No need to chase the idea storms anymore. Like mad scientists and passionate alchemists, we've performed many experiments. We've conducted our research, documented our findings and we have the tools and all the elements to create the perfect brainstorm.

Structure, a diverse group of participants and an environment conducive to creativity make a good starting point for a dynamite brainstorming session, but the requirements for a perfect storm are much more subtle.

The Brainstorm Facilitator helps organizations capture the imagination of their team, their employees, their customers, or the world and use it to solve any kind of challenge.

The real key to a great brainstorm facilitation is to escape the prison of familiarity to shed old assumptions so that we can see new opportunities. We'll help you to capture incredible pictures in your mind, transmute lead into gold, encourage all ideas & suggestions, even the foolish ones. We'll conduct your group like an orchestra on opening night and we'll have you intoxicated with possibilities that go far beyond your imagination. You will play, laugh, listen and learn.

We use some pretty cool technology and clever techniques, but we achieve awesome outcomes mostly because we're not afraid to create a big storm. If you want electric ideas you need to stand right inside the storm, not in the drizzle.

Let us ignite the fire, seed the storm, plug you in to electrical idea energy, and spark new ideas.

Many people have a 1950's view of brainstorming. Perhaps they've participated in such pathetic brainstorming sessions and seen so few results.

Most sessions result in domineering colleagues with secret agendas playing to what they believe the boss wants to hear and almost everyone is infatuated with their own ideas. There's pitiful preparation, aimless wandering, poorly defined problems, inefficient methods, poorly trained facilitators, and there's zero sense of humour and all for what? A bunch of average ideas, high blood pressure and a stale taste left in your mouth.

Opportunities to generate ideas are abundant but traditional brainstorming requires structure and design. Every organisation has a wealth of intellectual capital most of which is untapped. Crowdsourced or open brainstorms can also bring new perspectives that generate new ideas.

Widespread employee participation in creative sessions can lead to an increase in employee satisfaction.

Our start-to-finish idea development system leads to

• Improving employee awareness of creativity  techniques and idea generation concepts
• Promoting a creative culture within your organization
• Harvesting the ideas of your employees and customers
  
• Moving the ideas through analysis and decision-making
• Rewarding employee/customer idea generation
• Following up on the effectiveness of the ideas

The Brainstorm Facilitator highly recommends you reach outside of your networks for some of the participants in your ideation session, and can provide a selection of brainstormers to contribute to your brainstorm from our 'Brains Trust'..

A successful and productive ideation session needs a leader preferably from outside the organisation, someone who is not absorbed in the hierarchy or workplace politics.

Update: Will 2009 be the year of innovation economics?

Now is not the time to, nor can we afford to develop and test products in the marketplace at great expense. We need to invite employees and the consumer to tell us in detail what products, services and experiences they really want and what we can do better.

During a recession, your customers will probably reduce spending, especially on discretionary items. But they may be willing to invest in products or services that eliminate their pains. Problem solvers are in big demand…always. Use process innovation to reduce operating costs. Innovation is not just about new products or new business models, it can also be focused on ways of reducing operating costs. We can start by identifing and reducing areas of waste, which can uncover huge opportunities for cost savings.

The return on investment can be huge when you get to incorporate the edge ideas into your core business to really differentiate your brand.

"Economists and business leaders across the political spectrum are slowly coming to an agreement: Innovation is the best, and maybe only, way the the world can get out of its economic hole. New products, services, and ways of doing business can create enough growth to enable us to prosper over the long run". Business Week.

September 2008. Stephen Shapiro writes a brilliant article on 7 ways innovation can recession proof your business. Read More. Dr. Christensen  autor of "The Innovator's Dilemma" writes an article in the Wall Street Journal on
How Hard Times Can Drive Innovation. Read More.

Think Better with The Brainstorm Facilitator

You hire The Brainstorm Facilitator to plan and facilitate your brainstorming sessions, design your idea campaigns and assist with the evaluation process. View the start-to-finish ideation strategy mind map   here.

Service Area

We service Australia, the Asia-Pacific region as well as virtual brainstorms, however if you are looking for a fantastic facilitator for the northern hemisphere, we highly recommend you get in touch with either Mitch Ditkoff from Idea Champions or call 1-800-755-IDEA in the US or Tim Hurson on 416-690-0084 from thinkx.

Our mantra is Big Ideas - Better Insight - Best Life®

You hire us for 1) expertise, 2) objectivity, 3) credibility, 4) leadership

A Fresh Approach to Brainstorming Sessions

We provide customized innovation and brainstorming facilitation and training based on your specific needs. A balanced mix of energy, creativity and collaboration. We provide focused vision, leadership, learning and fun in all that we do. We use the leading creativity techniques to facilitate the very best outcomes for our clients.

We endeavour to eliminate the barriers that hold back the creation of big new ideas. Looking for fresh ideas requires fresh perspectives.

We have a library of over 200 creativity prompts and tools ready for any challenge, and included in our bag of tricks is our feature rich idea management technology. We cover the Internet and the mobile phone so you can capture and manage ideas where ever and whenever they may pop up. We all know that ideas choose some very strange times and places to reveal themselves so you can rest assured every single idea has a means to be recorded and analyzed during the evaluation process.

As Mitch Ditkoff the creativity guru says, "Facilitating a brainstorming session is a multi-faceted task, requiring a variety of sensitivities". During any brainstorming session the The brainstorm Facilitator can assume many if not all these personas.

Conductor, Alchemist, Dancer, Mad Scientist, Diamond Cutter, Actor, Environmentalist, Officer of the Law, Servant and Stand-up Comedian.

We can take you out of the office on a ideation journey or we can recondition an office space to create the perfect environment for cultivating creativity.

Why The Brainstorm Facilitator?

We provide the only full service ideation experience in Australia. We cover outdoors, indoors, online idea management, private, public, and mobile idea capture.

You could, of course, run the brainstorming session yourself.

The is loads of documentation on Internet to guide you through the process. No doubt you would almost certainly do a good job.

Thunderbolts & Lightening

If it's thunder bolts and lightening ideas you want then we offer brainstorm facilitation in Australia, but also service clients around the world using our virtual brainstorming tools.

Naturally, as you start to realize the unlimited ways you can easily become aware of how engaging our services will help you truly accomplish your goals more rapidly and effectively.

You'll start imagining the success you can actually achieve with our help and guidance --NOW -- are you starting to experience the possibilities? View the ideation strategy mind map   here.

Brendan O'Keefe, the idea - inception expert will help you generate a supply of innovative and creative ideas that will help you grow your business. 

If humour and fun are not tolerated in your organisation, please do not contact us.

There are no problems only solutions. You can engage our services with total flexibility.

By the minute, call me, think out loud. Rent my brain, bounce ideas off me.
By the hour or by the project (virtually or on site)
For a free consultation, the scoop on fees and availability, call Brendan on 613 9005 7877 or use the online form and I'll get right back to you.

View some testimonials here. Download brochure here. (500 KB)

Our Ideation & Evaluation Process

• Problem Definition
• Set context. Clarify outcomes. Address expectations
• Custom Design
• Determine the team
  
• Determine and Create the environment
• Establish ground rules and agreements for participation
• Clarify the process
• Break the ice
• Invite appreciative inquiry
• Encourage participants to follow their fascination
• Invite humour and playfulness
• Tell Stories
• Identify and transform limiting assumptions
• Excursion
• Create and explain the brainstorm ground rules
• What's going on? Question storming
  
• Group brainstorming
  
• Allow for solo brainstorming
• Establish criteria for evaluation
• Incubate - 1 day, 1 week, 1 month
• Help you evaluate ideas effectively
• Brainstorm Report
• Follow-Up

Brainstorm, Virtual, or Ideas Campaign?

Brainstorm: If you want a small team (8-20 people) to deeply focus on a problem over a relatively short period of time, brainstorming is your best bet. A full brainstorming event takes anywhere from a half day to three days depending on the problem, the people and how far you want to take ideas - do you just want ideas; or do you want to develop the best ideas. During the entire brainstorming event, participants are highly focused on your problem and potential solutions.

Guerilla Brainstorming
You have an urgent deadline, your budget is limited. Perhaps you’ve run out of ideas, run out of time, or run out of your office screaming. Whatever the case, quick inspiration is at hand. A combination of collabaration and facilitation, we generate ideas with you. We come to you for a quick 45 minute brainstorm, available 24 hrs a day, online using our virtual brainstorming tools or anywhere in the Melbourne metropolitan area. We provide you with a one page report and captured ideas are presented in a spreadsheet.

Brainstorm in Motion. Exercising your business challenges. We come to you and take a walk. Morning or lunchtime  walks are a great idea. We focus on generating as many ideas as possible within that time and we capture all ideas using our idea management technology  – great exercise for the body and the mind.

Virtual Brainstorm: If you want a small team (8-20 people) from multiple locations to deeply focus on a problem over a relatively short period of time, virtual brainstorming is your best bet. Save time, money and resources by conducting your brainstorm over the Internet and or using mobile devices to capture and organise ideas.

A full virtual brainstorming event takes anywhere from a half day to three days depending on the problem, the people and how far you want to take ideas - do you just want ideas; or do you want to develop the best ideas. During the entire virtual brainstorming event, participants are highly focused on your problem and potential solutions. 

(Idea Jam) Ideas Campaign: If you want to get everyone in your organisation (or even all your customers) involved in generating ideas and you can allow two to six weeks for devising and building ideas, then an ideas campaign is your best bet. An ideas campaign (idea Jam) allows people in your organisation to log into the web based campaign at any time, review existing ideas, build on existing ideas and submit their own ideas.

Ideation Strategy Mind Map

View the ideation strategy mind map here.

Urban Diversion Ideation Game

Get out of the office and let the world answer your questions and stimulate creative problem solving.

Urban Diversion is a fun group adventure game using mobile phones and digital cameras in a selected environment. When you play The Urban Diversion Game, the rule book is reality, the board is your city, and the pieces are you and your team.

Teams will use their mission, the journey and the environment around them to stimulate new ideas and problem solve their business challenges out in the field.

This is a prefect alternative brainstorming & team building event. 

Urban diversion is fully customizable. Either played as individuals or as teams.

For the duration of the game, each team of 5-10 will be provided with a kit containing a web enabled mobile phone, local map, digital camera and a note book.

Clues and missions are delivered via SMS, MMS photo clues, hidden envelopes, mobile Internet and SMS quizzes.

Missions are either creative challenges, brain teasers or a combination of both. Each mission has a set time to be completed and rewards, prizes or points can be awarded according to the challenge.

Creativity is the winner in this game. Using the digital camera and taking notes, team members will be responsible for documenting how the team completes each task. 

As each clue is successfully discovered by your team you send an SMS on the mobile phone to the game command centre which will send you the next clue and you head off for the next challenge.

In some cases props will be supplied via actors and secret agents who pop up throughout the game.

To explore the possibilities for a real innovation experience or for more information on our consulting services and idea management tools contact us for a free consultation.

ThinkCube®

The Brainstorm Facilitator is also an accredited trainer and Australian distributor for the ThinkCube® Professional Innovation Tool. Read More

ThoughtOffice Training & Sales

Desktop brainstorming software. ThoughtOffice makes it fast, easy and rich with unique words, phrasing and imagery. And your final stream of consciousness brainstorming arrives in a nice, clear linear presentation you can quickly share with anyone… whether in the next office, or half-way around the globe.

ThoughtOffice Innovation Solutions make crossing the chasm easy. Simply enter a word or phrase and explore over 7,691,000 results. Instantly tap the minds of PhDs, MBAs and Domain Experts with eXpertTopic Modules, drilling-down on any subject, problem or creative challenge.

Making sense of your creative explorations is what ThoughtOffice does best. This organizer gets out of the way your brainstorming, effortlessly recording the most important elements of your ideas… so you can share your ideas in a professional, clear manner.

Contact us for a demo and special offer on sales and training.

FourSight™

How well do you understand  the diversity of your team?

Use FourSight to get a simple, striking look at exactly where they excel and breakdown in the four distinct phases of the breakthrough thinking process. Discover as an individual, team or organization: Are you a Clarifier? An Ideator? A Developer? An Implementer? Some combination? The ability to understand and leverage your thinking style is the first step toward breakthrough results.

FourSight, the breakthrough creative thinking style preference assessment was developed through years of field testing and comparative research. Through it's simplicity, it yields profound insights with far-reaching implications for personal development and how we work together as teams to accomplish complex objectives. Call Brendan on 613 9005 7877 or use the online form to book a FourSight presentation and assessment for your team.

Box of Tricks - What's in the box?

We have more than 200 creative prompts and props to stimulate creativity in almost any situation. We're also collaborating with some of the worlds most creative thinkers to deliver 'The Brainstorming Kit' in early 2009.

The plain white box (the kit) contains everything you can imagine you need to generate, refine and evaluate ideas. With this in mind the box is vast and the space contained within breaks away from the volume we have come to understand in a box.... www.thebrainstormingkit.com

For more information on our consulting services and idea management tools contact us for a free consultation. Download brochure here. (500 KB)