Active Brainstorming:A systemic and systematic approach for ideageneration

摘要

Many systems engineers and other problem solvers practice some aspectsrnof idea generation when problem solving but tend not to practice it systemically andrnsystematically. This paper addresses that aspect of problem solving and introduces arnsystemic and systematic way of idea generation via four new problem solving idearnstorage templates similar in concept to the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities andrnThreats (SWOT) template using a combination of:rn1. Three new problem solving templates which have been successfully used inrnseveral iterations of a postgraduate introductory course on systems enginee ringrn(Kasser, et al., 2008) and several one-day workshops on applying systemsrnthinking to problem solving and managing research.rn2. A standard set of system thinking perspectives (STP) (Kasser and Mackley,rn2008) arranged around a perspectives perimeter which provide anchor pointsrnfor viewing and discussing issues noting that combinations of the STPs are alsornuseful.rn3. A fourth template in the form of a work sheet for triggering ideas based on arncombination of the STPS and the six questions “who”, “what”, “where”,rnwhen, “why” and “how” introduced by (Kipling, 1912).