The Brainstorm Beacon is a leap forward from traditional brainstorming methods, providing a more effective solution for idea generation and team collaboration. Its key advantages include:

Better Quantity and Quality of Ideas: The Brainstorm Beacon facilitates generation of more ideas and and better quality of ideas. This happens due to capacity to enable participation from an unlimited number of team members, creating a richer and more diverse pool of ideas than what is typically achieved in conventional in-person sessions.

 Reduction of Cognitive Biases and Groupthink: By allowing individual thinking before group discussions, the Brainstorm Beacon helps to produce a more diverse and unbiased range of ideas. This approach effectively reduces the risks associated with groupthink and the dominance of certain voices, fostering more democratic and creative outcomes.

 Anonymity and Objective Evaluation: The tool’s feature of anonymity ensures that ideas are judged based on their merit alone. This objective evaluation process helps diminish biases, leading to a more fair and balanced assessment of each idea.

 Efficient Categorization and Focus on Top Ideas: Technology categorizes inputs and helps to concentrate discussions on the most promising ideas

 Scalability and Inclusivity: There is no limit on how many members you want to include or where they are located. This feature is crucial in the current landscape of global and remote work, where traditional brainstorming methods may be impractical.

 Record Keeping: All your information is available for 1 year and you can revisit your databank of ideas or re-run and improve them.

 In summary, the Brainstorm Beacon, by harnessing technology and advanced cognitive approaches, presents a superior alternative to traditional brainstorming. It not only amplifies creativity and idea diversity but also ensures a more organized, inclusive, and unbiased method for group idea generation and discussion.

The principles behind The Brainstorm Beacon are grounded in scientific research.

Effectiveness of online brainstorming sessions have been researched earlier. Sources:

Brainstorming—From Classics to Electronics: Journal of Engineering Design: Vol 7, No 1 (tandfonline.com)

A Meta-Analysis of Group Side Effects in Electronic Brainstorming: More Heads are Better than One: Media & Communications Journal Article | IGI Global (igi-global.com)

Electronic Brainstorming and Group Size on JSTOR

The medium matters: Mining the long-promised merit of group interaction in creative idea generation tasks in a meta-analysis of the electronic group brainstorming literature – ScienceDirect

The design of The Brainstorm Beacon Journey itself addresses the problem of known biases during group work. These biases are distinct psychological concepts, which concern cognitive processes or phenomenon, particularly in decision-making and group dynamics. We can reference a couple of known sources for your convenience.

Daniel Kahneman’s ”Thinking, Fast and Slow” delves deeply into the workings of human cognition, differentiating between two systems of thought: System 1 (fast, intuitive, and emotional) and System 2 (slower, more deliberative, and more logical).

Kahneman’s theories suggest that allowing individual input collection before group discussion can be beneficial for several reasons:

Reduction of Groupthink: Kahneman highlights how groups can be influenced by biases and a desire for conformity. Collecting individual inputs before the group meets can reduce the risk of ’groupthink’, where the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.

Utilizing System 2 Thinking: By giving individuals time to think independently, you encourage System 2 thinking — the more deliberative, logical processing. This can lead to more thoughtful, well-reasoned inputs as opposed to the quick, intuitive reactions of System 1 that might dominate in a real-time group setting.

Mitigating Anchoring Bias: Kahneman discusses how people’s decisions and estimations are influenced by initial anchors or values. In group settings, the first idea or opinion expressed can act as an anchor, swaying the subsequent discussion. Independent input collection can help in gathering unbiased ideas, free from the influence of early anchors.

Diversity of Thought: Collecting inputs individually ensures a diversity of thought, as each person’s unique perspectives and cognitive biases are less likely to be overshadowed by dominant personalities or consensus-seeking behavior in group settings.

Overcoming Availability Heuristic: Kahneman explains the ’availability heuristic’, where people overestimate the importance of information that is readily available to them. In a group setting, the most recent or most loudly expressed ideas might dominate. Individual input collection allows for a broader range of ideas, not just those that are most readily recalled or most forcefully presented in a group context.

In essence, Kahneman’s work, offers valuable insights into how individual cognition can contribute to more effective group processes when individual inputs are collected before group discussions. This approach can help mitigate various cognitive biases and encourage more rational, diverse, and well-considered contributions in group settings.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic in his HBR article Why Brainstorming Works Better Online (hbr.org) Is summarising the research on both topics of online brainstorming and difficulties of group work biases.

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Certainly! Once you’ve registered an account, you gain access to Brainstorm Beacon for an entire year. Keep in mind, it’s a bit solitary when navigating the tool alone. The Journey is designed for team ideation – that’s where it really comes to life! Whenever you’re ready to brainstorm with your team, adding users is a simple and straightforward process.

No! You pay for the product only once based on the number of users. After that you can access it for a year at no cost. We bill annually

Data Safety and Security at Our Organization

At DigitaBlue, data safety is paramount. We collect various types of data to enhance our services, including organizational metrics, market trends, and user feedback, which are critical for our Consulting Journeys.

We store all collected data in a secure Atlas Mongo database, utilizing AWS Lambda for processing, which adheres to the industry’s best practices for data security. Our commitment to data protection includes robust encryption, strict access controls, and the implementation of cutting-edge firewalls and anti-virus software to guard against unauthorized access and threats.

In compliance with GDPR, we ensure user data is handled with respect for privacy and user rights. We regularly review and update our data safety protocols to align with the latest regulations and technological advances.

Our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use provide transparent insights into how we manage and protect user data. They outline the rights users have over their data, including access, rectification, and erasure.

In the event of a data breach, we have established a clear and effective incident response plan to mitigate risks and inform affected parties as required by law. We also conduct periodic security audits to identify and address potential vulnerabilities.

We believe that employee awareness is key to data safety, hence we conduct regular training sessions to ensure our team is informed about their roles in maintaining data security.

Our use of data is always to improve user experience and operational excellence. We do not share user data with third parties without explicit consent and ensure that strict confidentiality agreements govern all data sharing.

In summary, DigitaBlue’s approach to data safety is comprehensive and adaptive, prioritizing the security and privacy of our users’ data.

You should only pay for The Brainstorm Beacon if you recognize its value. While you can test the product free of charge, its full potential is evident in team collaboration.

 Before deciding to purchase, consider these questions:

1. Team Size for Ideation: How many participants are needed for your ideation?
   Research indicates that the productivity of group brainstorming diminishes significantly as group size increases, with over 6 members things can get messy. With The Brainstorm Beacon each member works individually first, and technology is collecting input, so managing big groups is efficient and easy.
2. Geographical Spread: Are your team members dispersed across multiple locations?
   The Brainstorm Beacon is exceptionally convenient for ideation in such scenarios
3. Current Ideation Tools: Do you have a go-to tool for brainstorming or innovation?
   If you’re lacking a simple and efficient tool for quick idea generation, consider the Brainstorm Beacon. NOTE, you can involve external partners in the ideation process, innovating together with your customers or end-users.
4. Groupwork Biases: How skilled are you at navigating groupwork biases?
   Facilitating effective brainstorming requires every participant to be mindful of them, a task that can be quite demanding. Let the Brainstorm Beacon take away the headache of managing these biases for you.
5. Importance of Idea Generation and Innovation: How vital are new ideas to your organization’s growth and development? In scenarios where rapid and frequent ideation is crucial – such as developing new products or seeking innovative solutions – having a robust databank of ideas can be invaluable.