0 Class Connectionz : Mental Locks

During design concept brainstorming, why is it better to raise the bar for the number of ideas generated?

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

- Linus Pauling 1901-1994
Chemist , Nobel Prize winner (Nature of Chemical bonds)

As discussed in class, it is important to have a number of ideas during brainstorming. Emphasis is on quantity rather than quality. So judgements are to be deferred.

So with that statement, some of prominent "mental locks" to generating ideas are :

There is only one good answer
That's not logical
Follow the rules
Be practical
Play is frivolous
Thats not my area
Don't be foolish
Avoid Ambiguity
To err is wrong

Part of the problem is that our formal education trains our left brain more than the right. The left is associated with analytical thinking. Emotions, intuition and associativity is related to right brain thinking.

Most of the mental locks mentioned above are associated with left brain (analytical) thinking. So hence I have learnt how important the right brain is in engineering!