Book Review: SmartStorming

Perhaps the most vital part of business—the part that separates great companies from average ones—is the very part that nobody really seems to have any process for: Ideation.

If innovation is, as any CEO will tell you, the most important thing for their businesses these days, why is brainstorming so often jammed in to crowded workday schedules and so often practiced with such disappointing and unproductive chaos?

We've all been there, and that's why I am so excited that there is a new book on the scene that brings order to this chaos.

In SmartStorming, authors Mitchell Rigie and Keith Harmeyer draw on their years of creative experience in agency and corporate environments to provide an in-depth practical manual for ideation.

A Practical Systemization

What will be most valuable to the reader is not any never-before-seen revelations (although not including the boss in brainstorms was nearly one for me), but the practical and simple systemization of their brainstorming process and then the flexibility in their approach to scale things up, down and pretty much any way that fits an organization. Of course, an organization might get more out of a multi-day intensive ideation session with 20 people that utilizes handfuls of the techniques, but the authors present the reader with ways of implementing SmartStorming in shorter amounts of time, with fewer people and even by oneself.

And the book takes a look at the entire ideation process which includes preparation and, most importantly, idea selection criteria and follow-up.

While there is a degree of repetition in the book in that guidelines and specific techniques are presented and discussed at varying levels multiple times, I would say that the primary reason for this is to make the book work on different levels. It can be read straight through (as I experience it), but it can also and should be used as a reference guide, allowing the reader to zero in quickly on what they specifically need in preparation for a brainstorm session.

Specifically, in addition to the overall SmartStorming approach, readers will probably get the most out of the 20 idea-generating techniques (specific brainstorming methods), 25 ice-breaker activities, advice for “piloting” (guiding) an ideation session and the idea selection criteria and the six step session flowchart.

Beyond the Book

I have worked with and known Keith and Mitchell for years and have attended one of their live sessions. If you or your organization is serious about generating new thinking and solutions, pick this book up. And if you are really serious, give them a call for customized in-person trainings and sessions. Many, many top companies have done so...

More on their site, SmartStorming.com.