Page 150 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

SUMMARY OF STEPS

1. The facilitator creates target or focus statements.
2. Participants write replies to these targets on slips of paper, one

idea per slip.
3. The facilitator performs data reduction.
4. The final report is written. It includes all the related comments

from the idea slips, itemized under the relevant subcategory
headings.

73/9. DELPHI TECHNIQUE 101
CREATIVE
The traditional Delphi process used in scenario forecasting
can be employed in generating alternatives in much the same PROBLEM
manner as individual brainstorming. 22 In the Delphi pro- SOLVING
cess a questionnaire, based on some perception of a situa-
tion, is mailed or otherwise communicated to experts in the TECHNIQUES
field. Their individual responses are collected, and summa-
rized, and the summaries are returned to each expert with
instructions to revise his or her responses as necessary. The
process continues through a series of iterations until a gen-
eral consensus is reached. Participants whose responses de-
viate widely from those of the other participants are required
to submit justifications for the disparity. These too are sum-
marized and distributed to the others.

The Delphi technique is especially useful in situations in
which it is important to separate the ideas of individuals from
those of others yet to collect them into a combined set pro-
duced by an "expert" group. It is a noninteractive group tech-
nique by design, but interaction does in fact occur. Thou-
sands of major Delphi studies have been carried out in many
disciplines and in various societies. For example, the tech-
nique has been used to identify the ten most important is-
sues of the 1990s in human resources management, 23 future
trends in logistics management, 24 and the expected levels of
tourism in Singapore. 25

This is an excellent technique for pooling the ideas of geo-
graphically separated experts. All participants have an equal
chance to make a contribution, and the ideas are judged on
their merits, not on their sources. Moreover, ideas are not
influenced by individual or group persuasion. There are