I don’t. After years of conducting “outside the box” brainstorming sessions with both staff and clients, almost always with exhaustive and frustrating results, often due to realities that limit how out-of-the box we can really be, I changed my strategy to “thinking inside the balloon.”

The reality is that we all have limitations – budgets, time, resources, skills, knowledge, to name a few. With a “thinking inside the balloon” approach, we acknowledge that there is no point is coming up with a Single Barrel Bourbon idea if we’re limited by beer variables. But what if we could stretch our domestic beer variables to craft or import beer results by being creative? Now we’ve set some parameters to make the value of our brainstorm more focused and productive.

Few things are more deflating (yes, I used that pun in my reply) than pulling a team together and coming away from a brainstorm with nothing particularly actionable because the time was wasted on moonshot ideas when the hand we were dealt would only allow us to get across the lake… in 24 hours… with no allocated budget… while 2 members of our team were on PTO. In fact, I’ll argue that placing practical restrictions or limits on the parameters of the project challenges the participants’ creativity and innovation even further than a free-for-all.

With an “inside the balloon” approach, we tap into creative and emotional intelligence and leadership to recognize there are limits in our worlds, and it is our objective to stretch those limits beyond the current capacity of “the balloon” – as far as we can – without popping it.

** Not included in my reply, but as I think about it – consider the Appolo 13 challenge of filtering the CO2 with only what was available on board. No point in trying to figure out how to get a new filter system up to the crew from Earth. Working with what they had available kept them inside the balloon and focused. And maybe THEN they had a shot of bourbon when they safely returned (or, I imagine they did).