Idea‐generation for industrial firms—report on an international investigation

In Germany a general interest in creativity and methods of idea‐generation for industrial use arose in the late '60s, although initially knowledge was largely confined to catchwords; additionally insufficient experience hampered the appropriate diffusion of idea‐generation techniques. For these reasons the Battelle‐lnstitut e. V. at Frankfurt in 1971 initiated an extensive experimental research project in the field of creative idea‐generation in industry. The most essential results from the research can be summarized as follows: 1. Synopses of methods of idea‐generation in worldwide use enabled these methods to be grouped into six categories: Brainstorming methods (1), Brainwriting methods (2), Methods of creative orientation (3), Creative confrontation (4), Systematical structuring (5) and Systematical problem specification (6). 2. Investigations enabled the optimum conditions to be specified for applying Brainstorming, Brainwriting, Synectics and Morphological Analysis (which have to be considered as key methods) in respect to e. g. group size, group structure, leadership style. 3. Proposals were suggested for classifying problems into five different problem types (search, analysis, constellation, selection and consequence problems) together with recommendations on which problem type can be treated most efficiently with the available methods. 4. Recommendations were made on how the various methods of idea‐generation can be integrated into complex problem‐solving processes. 5. Original developments were reported of twelve alternative methods of idea‐generation by the Battelle research team, e.g. TILMAG (reported in this paper), Sequential Morphology, Visual Synectics and Hypotheses Matrix. The investigations also led to the conclusions that further research was particularly needed in problem classification, processes of analysing problems, procedures of evaluating ideas, and different techniques for prompting ideas.