How To Sort Brainstorming Ideas

Now that your brainstorming has produced a string of ideas that string needs judgment applied in a vigorous, cold-water session.

This may be done by the entire group in a technique worked out by Professor Paul Pigors at M.I.T. He found that a brainstorm panel can immediately sort their own ideas into three categories:
(1) hot ideas that can be tried out almost immediately;
(2) those which need long range or involved study, co-ordination, or vast appropriations;
(3) those which are obviously unusable.

General Electric's Royce plant in Toronto used to arrange their ideas into those which can be put to work: (1) in one week; (2) one month; (3) six months, and so on.

To have the whole group do the judging, of course, takes a great deal more time than the session itself, and it completely wastes the time of those non-experts who just don't know enough about the subject to say if an idea is practical or not.

It is best to have a committee of about three panel members, usually the ones most concerned with the problem, meet and apply judgment. They should be the folks who know what has been tried, what is too expensive, what's against policy.

To save time in this session each committee member should read over the list beforehand and come in with the top ten ideas. Usually the committee will find it quickly agrees on a majority.