How to brainstorm effectively?

A few weeks ago, I took part in a brainstorming session (or talkoot in Suomi) on resting-state networks. The gathering was of academics from Finland at various levels of seniority.

Now, I am just back from a brainstorming session organized by Nokia Research. The group consisted of predominantly NRC engineers, designers, and a few outsiders. Since my lips are sealed by the IPR police, I am not at liberty to tell you what it was about. However, I was paying attention to the creative-argumentative process of each and every participant.

Obviously, the sessions were very different in character, participants, participation, format of discussion, and goals. However, let me attempt to take away some universals, and propose some recommendations on how to brainstorm effectively. Obviously, my impressions are fresh, superficial and open to critique.

How to brainstorm effectively

1. Agree in the first 5 minutes on:
a) What you are talking about
b) What you expect the discussion to lead to

2. Spend the next 5-10 minutes on defining the keywords. Usually, in an "interdisciplinary" (the bunny ears have a deep meaning) setting, for each participant, each keyword has a different set of association-keywords (keywords that are triggered by said keyword). If possible, go around the room once and ask people to suggest a few association-keywords. Organize them into a venn diagram if necessary, with each set representing a single participant or their background. If appropriate, brainstorm a tagline (in the advertising, or elevator-pitch sense: the key idea in 5 words or less) consisting of these keywords. Mutliple taglines representing multiple views of the idea enrich the ensuing discussion.

3. Be aware of
a) bounded rationality (there is not enough time and capacity to examine ALL the facts and derive opinions from first principles)
b) bounded comprehension (you may have to repeat yourself in different words, a different style, or pause to explain keywords)
c) bounded empathy (do not expect each participant to agree with a personal opinion dear to you, such as: come on, let's face it, X is bullshit, right?)

4. As an orchestrator, maintain a sense of balance between
a) obviously contradictory viewpoints due to prior biases of participants (an effective strategy to deal with this is what I'd like to call continuum mapping [1]).
b) the need to not idea-kill (let all flowers bloom) and the need to be precise (about definitions, goals of the session etc.).
c) creativity (btw, it strikes me that this can be applied to XYZ) vs. focus (is this strictly relevant?).

5. Accept beforehand, and expect that your stand on an issue may be contradicted, modified, fleshed out etc.

6. At the end of the session (or even through the session), go back and revise keywords, definitions, venn diagrams and taglines. These can finally be wrapped up cutely, as a take home message.

Any other points?

[1] Continuum mapping (own coinage, open for revision) is a technique that may be used by an arbitrator during a debate, or conflict resolution when parties or people explicitly, and diametrically disagree. The arbitrator simply maps each (polemic) viewpoint at two ends of a continuum, and opens the house for examples/suggestions/parameters/viewpoints that fit somewhere in between the continuum, thus defusing the tension. Continuum mapping may be used to visualize various trade-offs and cost-benefit charts.

Hindustani Classical Music

Training and innate talent, both in harmony, produce stellar musical performances.

I realize today years later that I was in the audience during one such performance when I had just finished high school. Between juggling through the notes and lecture material for university entrance, my otherwise troublesome landlord offered me tickets to attend a classical Indian music concert, to which they were themselves not too keen. The event was at Siri fort Auditorium in New Delhi. It was probably my only 'out of studies' experience for a long time (Hindustani music on wiki).

Frankly, I wasnt too keen since classical Hindustani music was always boring according to pop taste of my age group. Prior to that day the most impressionable exposure about this art had come from a government promoted video on teli in 80's - Baje Sargam (Video 6:36). But being the only opportunity for a change, I also remember wearing my best clothes to this event.

The performances of,

Shiv Kumar Sharma on Santoor 5:05,

Hari Prasad Chaurasia on Flute 3:14,

Ustad Bismillah Khan (recently deceased) on Shehnai 9:14

actually mesmerised me. For some readers the links may do the same, and since then I have heard recordings of many other performers who are masters of their arts in Hindustani Music-

Pandit Ravi Shankar (on Sitar 8:22 , a lesson 8:24), Ustad Zakir Hussain (on Tabla 4:24), Pandit Bhim Sen Joshi (Vocals, english subs 9:59, male) and Shubha Mudgal (Vocals, female, other commercial piece 3:35).

Also try an amazing roadside performance of a melancholic sounding instrument called the Tanpura ( Roadside Tanpura 2:08).

The links are of some personally liked pieces.

Another realm which is commercially more popular is the semi classical form. It originated from the inclination of kings towards music being played in their courts during Kathak (meaning story telling. Derived from "Katha", sanskrit story. A popular dance form which today perhaps unknowingly forms the basis of most commercial bollywood dance videos, ofcourse the western influence is unquestioned nowadays, here is a mixture 5:47, also the wiki link).

Tansen (wiki), is legendary in hindustani music folklore, who is believed to have invoked rains and thunder and lit the wick of a lamp by his singing in the court of Akbar.

For educational purpose - 3 very humble videos on youtube

Part 1 (6:09)

Part 2 (6:22)

Part 3 (5:00)

Unique text material from introduction to ellaborate databse of videos and mp3 regarding Hindustani Music can be found by a Patrick Moutal here .

For events, concerts, education and other programs related to Hindustani Classical Music visit

ITC Sangeet Research Academy Sammelan (official website), Kolkata, Hyderabad, Annual

Gunitas Sangeet Sammelan, Mumbai-Delhi-Kolkata, Nov -Dec, Annual

Saptak Music Festival (institute's official website), Ahmedabad, Gujarat, January, Annual

Sawai Gandharwa Music festival (wiki) , Pune, Maharashtra, December, Annual

Tansen Music Festival (MP tourism info), Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, Nov-Dec, Annual

Dover lane Music Festival (official website), Kolkata, Dec-Jan, Annual

Week long, all night classical music and dance is also on show by the most illustrious performers of India at Khajuraho Dance Festival which is organized at the erotic temples of Khajuraho (MP Tourism info) usually around end of February, annually.

Mission impossible?

Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

-from wikipedia

Under what conditions would contests for innovation work?

I came across a blog post here where somebody suggests a simplistic idea for accelerating algorithm development for a particular application. I welcome suggestions abd discussions about the conditions under which such algorithm development contests would work. Consider the following questions.

1. Who would fund the prize money, and why would they fund it?
2. Researchers at what level would be motivated towards the contest [at the level of a research lab]?
3. What would be the resources required to implement a contest like this, and what would be the value addition, if any?

E-S theory of gender differences

In my web crawling activities du jour, I came across this on wikipedia.

The empathizing–systemizing (E-S) theory seeks to classify people on the basis of their skills in two factors of empathizing and systemizing. It measures skills using as Empathy Quotient (EQ) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ), and attempts to explain the social and communication symptoms in autism spectrum disorders as deficits and delays in empathy combined with intact or superior systemizing.

This theory seems to explain observations from studies of empathy scores etc., and posits that women are more often E-type, while men are more often S-type. To me, this seems counterintuitive. Intuition tells me that the skills required to empathize, see something from another person's point of view (EQ) are the same as those required to systematize, build a model of something, identify regularities in something (SQ).

[Note that I am not fundamentally opposed to geneder differences in cognition and behavior, I just have a nagging feeling about this theory].

Effective policy making: How to recognize and avoid Martingale-like phenomenon?

I was commenting on Cathy's post on big pharma's evil influence on physicians and the comment grew too long, so I decided to make a post our of this. I think the post was a good example to discuss the role of policy making and its perceived role amongst think tanks on the liberal--conservative spectrum, in general.

I can't access the article, but I don't really agree with Dana et al. (2003) 's recommendations to outrightly ban gifts. More generally, I believe that banning first-order incentives (eg. free dinners) will only sprout second-order incentives (eg. awards of recognition for good medical practice certified by BIGPHARMA, or featuring the physician in a popular article by scratching some journalists' backs) that are 'legal'. The same phenomenon is observable in Madoff-like Ponzi schemes. See a post about the Martingale Crisis (link via Laszlo). In one line, the Martingale hypothesis is: "Suppressing system-circumventions by banning them will lead to further circumvention by more innovative system-circumventions".

So, what is NOT the solution? The solution is not to go on banning every incentive system that crops up. I'll go so far as to say that in my opinion, this is symptomatic of think tanks on the far left and far right, who favor top down solutions from the government rather than bottom up solutions by involving the parties concerened. Rather, it is more effective to recognize that incentives are fundamental to ANY negotiation, be it at the level of policy making among the power-elite, or at home between husband and wife, parent and child. If you need people to get on board with a decision/action/law/yadayada, you need to INCENTIVIZE them, and the most effective solution will be to ask each party what they want. Sadly, this is easier said than done. Of course, the importance of being unbiased cannot be stressed enough.

For a more theoretical analysis of such concepts, we could look to the liberal paradox and arrow's impossibility theorem. I hereby incentivize anyone who is willing to translate these theorems from acadamese to English, by promising a beer-day-out on me.

Looking a (small) gift-horse in the mouth

I came across an interesting article by Dana and Loewenstein (2003) that i vaguely heard of once before about the influence of small pharmaceutical gifts on doctors' decisions.

The basic questions are:
1) do gifts influence doctors' beliefs/prescribing habits, and
2) is this a function of gift size

Both doctors and regulating bodies must think that 1) and 2) are true, since the recent guidelines of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America define gifts of "more than nominal value" as inappropriate. And surveys show that physicians view small gifts as ethically more acceptable than large gifts, and they don't think that small gifts tempting enough to influence physicians' prescription choices.

Pharmaceutical companies also believe 1) is true, but many restrict their own employees from accepting even small gifts. => big pharma knows something we don't.

Thus policies that restrict gift sizes will be useless if biases introduced by gifts are not related to the size of the gift.

Here's the scenario:
-Pharmaceutical companies employ representatives who meet with physicians with apparent success to aggressively promote newer and typically more expensive drugs
-a study of 29 empirical articles showed that physician interactions with pharmaceutical companies led to increased prescription costs and nonrational prescribing
-all this is questionable, because from 1989 to 2000, the US Food and Drug Administration judged 76% of all approved new drugs to be no more than moderate innovations over existing treatments, with many being a modification to an older product with the same ingredient. In 2000, the average price of these standard-rated new drugs was nearly twice the average price of existing drugs prescribed for the same indications.

some outcomes

• - one retrospective study24 tracked house staff who attended a grand rounds given by a pharmaceutical company speaker and found them more likely to indicate that company's drug as a treatment than did their colleagues. However, many of the house staff did not recall what company sponsored the grand rounds (this reminds me of the Overcoming Bias blog)

• -a positive correlation has been found between the cost of physicians' treatment choices and their amount of interaction with pharmaceutical company representatives

Frame of reference bias
Alas, it seems that we are the centre of our own universe, where translational invariance to another's frame of reference does not apply (unlike the laws of physics). "A recent study of medical residents26 found that 61% reported that 'promotions don't influence my practice,' while only 16% believed the same about other physician's practices. Clearly, it cannot both be true that most physicians are unbiased and that most other physicians are biased!! Furthermore, medical students recognize gifts as more problematic for other professions than they are for medicine."

Interestingly, all this works the other way around too. "Patients, while somewhat more concerned about the possible biasing effects of gifts than physicians, seem to be vicariously self-serving in their perceptions, believing that other individuals' physicians are more likely to be biased by gifts than their own physicians."

The article concludes that, without properly understanding the sources of conflict of interest, it is impossible to make policies to regulate it. They recommend that pharmaceutical gifts of all sizes should be prohobited, as even small is big in this case.