• Rules:
1) State a clear purpose and prepare your session (clean the white board, provide water & a lot of various materials related to your purpose)
2) No idea is bad. A brainstorm is all about free thinking, never critize during brainstorming process.
3) Encourage differing views
4) Vary the Structure (mix methods/places/team)
5) Go for a lots of Ideas. Go for quantity trying to generate 100 ideas per hour. Put every ideas on the wall
6) Keep track of your session: number your ideas, use mindmaps or big and colorful post-its.

• Tips, fun things to investigate:
- As any "sports", Brainstorm is also about Practice: be persistent & keep practicing
- Explore (ideas are every where), research on the subject before, collect products, gadgets, pictures related to your purpose.
- Encourage improvisation & wild ideas.
- Play with absurdity, push yourself beyond your comfort zone, list the 10 things that are the most stupids ideas for this purpose.
- Allow everyone to think freely, forget your critical nature, it's a nonjudgmental environment
- Put everything on the wall, be visual.
- Mindmapping: a way of expressing ideas visually, a structure for thinking in a nolinear manner.

• Team work: Animator/Moderator + Brainstorm Team (small hot team 2 to 6)

• Duration : Max 1h (ideally initial warm-up 5mn + 45 mn)
As any high-energy activity it needs to be limited in the time.

• Points to deal with:
- Balance between stimulation & structure
- Verbalize ideas (hearing yourself can stimulate new toughts)
- Instant feedbacks as a dynamic process of evolution, let it flow.

"The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas." Linus Pauling

• Ressources:
IDEO is a great Design company. They provide a simple and clear overview of their rules for brainstorming. Here you can find a brief description of the methodology of IDEO:

Overall design methodology
1. Observation
2. Brainstorming
3. Prototyping
4. Implementation
>> Book: "The Art of Innovation" (by Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman).

• Wikipedia:
- Brainstorming (ou Remue Méninges)
- Mindmapping (ou schémas heuristiques).