Comparison of Earlier Idea Creation Methods with the Idea-Marathon

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Table 3 In the case where the ETS was not applied and idea details

On May 14, 2011, 24 participants started the Idea-Marathon in the same school for working students without back up using the ETS. Within three months’ time, 20 persons had stopped practicing the Idea-Marathon. They were only requested to report the number of their ideas every two weeks but no comment was returned or they were not pushed or encouraged to inform their idea numbers. Gradually most of them dropped out. (Figure 20) Compare Figure 18 with Figure 19.

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

0 30 60 90 120

Without ETS With ETS Rate of Remaining Participants

Days

Figure 20 Comparative Survival Rate of the Idea-Marathon Participants between With ETS” and Without ETS”

3.7 Comparison of Earlier Idea Creation Methods with the Idea-Marathon

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Osborn founded the Creative Education Foundation (CEF) in Buffalo, New York, in 1954. Osborn and Parnes started to expand Brainstorming with the Parnes-Osborn model all over the United States and the world. Brainstorming became one of the most popular and successful methods for generating ideas. But at the same time, Brainstorming has undergone strong criticism in academic and business circles [31].

In the 1960s, discussions were raised about the idea productivity between the Nominal Group Brainstorming (NGB) and the Interactive Group Brainstorming (IGB). According to Rickards, ex-periments were performed, and the Nominal Group Brainstorming (NGB), in which members do not discuss ideas with others in the Brainstorming meeting, was found to be more efficient in creating ideas than the Interactive Group Brainstorming (IGB) [32].

3.7.1.1 Controlling Brainstorming (BS)

Van Gundy (1981) said that Brainstorming can often be controlled by the person with the loudest voice, by the most active person, or by a senior ranking person. Shy or quiet persons cannot express their ideas well. There is a potential for conflict with and domination by a few persons [33].

3.7.1.2 Without Idling and Warm-Up, and Boredom

Just like an old-type automobile engine needs idling in the morning for a certain time before driving out, so warming up for creating ideas, or Brainstorming, in a meeting is necessary for all the participants.

In Brainstorming, it also sometimes takes too much time before the participants get relaxed or get used to the atmosphere of free discussion for idea creation, which shows that the idea production rate is often not so high at the starting time. And participants often find it monotonous and get tired if Brainstorming on the same issue is repeated.

Even if the repeated Brainstorming is on a different subject, the participants might be bored with the same way of thinking and of creating ideas.

3.7.1.3 Intellectual Rights Neglected

In Brainstorming, it is not clearly pointed out that all the ideas suggested in the meeting are simply collected and carried away by the chair-person. All the ideas or fruits of the Brainstorming meeting mercilessly become the property of the host organization. And the origin of those ideas, that is, “Who created or suggested the important ideas,” is not recorded.

3.7.2 Brainwriting (BW)

To avoid the disadvantages of Brainstorming, such as the influence of the person with the louder voice, the active person, the senior ranking person, and the lack of influence of shy or quiet persons, the Brainwriting method was developed, mainly in northern Europe, with which the participants write down their ideas on circulating fill-in sheets or cards within time limits.

There are several types of Brainwriting. The typical type of Brainwriting is called [Method 635]

since Six people write down Three ideas each in Five minutes, turning and turning the sheet until it is filled up with 18 ideas in 30 minutes.

Brainwriting is said to produce more ideas than Brainstorming with a five minutes time limit.

Geschka said that Brainwriting is suitable for slightly more complex problems than Brainstorming [34]. But being silent or without conversation, participants do not all need to be in one place. This can be done through the internet. However, this method kills the awareness that arises from face to face conversation or talking.

3.7.3 Brainstorming (or Brainwriting ) in the Idea-Marathon Method

The Idea-Marathon rules for thinking and writing are similar to the Brainstorming rules. All of the Brainstorming rules exactly match the Idea-Marathon rules. Moreover, since it is a purely personal

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activity, there is no one else to criticize the Idea-Marathon practitioner’s written ideas. One can feel free to freewheel or hitchhike on other ideas and aim for quantity.

The Idea-Marathon is the self-training method for better creativity for all the participants. These participants who have been trained with the Idea-Marathon for six months can play a positive role by participating in Brainstorming and Brainwriting.

The most particular point of Idea-Marathon Brainstorming is that, before the participants speak out any idea, they have been supposed to write down the idea in their notebook first, and then propose it.

In this way, later, it is easy to identify who proposed the idea.

After the completion of the training program of the Idea-Marathon at one media company, an opinion was voiced by a general manager that, when his department held the Idea-Marathon Brain-storming, he was happy since he could later appreciate the specific persons who originated the pre-cious opinions.

This is a very important point, as any good idea or proposal made in Brainstorming takes a great deal of time before its realization. And by that time, the person who created and suggested their good ideas is forgotten. But at an Idea-Marathon Brainstorming meeting, the notebook backs up the record of an idea’s origins.

In the Idea-Marathon, it is usually recommended to write down one’s opinions into a notebook first before speaking up at any meeting, conference, or in front of customers since this action can decrease careless mistakes in speech and can decrease careless omissions of basic or important items.

The same goes with Brainwriting. Writing ideas down in the Idea-Marathon notebook can be the first step before writing them on the Brainwriting fill-in sheets or cards.

At any important meeting or at a critical meeting in front of important people, one might suffer nervous stage fright, make a simple omission of important items or make easy mistakes which leave irrevocably bad impressions.

3.7.4 Various Idea-Marathon Creation Methods

The Idea-Marathon can suggest four idea creation methods:

3.7.4.1 The Three Weeks Preparation Method

Prior to a meeting, all the participants (all are Idea-Marathon practitioners) are given certain themes or problems to solve with a certain period for, such as, three weeks, two weeks, one week or even one weekend. During this preparation period, all the participants create five to ten ideas per day using the Idea-Marathon method and write them down in their Idea-Marathon notebooks. In this way, all the participants generate many ideas. They then organize their ideas into a list.

They participate in the brainstorming meeting with this list, as usual. In this case, their brains have already rehearsed and are familiar with the given themes and problems. They start to make their presentations according to their selections from the list. Because of their preparation through the self-brainstorming activity written down in their notebooks, the best ideas of all the member are proposed at the early stage of the meeting and the quantity and quality of their ideas are much higher.

This method is extraordinarily effective with regard to the works with regular planning meetings per month or even per week. If one belongs to the editing department of a magazine published monthly, there are a monthly new plan meeting for the next month’s issue, a meeting for the issue published two months later, and of course this month’s articles.

If all the editors are just engaging in brainstorming in each meeting without any preparation, or if the instruction from their Editor-in-Chief is “Think a good idea for the next issue,” the quality of the new plans is difficult to maintain. The editors without a stock of ideas for these meetings are having their nightmares.

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On the contrary, if all the members keep thinking, collecting and writing every day in their note-book, they can pick up the best plan out of their stock of vast ideas in their notebooks.

3.7.4.2 The Short-listing Method

The participants are given a theme and a certain period of preparing days, and they then concentrate on creating relevant ideas as much as possible, which is the same as in (3.7.4.1). Before the meeting, however, all the participants submit all of their ideas to the chairperson. The chairperson and a se-lected committee (or in case, all the members of the meeting participants) then make a shortlist out of all the data. The shortlist is then distributed at the meeting for discussion.

3.7.4.3 The Comment and Voting Method

All the participating members submit ideas to the chair-person who makes a list in the office net-work, deleting duplicate ideas. The participants are requested to comment and vote ranking on all the items in the office IT network. The chairperson asks the participants to judge the ideas individually on a scale from A (Best) to E (Not to be considered).

This method has actually been adopted by an electric appliance manufacturer in Tokyo. The list started with 500 ideas before being winnowed down to solely ideas judged A by the participants’ poll.

Afterwards, the participants had a brainstorming session using this selected list.

3.7.4.4 The BBS Discussion Method

All the participating members think and write down ideas about the given themes and problems every day according to the Idea-Marathon rules, and they put either all their ideas or solely their best ideas into an electronic Bulletin Board System (BBS) site in the office network.

On this site, a discussion is held to comment on these ideas before a brainstorming session takes place to select and shortlist the best ideas. This method was adopted many times by Professor K.

Miyata and his Research Office Members to prepare the original proposal to the IVRC (International Collegiate Virtual Reality Contest), hosted by The Virtual Reality Society of Japan)[35].

3.8 Comments on Excerpts of Feedback by Participant Students about the Idea-Marathon