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The Startup Garage - Business Plan writer San Diego

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I Have An Idea For a Product. Where Do I Start? | The Startup Garage

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http://www.TheStartupGarage.com Greetings! Welcome back to Video Fridays at The Startup Garage. The question this week is from Brian and he would like to know: "I have an idea for a product.... Where do I start?" That's probably one of the most common questions we get from entrepreneurs.

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A startup company ( startup or start-up) is an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged business that aims to meet a marketplace need by developing a viable business model around an product, service, process or a platform. A startup is usually a company designed to effectively develop and validate a scalable business model.

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This is a portable, pop-up computer monitor

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Alexander Wesley traveled a lot for his job so he designed a monitor he could take with him. It's called SPUD.

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Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries | Find definitions, translations, and grammar explanations at Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries

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The largest and most trusted free online dictionary for learners of British and American English with definitions, pictures, example sentences, synonyms, antonyms, word origins, audio pronunciation, and more. Look up the meanings of words, abbreviations, phrases, and idioms in our free English Dicti…

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Welcome to Macmillan Education Customer Support

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"You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality." -Walt Disney
Even if it was a good session with solid ideas, the meeting notes (if there are any) will most likely end up lost in an email chain abyss never to be found again.

These are classic examples of brainstorming gone wrong.

When venturing into the world of brainstorming, keep a few important things in mind.

First, the top priority of brainstorming Yes, you read that right: quantity, not quality. Brainstorming is the first step in the exploration phase of a new is quantity over quality.project, so it's important to be open to all ideas and possibilities. Problems arise when team members filter out the good ideas from the not-so-good ones out of a fear of rejection or judgment.

The biggest problem with brainstorming is only a few people do 60-75% of the talking . This bias, often called "anchoring," can often prevent other fresh ideas from coming to light.

Don't get lazy when you brainstorm-keep it both efficient and effective. Let's dive into seven easy brainstorming techniques that encourage collaboration while eliminating judgment.

1. Brain Writing

The general principle of this technique is to separate idea generation from discussion.

The team leader shares the topic with the team, and team members individually write down their ideas. This helps eliminate the anchoring bias and encourages everyone on the team to share their own ideas. It also gives everyone more time to think over their ideas, which is especially helpful for your introverted participants. This brainstorming technique works best for teams who seem to be greatly influenced by the first ideas presented during a meeting.

When your team is brainstorming ideas individually, away from distraction and public opinion, you generate concepts that may not naturally surface in a larger setting. Individual brainstorming techniques like this will often give you more unique ideas than when the group comes up with topic ideas together.

2. Figuring Storming

Ever consider how someone else might handle the situation? Or what they might say about a particular topic? With figuring storming , you aim to do just that.

Try the simple question: W hat would Abraham Lincoln do? When you brainstorm questions that revolve around the possible actions of a third party, you free up ideas that aren't limited to your participants. It's one of those exercises for teams that gives everyone a different viewpoint.

3. Online Brainstorming (Brain-netting)

Virtual teams are becoming more and more common across all industries, so you'll need to introduce some remote work games. The evolution of email and collaboration tools make working remotely the norm in some organizations. But what happens when the team needs to come together to brainstorm?

Sure, ideas can be tossed back and forth through email, but then it becomes difficult to archive those ideas for future reference. Creating a is crucial for these central location online where team members can collaborate See how virtual teams - consider cloud-based document storage, remote whiteboarding tools, or an online collaboration tool. Backcountry uses a collaboration software to brainstorm productively.

There are also a ton of great One brainstorming exercise for groups involves using an brainstorming tools that help make online brainstorming more of a visual and collaborative experience. online mind-mapping tool to answer very specific questions or generate ideas tangential to the main problem. What other ideas surround this concept? Map these examples out, visually.

4. Rapid Ideation

Sometimes, time limitations can help generate ideas quickly, because you don't have time to filter or overthink each one.

Here's a tip you should take very seriously... get silly! Management professor Leigh Thompson conducted another study on this subject. She found that groups who shared funny or embarrassing stories about themselves came up with 26% more ideas in 15% more categories than the groups who didn't.

While brainstorming is the basic technique for developing ideas and getting people to think up new concepts and solutions, there is a very real temptation to overthink things. It's easy to get bogged down by every new idea and its details. This is precisely the problem that rapid ideation seeks to solve.

5. Round Robin Brainstorming

Teams form a circle to kick off this method. Once the topic is shared, go around the circle one by one and have each person offer an idea until everyone has had a turn.

Simultaneously, a facilitator records all ideas so they can be discussed once the sharing is over. It's very important to not evaluate any ideas until everyone has the opportunity to share. This technique is good when some of your team members have a tendency to stay quiet throughout meetings.

When leading a session, the round-robin method of brainstorming allows everyone to pitch in and contribute. Just make sure to treat each idea with equal weight. And try to discourage people from saying "X already mentioned my idea." If this does happen, say you'll return to them at the end so they have time to think of something new.

6. Starbursting

No, it has nothing to do with the candy.

This form of brainstorming focuses on forming questions rather than answers. Starbursting challenges the team to come up with as many questions as they can about your topic.

An easy way to begin a session like this would be to start listing questions that deal with the who, what, where, when, and why. This style assures that all aspects of the project are addressed before any work goes into executing it. It's a good technique for teams who tend to overlook certain aspects of a project and end up rushing to get things done last minute.

Thinking up some good brainstorming questions has the added benefit of giving you an instant backlog of ideas for web content: In case you need a FAQ section for your website or product, simply answer the generated questions.

7. Stepladder Technique

Developed in 1992, this style of brainstorming encourages every member of the team to contribute individually before being influenced by everyone else.

The session begins with the facilitator sharing the topic or question with the whole team. Once the topic is shared, everyone leaves the room except two members of the team. These two members will then discuss the topic and their ideas. Then, one additional member is added to the group. This new member will contribute his or her ideas BEFORE the other two discuss theirs.

Repeat this cycle until everyone from the original group is in the room. This technique prevents groupthink in teams where one or two members hold sway over everyone else. This also helps encourage the shy folks in the group to share their ideas without feeling intimidated by a room full of people.

The stepladder technique is actually one of the more mature brainstorming strategies as it incorporates both an individual and a group participation aspect. This technique is useful for medium-sized groups of anywhere from five to 15 people. Once the group gets larger, however, it takes much longer and may become unwieldy.

Bonus Tip: Try Some Brainstorm Music

Here's a unique tip for your session: try putting on some brainstorming music - i.e. music that's more conducive to generating new ideas. Depending on your company culture, or the team involved, the right kind of music at the right volume can help.

However, as fun as it is to rock out like Wayne and Garth, try to stick to these guidelines for picking music for productivity :

Keep it instrumental (it's better for concentration and attention)

Keep it in a major key (so the mood stays positive)

Ensure the music stays at a fixed tempo and volume (less distracting).

Two examples you could play: Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, if you like classical music, or some deep house if you enjoy electronic dance music. Here are a few places you can find online to get your background music set .

The Benefits of a Group Brainstorm

So why is brainstorming in a group beneficial? The definition of brainstorming holds the key: It is a way to solve problems by holding a group discussion and collecting information or ideas that are arrived at via "unrestrained and spontaneous participation in discussion."

It's a useful method, especially in the early stages of a product or a company's growth, to bring together a wide range of viewpoints. Additionally, it's a quick way to generate a large number of ideas. Instead of just one or two, a group effort can exponentially increase the number of ideas.

Here are a few tips to help your next brainstorm become a resounding success:

Make the objectives crystal clear from the start. What are you trying to find/solve? What constraints are you operating under?

Just as with other collaborative meeting techniques, allow everyone to have a say. Facilitate the session so that the people who are quiet have equal time in the spotlight as those who have the tendency to dominate discussions.

Take away the possibilities of anchoring by letting people generate ideas individually first, before coming together to discuss and elaborate.

Go for quantity over quality at the start.

Be silly and have fun! No question or idea is stupid.

How to use Wrike for brainstorming

You may not think that a work management platform could help your team to better brainstorm creative ideas, but Wrike's collaborative features help you do just that. A shared, all-in-one space that updates in real time is essential for brainstorming, especially when your team is dispersed or working remotely. Once your session has finished and your ideas are ready to be worked on, custom request forms mean that each task is assigned to the right person, every time. Try it out yourself at your next brainstorming session with a two-week free trial.

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7 Techniques for More Effective Brainstorming | Wrike

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Are your team brainstorming sessions falling flat? Boost creativity and morale with these seven techniques for more effective brainstorming.