Chapter 2
Basic Managerial Techniques
2.1 For Brainstorming
‘Brainstorming’ is a technique developed around the 1940s by F. A. Osborn to facilitate the creation of innovative advertising. It consists in generating the largest number of possible ideas regarding a certain object of interest by a specially constituted team, under the guidance of a so-called ‘facilitator’. The facilitator is responsible for ensuring that each group member can state his opinion freely, succinctly and without being subject to criticism.
First of all, the object of interest must have been well defined to discriminate against any irrelevant ideas. In each round everyone has the right to express one single idea, and in turn and in a fixed time, and the ideas generated should be recorded. The brainstorming session then ends. Normally, at the end of it, when all group members feel they have no more ideas to be presented, the ideas are screened individually for the necessary clarifications and possible redefinition (amalgamations of similar ideas, etc.). The final objective is to find the most shared ideas. To this end, typically some voting system is called for.
Both the cause–effect diagram (Section 2.1.1) and the affinity diagram (Section 2.1.2) use brainstorming.
2.1.1 Cause–Effect Diagram
The cause–effect diagram is a graphical tool that shows all possible causes that could lead to a certain effect, the relationships between those causes and among them and the effect itself. The effect is most frequently ...
