What is Reverse Brainstorming and Why Is It Useful for PMs?
The benefits of a typical brainstorming session are clear. It is about solving problems, generating ideas, combining team members and so on.
Reverse brainstorming is a special approach that flips typical brainstorming practices upside down, allowing to see complex problems from a different perspective.
According to traditional brainstorming, people focus on collecting ideas on how to solve problems. In reverse brainstorming, you look at what could make the problem worse or why the problem can’t be solved.
Then, you and your team reverse those ideas to discover new things you didn’t see before.
This topic is clearly described on Mindjet.com blog. According to their article, reverse brainstorming is a good solution when:
- people have trouble coming up with good ideas quickly
- they are stumped on how to solve a problem
- you want people to let go of their pre-conceived ideas about a topic
- you want people to find new ways to problem-solve.
The key to a successful reverse brainstorming session is quantity over quality. The more ideas, the more perspectives you have to work with.
Like a usual brainstorming session, reverse brainstorming starts sorting a problem. Then you take that problem and reverse it to focus on the opposite of what you want to do.
So the main stages of the process may look like:
- Define your problem
- Reverse the problem
- Collect Ideas
- Reverse the ideas
- Evaluate the ideas and identify the solutions
Have you applied such technique to make brainstorming more effective? What other methods could you suggest?