Brainwriting is a group idea-generation method in which participants write down their ideas instead of presenting them verbally, then develop new ideas by reviewing and building upon the contributions of others. It is used in new product development, research and development, business process improvement, service design, problem-solving, and other activities requiring creative thinking.
In conventional Brainstorming, participants express ideas verbally and generate further ideas in response to what others say. However, the effectiveness of this process may be limited because only one person can speak at a time, discussions may be dominated by assertive individuals, and participants may hesitate to express ideas out of concern about how others will evaluate them.
Brainwriting attempts to reduce these limitations by using written contributions rather than verbal discussion.
For example, six participants may each write down three ideas and then pass their sheets to another participant after a specified period. The next participant reviews the existing ideas and adds new suggestions, modifications, or extensions.
By repeating this process, participants can develop ideas based not only on their own knowledge and imagination but also on the contributions of other group members.
The defining characteristic of Brainwriting is that it preserves time for independent individual thinking while enabling participants to benefit from the stimulation and combination of ideas contributed by others.
However, producing a large number of written ideas does not guarantee that useful solutions will emerge. The resulting ideas must subsequently be organized and evaluated for feasibility, usefulness, and other relevant characteristics.
Origins and Development of Brainwriting
One of the best-known forms of Brainwriting is the 6-3-5 Method (Method 635), introduced by the German researcher Bernd Rohrbach in 1969.
Rohrbach published “Kreativ nach Regeln – Methode 635, eine neue Technik zum Lösen von Problemen” (Creativity According to Rules—Method 635, a New Technique for Solving Problems) in the German journal Absatzwirtschaft.
The method subsequently became associated with Brainwriting through research and practical applications involving researchers such as Geschka and colleagues. Variations were developed with different procedures for sharing ideas and managing time.
Brainwriting was also introduced and promoted as a creativity technique in Japan during the 1980s.
In 2024, Takahiro Kawaji published “A Study of Early Brainwriting (Method 635)” in the Journal of the Japan Creativity Society, examining early publications and clarifying the historical development of the method.
The study identifies Rohrbach’s 1969 paper as the original publication of Method 635 and explains that some aspects of the early procedure differed from descriptions commonly used today.
For example, the numbers in 6-3-5 are now commonly explained as six participants generating three ideas within five minutes. However, the historical origin of the name does not correspond exactly to this explanation. In the original formulation, the final “5” was associated with the five subsequent participants who developed the initial contributor’s ideas.
In the widely used contemporary version, six participants each write three ideas in five minutes, with six rounds of contribution.
The term Brainwriting may refer specifically to Method 635 or more broadly to approaches in which written ideas are shared and developed collaboratively.
Differences Between Brainstorming and Brainwriting
Brainstorming and Brainwriting are both methods of Divergent Thinking, intended to generate multiple ideas from a group of participants.
Their principal differences concern how ideas are expressed and how participants interact.
| Aspect | Brainstorming | Brainwriting |
|---|---|---|
| Expression of ideas | Primarily verbal | Primarily written |
| Participant activity | Speaking and listening in turn | Writing independently in parallel |
| Stimulation from others | Hearing other participants’ contributions | Reading other participants’ ideas |
| Influence of assertive participants | Discussion may be dominated by frequent speakers | Differences in speaking behavior are reduced |
| Documentation | Separate recording may be necessary | Ideas are recorded from the beginning |
| Main limitations | Speaking order, interpersonal influences, discussion dynamics | Writing effort, time limits, dependence on previous ideas |
| Particularly useful for | Immediate discussion and interactive questioning | Generating ideas from multiple participants simultaneously |
In verbal Brainstorming, participants may need to wait while someone else speaks.
During that time, they may forget an idea or lose their train of thought.
Brainwriting allows participants to record ideas simultaneously, reducing this constraint.
However, Brainwriting is not necessarily superior in every situation.
When addressing complex technical problems, immediate questions, diagrams, and interactive discussion may be more effective than written exchanges.
Participants who find it difficult to express complex ideas concisely in writing may also experience greater difficulty with Brainwriting.
The two methods should therefore be regarded as alternatives or complementary approaches, rather than mutually exclusive techniques.
Productivity Losses in Group Idea Generation
Research in social psychology helps explain the potential advantages of Brainwriting.
In 1987, Michael Diehl and Wolfgang Stroebe investigated why groups engaged in interactive Brainstorming sometimes generated fewer ideas than an equivalent number of individuals working separately.
Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain this phenomenon.
Production Blocking
When one participant is speaking, others must wait before expressing their ideas.
They may forget what they intended to say or have their thinking interrupted.
Evaluation Apprehension
Participants may hesitate to express ideas because they fear criticism or negative judgments about their competence.
Social Loafing
Individuals may reduce their effort when working in a group because their personal contributions are less directly identifiable or accountable.
Diehl and Stroebe’s research identified Production Blocking as a particularly important cause of productivity loss in interactive verbal Brainstorming.
Brainwriting may reduce this problem because participants can generate and record ideas simultaneously.
However, Evaluation Apprehension and Social Loafing do not necessarily disappear.
When contributions are identifiable, participants may still be concerned about how others will evaluate them.
The effectiveness of Brainwriting also depends on the task, participants, and implementation conditions.
The Basic Structure of the 6-3-5 Method
The 6-3-5 Method is a representative form of Brainwriting.
Its commonly used contemporary procedure has the following structure.
| Item | Setting |
|---|---|
| Number of participants | 6 |
| Ideas per participant per round | 3 |
| Time per round | 5 minutes |
| Number of rounds | 6 |
| Total idea-generation time | 30 minutes |
| Maximum number of written entries | 108 |
Each participant receives a worksheet containing six rows and three columns for recording ideas.
During the first five minutes, each participant writes three ideas.
The worksheet is then passed to the next participant.
That person reads the existing ideas and adds three new suggestions, modifications, or extensions.
After six rounds, each worksheet has been completed by six participants.
Each worksheet can contain:
6 rounds × 3 entries = 18 entries.
With six worksheets, the theoretical maximum is:
[
6 \times 3 \times 6 = 108
]
However, 108 represents the number of available entries if every space is filled.
In practice, some ideas may overlap, represent modifications of previous ideas, or remain unwritten.
The calculation does not mean that 108 independent, valuable ideas will necessarily emerge.
How to Conduct a 6-3-5 Brainwriting Session
A conventional 6-3-5 session can be conducted as follows.
- Define the problem. Clarify the objective and relevant conditions so that all participants address the same challenge.
- Prepare the worksheets. Provide each participant with a sheet containing six rows and three columns.
- Conduct the first round. Each participant independently writes three ideas within five minutes.
- Pass the worksheet. All participants pass their sheets to the next person in the same direction.
- Develop previous ideas. Participants review the ideas already recorded and add three new ideas, improvements, combinations, or alternative approaches.
- Complete the remaining rounds. Continue until every worksheet has circulated among all six participants.
- Collect and organize the ideas. Examine duplicates, similarities, and possible relationships among the contributions.
- Proceed to evaluation and verification. Assess promising alternatives for feasibility, effectiveness, and other relevant criteria.
Verbal discussion and criticism are generally avoided during the idea-generation rounds.
However, participants are free to modify existing ideas or develop them in different directions.
The objective is not merely to improve the original contributor’s suggestion.
Reading an existing idea may trigger a completely different line of thinking.
This ability to use others’ ideas as cognitive stimuli is one of the important characteristics of Method 635.
Example: Developing Low-Cost Condition Monitoring for Existing Equipment
Consider an industrial measurement equipment manufacturer exploring ways to add condition-monitoring capabilities to existing production equipment at low cost.
The idea-generation challenge is defined as:
“How can we detect abnormalities in existing manufacturing equipment without major modifications to the equipment?”
Participants might be selected from technology development, manufacturing, maintenance services, sales, and other departments.
During the first round, each participant independently records ideas.
One participant’s initial contributions might be:
- A: Develop a vibration sensor that can be retrofitted to the outside of existing equipment.
- B: Use existing electrical current measurements for anomaly detection.
- C: Detect abnormalities by analyzing equipment operating sounds.
The next participant reads these ideas and develops them further.
| Round | Idea 1 | Idea 2 | Idea 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Retrofittable vibration sensor | Anomaly detection using electrical current data | Anomaly detection using operating sounds |
| 2 | Wireless vibration sensor | AI analysis of existing current meter data | Measure operating sounds with a smartphone |
| 3 | Monitor several machines using a single device | Estimate load changes from current waveforms | Combine acoustic and vibration measurements |
This is a hypothetical illustration. In an actual 6-3-5 session, worksheets are passed among different participants and additional rounds continue.
In this example, the original idea of a retrofittable vibration sensor develops into a wireless sensor concept.
The proposal to use existing electrical current data leads to AI-based analysis and load estimation.
The acoustic monitoring idea develops into smartphone-based measurement and the combination of multiple measurement signals.
No single participant needs to conceive every idea independently.
Differences in participants’ knowledge and experience can allow ideas to develop through successive contributions.
However, technical feasibility and economic value have not yet been established.
For example, smartphone-based acoustic monitoring may encounter difficulties involving factory noise and measurement conditions.
The purpose of the idea-generation stage is to expand the range of possibilities. Technical verification must follow.
How Building on Others’ Ideas Supports Creativity
Brainwriting uses exposure to other participants’ ideas as a source of cognitive stimulation.
For example, a participant initially considering vibration sensors may encounter another person’s suggestion involving electrical current measurements.
This may lead to the idea of combining multiple measurement signals for anomaly detection.
In this way, another person’s contribution can activate knowledge or associations that the participant might not otherwise have considered.
In 2000, Paul B. Paulus and Huei-Chuan Yang investigated idea generation through written group interaction.
Their research demonstrated that, under certain conditions, processing other people’s ideas and providing opportunities for further thinking after idea exchange can improve creative output.
Groups exchanging written ideas sometimes produced better results than comparable conditions without idea exchange.
The value of Brainwriting therefore lies not only in allowing everyone to write simultaneously.
It also lies in the new associations and combinations stimulated by exposure to others’ ideas.
However, reading existing ideas can also constrain thinking.
For example, if the first round contains mostly sensor improvement proposals, subsequent participants may concentrate on sensor modifications rather than considering alternative business models, maintenance services, or changes in equipment operation.
This is a form of idea fixation.
It is therefore important to design the problem statement and procedure so that participants can explore different directions.
Avoiding Idea Fixation
Brainwriting uses the influence of others’ ideas, but that influence is not always beneficial.
When early contributions emphasize a particular direction, later ideas may develop predominantly within the same area.
Several approaches can help reduce this problem.
First, all participants should generate their initial ideas independently before seeing other contributions.
Second, participants can be selected to provide a suitable diversity of expertise and experience.
Third, later rounds can explicitly encourage participants to explore different users, technologies, operating conditions, or business models rather than merely improving the existing proposals.
For example, participants might be prompted to consider:
- How could this idea be applied in another industry?
- How might the cost be reduced?
- Could a component be eliminated rather than added?
- Could the required function be achieved through a different operating principle?
However, introducing different prompts into each round modifies the conventional 6-3-5 procedure.
Such approaches are best understood as extensions of Method 635 rather than the original method itself.
Variations of Brainwriting
Brainwriting includes several approaches beyond the conventional 6-3-5 Method.
| Method | Characteristics | Suitable Situations |
|---|---|---|
| 6-3-5 Method | Fixed participants, number of ideas, time limits, and worksheet circulation | Generating many ideas within a short session |
| Brainwriting Pool | Participants place written ideas in a shared pool and select other contributions to develop | Accommodating differences in idea-generation speed |
| Card Brainwriting | Each idea is recorded on a separate card | Subsequent classification and combination of ideas |
| Electronic Brainwriting | Ideas are exchanged through digital tools | Remote collaboration and maintaining idea histories |
| Asynchronous Brainwriting | Participants contribute and review ideas at different times | Distributed teams or participants with scheduling constraints |
In Brainwriting Pool, participants place completed idea sheets in a common area and select other sheets for further development.
This removes the need for fixed circulation order and strict timing, making it easier to accommodate differences in participants’ working speeds.
Card Brainwriting records ideas as individual cards, allowing them to be rearranged, grouped, or combined later.
Electronic Brainwriting supports sharing, recording, searching, and classifying ideas in a digital environment.
However, digitizing the process does not automatically improve creativity.
The timing and manner in which participants encounter others’ contributions can influence the direction and quality of their thinking.
Evaluating the Quantity and Quality of Ideas
Brainwriting often reports the number of ideas generated within a particular period as an outcome.
However, idea quantity alone is not a sufficient measure of creativity.
For example, a session may produce many slightly different descriptions of essentially the same solution.
In that case, the number of written entries may increase without meaningfully expanding the available alternatives.
Conversely, a small number of ideas may introduce fundamentally different technological principles or new ways of defining the problem.
Several dimensions of idea evaluation can be distinguished.
| Evaluation Criterion | Main Meaning |
|---|---|
| Fluency | Number of ideas generated |
| Flexibility | Diversity of categories or directions of thinking |
| Originality | Degree of difference from existing ideas |
| Usefulness | Potential contribution to solving the problem |
| Elaboration | Level of detail and development |
| Feasibility | Ability to satisfy technical and economic conditions |
These criteria do not necessarily need to be applied at the same stage.
Strict feasibility evaluation during early idea generation may discourage unconventional proposals.
It is therefore useful to distinguish between a divergent phase, in which possibilities are expanded, and a convergent phase, in which ideas are organized, compared, and evaluated.
Originality also depends on the reference point.
An idea may be new to the participants while already being widely used in another company or industry.
If novelty is an important evaluation criterion, existing technologies and prior applications should be investigated.
Organizing Ideas with the KJ Method
After Brainwriting produces a large number of ideas, those ideas need to be organized so that their overall structure can be understood.
Methods such as the KJ Method and Affinity Diagramming can support this process.
For example, contributions from a 6-3-5 session can be converted into individual cards and grouped according to similarities or relationships.
This may reveal several broad directions, including sensor technologies, data analytics, maintenance services, customer operating practices, and business models.
However, immediately assigning all ideas to established categories can obscure unconventional combinations or emerging concepts.
During classification, it is therefore important to examine not only similarities but also meaningful differences and ideas that connect otherwise separate groups.
Brainwriting generates ideas, while the KJ Method helps identify meaningful structures and relationships among them.
Combining the two can provide a transition from divergent idea generation to conceptual organization and structuring.
Relationship with SCAMPER, TRIZ, and Morphological Analysis
Brainwriting uses participants’ spontaneous ideas and mutual stimulation.
However, free idea generation may become concentrated in a limited number of directions.
Other creativity methods can therefore provide complementary mechanisms for expanding the search.
SCAMPER uses prompts such as Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse or Rearrange to encourage different approaches.
For example, a modified Brainwriting procedure could introduce a different SCAMPER prompt during each round.
TRIZ uses concepts such as technical contradictions and inventive principles to explore systematic directions for technical problem-solving.
For example, when improving monitoring accuracy would ordinarily require adding sensors and increasing cost, TRIZ may help investigate alternative ways to resolve the contradiction.
Morphological Analysis decomposes a problem into dimensions and alternative options, then examines combinations of those options to identify new configurations.
Ideas generated through Brainwriting can be decomposed into technological elements, operating conditions, customers, or business models and transferred into a Morphological Analysis.
| Method | Primary Role |
|---|---|
| Brainwriting | Generate ideas using the contributions of other participants as stimuli |
| SCAMPER | Change the direction of thinking through structured prompts |
| TRIZ | Explore solutions through technical contradictions and inventive principles |
| Morphological Analysis | Explore configurations through combinations of elements |
| KJ Method | Organize similarities and relationships among ideas |
These methods are not mutually exclusive.
They can be used at different stages of idea generation, structuring, and evaluation.
Combining Individual and Group Idea Generation
Brainwriting allows participants to generate ideas independently while benefiting from written contributions by others.
However, exposure to others’ ideas is not always helpful.
When a problem requires sustained technical reasoning or deep conceptual exploration, repeatedly producing written ideas under strict time limits may interfere with the thinking process.
In his 2009 paper “Better than Brainstorming?”, Peter A. Heslin examined the contextual limitations of Brainwriting research.
He emphasized that findings from experimental studies should not necessarily be generalized directly to organizational settings.
Results may depend on the nature of the task, participants, time, location, organizational culture, and other conditions.
It is therefore important to combine independent individual thinking with opportunities for stimulation through other participants’ contributions.
For example, participants might first spend sufficient time developing ideas individually.
They could then participate in a Brainwriting session to extend and combine those ideas.
Afterward, another period of independent reflection could allow them to reconsider the shared ideas and develop additional possibilities.
The objective should not be merely to follow a fixed time limit.
It should be to create cognitive conditions appropriate to the problem being addressed.
Applications to New Product and Business Development
Brainwriting can be used to generate ideas for new products and business opportunities.
For example, participants can examine a proposed product from different perspectives, including technology, customers, applications, delivery methods, and revenue models.
When participants possess different kinds of expertise, a function proposed by an engineer may inspire a new customer application from a sales specialist.
A maintenance specialist may develop the same function into a service offering.
However, when the problem statement begins with existing products or customers, the resulting ideas may remain close to established business activities.
For example, asking “How can we improve our current measurement equipment?” may produce suggestions involving accuracy, cost, and usability.
By contrast, asking “How could the functions provided by our measurement technology be used in other industries?” may encourage exploration of unfamiliar applications and markets.
The initial question therefore has a substantial influence on the results of Brainwriting.
The technique is not determined solely by participants’ creativity.
How the problem is framed matters as well.
Applications to R&D Theme Generation
In research and development, Brainwriting can help generate alternative solutions to technological problems or explore new applications of existing capabilities.
Researchers from different disciplines might exchange ideas concerning materials, sensing mechanisms, control methods, manufacturing processes, or quality assessment technologies.
However, technical idea generation requires considerations that may differ from those of general product planning.
Scientific knowledge and physical constraints can be essential.
For example, if someone proposes applying a particular material in a high-temperature environment, its thermal and chemical stability must be verified.
Before Brainwriting proposals are adopted as R&D themes, relevant literature, technical feasibility, and possible validation methods should be investigated.
R&D may also require the discovery of operating principles or technological approaches outside the participants’ established disciplines.
In such cases, Brainwriting based only on existing participant knowledge has inherent limitations.
Relationship with Concept Exploration
Brainwriting can be combined with Concept Exploration, an approach proposed by Mindware Research Institute.
Brainwriting uses participants’ existing knowledge and experience to generate multiple ideas concerning a defined problem.
Concept Exploration, by contrast, emphasizes searching for unknown objects and possibilities through characteristics, structures, relationships, and patterns without relying exclusively on familiar names or disciplinary categories.
This distinction is important.
For example, a Brainwriting session about detecting abnormalities in existing equipment may produce proposals based mainly on sensors and analytical methods already known to the participants.
However, if anomaly detection is expressed at a more abstract functional level, it becomes possible to investigate analogous mechanisms in biological sensing systems, self-diagnosing materials, distributed monitoring networks, and other fields.
Participants who do not already know about these technologies may be unlikely to propose them through spontaneous idea generation alone.
Concept Exploration can therefore be used to identify unfamiliar technological mechanisms or examples and introduce them as stimuli during Brainwriting.
Participants can then use these discoveries to generate new product concepts or R&D themes.
Conversely, important technical characteristics and requirements can be extracted from Brainwriting ideas and used as starting points for Concept Exploration.
Brainwriting combines the knowledge and ideas available to participants, while Concept Exploration can expand the knowledge and potential subjects available as inputs to their thinking.
Combining the two approaches can move idea generation beyond familiar combinations of existing knowledge toward the use of newly discovered insights from other domains.
Brainwriting in the Age of AI
The development of LLMs creates new possibilities for supporting Brainwriting.
For example, an LLM can propose alternative problem statements, summarize and classify participants’ contributions, or suggest different applications and configurations of an existing idea.
However, using an LLM to generate large numbers of ideas on behalf of participants is not the same as using Brainwriting to support human creative thinking.
If participants see AI-generated ideas from the beginning, their thinking may become concentrated around the directions suggested by the model.
If they merely copy AI suggestions into worksheets, they may spend less time considering the problem independently.
An AI-assisted approach should therefore preserve opportunities for independent human idea generation.
For example, the first round could involve only human participants.
AI-generated suggestions or examples from unfamiliar technological domains could be introduced in later rounds.
Another approach would alternate rounds of independent human thinking with rounds involving AI-assisted stimulation.
However, whether AI assistance actually improves novelty, diversity, or usefulness requires empirical evaluation.
The presence of AI does not automatically improve the creative quality of the resulting ideas.
Organizing and Evaluating Ideas with AI
A Brainwriting session may produce many ideas that need to be organized and compared.
LLMs can help interpret the meaning of written contributions and identify semantically similar proposals.
Embedding vectors can also represent semantic similarities, allowing clustering or other analytical methods to visualize the overall distribution of ideas.
However, semantically similar ideas are not necessarily technically equivalent.
For example, “detecting abnormalities through vibration” and “detecting abnormalities through sound” may be semantically related, but their sensors, measurement conditions, and achievable performance can differ.
Evaluating similarity or duplication should therefore consider functions, operating principles, and implementation conditions rather than relying only on textual meaning.
It may also be useful to record how individual ideas developed through successive contributions.
For example, a system could preserve relationships indicating which earlier proposals inspired later modifications or combinations.
This would allow users to analyze the evolution of ideas rather than viewing only the final collection.
However, if participant anonymity is important, those relationships should be recorded without unnecessarily revealing individual identities.
Limitations of Brainwriting
Brainwriting has several important limitations.
First, results depend strongly on how the problem is defined. Narrow questions tend to generate ideas within similarly narrow boundaries.
Second, the method depends on participants’ existing knowledge. Spontaneous thinking alone cannot necessarily reveal technologies or examples that participants do not know.
Third, exposure to existing ideas can produce fixation. When early contributions concentrate on a particular direction, later participants may follow the same path.
Fourth, writing under time pressure can be difficult. Complex technological proposals may require more explanation and reflection than the conventional five-minute interval allows.
Fifth, the number of written entries is not a direct measure of creativity or usefulness. A session may produce many overlapping or closely related ideas.
Sixth, Brainwriting does not itself evaluate technical feasibility or business value. Additional research, experimentation, and evaluation are required.
Seventh, group idea generation is not necessarily superior to individual thinking in every situation. Depending on the task and implementation conditions, independent work may be more effective.
The appropriate question is therefore not simply whether the Brainwriting procedure has been followed correctly.
It is whether the participants, problem definition, and working conditions are appropriate for the kind of thinking required.
Brainwriting in ThinkNavi
ThinkNavi regards Brainwriting as a thinking-support method that allows participants to generate ideas independently and develop further possibilities through exposure to other people’s contributions.
ThinkNavi Free could provide basic support for conducting the 6-3-5 Method through manual input.
For example, users could define a problem and create a worksheet containing six rows and three columns.
Ideas could be recorded for each participant and round, allowing users to review previous contributions as the process progresses.
However, a tool operated by one person for recording and managing ideas has different functional requirements from a real-time collaborative system used simultaneously by six participants.
A full online collaboration system would require participant access management, round progression, timers, editing permissions, and controls for simultaneous editing.
An appropriate initial implementation could therefore focus on recording ideas and managing rounds, with real-time collaboration considered separately.
Support for free-form Card Brainwriting, in addition to Method 635, would also allow idea generation without fixed participant numbers or time limits.
The generated ideas could be transferred to the KJ Method or Affinity Diagramming for organization and subsequently to SCAMPER, Morphological Analysis, or Decision Matrix methods for further development and evaluation.
An LLM-assisted version could help improve problem statements, suggest alternative perspectives, provide examples from unfamiliar domains, and summarize or classify ideas.
However, presenting large numbers of AI-generated suggestions at the beginning of a session may narrow human thinking.
It would therefore be preferable to distinguish between stages of independent human idea generation and stages in which AI-generated stimuli are introduced.
Further integration with the ConceptMiner product family could allow ideas generated through Brainwriting to be organized into conceptual structures and explored using their underlying characteristics and patterns.
Conversely, technologies and examples discovered through ConceptMiner R&D’s Cross-Domain Concept Exploration could be introduced as stimuli for subsequent Brainwriting sessions.
This suggests an iterative process in which idea generation produces new questions, Concept Exploration discovers unfamiliar knowledge, and that knowledge supports further creative thinking.
The significance of Brainwriting lies not simply in producing many ideas quickly, but in preserving individual thinking while connecting the knowledge and insights of different participants to discover new possibilities.
Combining AI with mathematical analysis could support a broader process extending from idea generation and organization to comparison, evaluation, and verification.
Ultimately, however, the important outcome is not the number of ideas produced, but the extent to which those ideas reveal useful and genuinely new possibilities for solving problems.
Primary English Term: Brainwriting
Related Terms: Method 635, 6-3-5 Brainwriting, Brainwriting Pool, Card Brainwriting, Electronic Brainwriting, Divergent Thinking, Production Blocking
Related Thinking Methods:
- Brainstorming — Generating More Ideas by Suspending Judgment
- The KJ Method | Building Meaningful Structures from Fragmented Information
- SCAMPER | Generating New Ideas Through Seven Perspectives
- TRIZ | A Systematic Approach to Inventive Problem Solving Through Technical Contradictions
- Morphological Analysis | Systematically Exploring New Possibilities Through Combinations of Elements
- Analogy — Connecting Knowledge Across Domains to Generate New Ideas and Hypotheses
- Structure-Mapping Theory | Understanding Relational Correspondences and Generating New Inferences Across Domains
- Concept Exploration | Discovering Emerging Concepts and Unknown Possibilities
- Cross-Domain Concept Exploration,
- Decision Matrix | Comparing Alternatives Across Multiple Criteria and Evaluating Decision Validity
- R&D Theme Exploration and Generation
References and Further Reading
- Bernd Rohrbach, “Kreativ nach Regeln – Methode 635, eine neue Technik zum Lösen von Problemen,” Absatzwirtschaft, Vol. 12, No. 19, pp. 73–76, 1969.
- Takahiro Kawaji, “A Study of Early Brainwriting (Method 635),” Journal of the Japan Creativity Society, Vol. 27, pp. 53–64, 2024. (Japanese; a historical examination of the origins, naming, and introduction of Method 635.)
- Arthur B. VanGundy, “Brainwriting for New Product Ideas: An Alternative to Brainstorming,” Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 67–74, 1984.
- Michael Diehl and Wolfgang Stroebe, “Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: Toward the Solution of a Riddle,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 53, No. 3, pp. 497–509, 1987.
- Paul B. Paulus and Huei-Chuan Yang, “Idea Generation in Groups: A Basis for Creativity in Organizations,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 82, No. 1, pp. 76–87, 2000.
- Peter A. Heslin, “Better than Brainstorming? Potential Contextual Boundary Conditions to Brainwriting for Idea Generation in Organizations,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 82, No. 1, pp. 129–145, 2009.
- University of Siegen, 635 Brainwriting. Practical guidance on the procedure and implementation of Method 635.
- Atlassian, How to Build a Better Brainstorming Session: Try Brainwriting. Examples of implementing Brainwriting using digital collaboration tools.