same neurons and hundreds of others with nanometer resolution.

Using a new imaging system they developed, the team recorded more than 3 million high-resolution images. They sent them to the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University, where researchers stitched them into 3-D images. Using the resulting images, Bock, Lee and laboratory technician Hyon Suk Kim selected 10 individual neurons and painstakingly traced many of their connections, crawling through the brain's dense thicket to create a partial wiring diagram.

This model also yielded some interesting insights into how the brain functions. Reid's group found that neurons tasked with suppressing brain activity seem to be randomly wired, putting the lid on local groups of neurons all at once rather than picking and choosing. Such findings are important because many neurological conditions, such as epilepsy, are the result of neural inhibition gone awry.

"This is just the iceberg's tip," said Reid. "Within ten years I'm convinced we'll be imaging the activity of thousands of neurons in a living brain. In a visual circuit, we'll interpret the data to reconstruct what an animal actually sees. By that time, with the anatomical imaging, we'll also know how it's all wired together."

"How the brain works is one of the greatest mysteries in nature," Prof. Reid added, "and this research presents a new and powerful way for us to explore that mystery!"

For a verbal explanation of the research by Prof. Clay Reid on video, click HERE.
For a YouTube video about untangling the brain, click HERE.

Amazing to know that one of our vital organs is still a big mystery to science!

Warm regards,


Patrick