Gaining consensus through images - effective brainstorming and solution capturing

I took part in a seminar which uses an interesting technique involving using images and pictures to capture group thoughts and process. Visionpool has created a tool which is like playing a board game on a table littered with hundreds of abstract images and key words. The structured process forces you to define issues, challenges, identities through the use of these small picture snippets. It forces dialogue and enables groups, people who've never worked together before to share a common, collaborative work space, very quickly and very effectively.

It could be applied to all sorts of different situations – we applied it (with the help of Danish Standards) to workshop on the theme of how one expresses ‘corporate social responsibility’ in large organizations. We looked at ways to define CSR, the dilemmas and also the goals. We came out with some valuable stuff.

To me, one could go further with the tool and capture the benefits to the organisation, i.e. how you prove value-add (or ROI) – so if anyone is interested I can introduce you to the guy that originated the tool and go from there. I'm hoping to join forces and bring some of the work I do on driving innovation and creative development to add to the pot.