The participants your choose to be a part of a brainstorm are obviously important, but the there are numerous ways to decide who to include.

A Half & Half is a ideation and problem solving format that I use for small groups. The basic idea is a pretty simple and might be a way to add a new dimension to your next brainstorm...give it a try.

1) Invite a group of curious people together (I suggest no more than 8).

2) Make sure at least half are new faces

3) Try to include at least one “creative” (an artist, designer, etc), and at least one person who is radically outside your industry.

4) Have just one cental topic or question to explore.

You can run the discussion freestyle or use something more formal. Typical meeting/collaboration challenges will apply. It can help to have a facilitator and a note-taker.

Depending how you tweek the meeting, different outcomes can be reached. Perhaps you want to raise issues...asking broader questions might be in order. Perhaps you want to look at new angles of a problem your team is stuck on...have the old-hands describe the problem in a short 5 min presentation and then spend 20 minutes silently listing to the ideas of the newbies. 

There is a lot of talk about bring together interdisciplinary groups to solve problem but it is tough to execute. Often are networks are not as broad as we might think. You might consider inviting someone else to curate the newbie half of the meeting. 

As long as the participants are generally curious and open minded, good facilitation should be able to make the group work. If you don't have good facilitation, it still will be inclined to new ideas because of the new people. The main contribution of a Half & Half is in making a conscious curatorial decision to bring in new perspectives and to bring in enough of them that they have a voice in the room.

- There are a few principles at work here will encourage new ideas.

1) Having new people who are not versed in the social dynamics and history of the problem you are trying to solve forces the old-hands to look at each other and the problem anew.

2) Sometime there is already an appropriate solution available and in common use in a different industry.

3) Conflicts are good when trying to generate ideas, as long as they support the meeting goal. New perspectives introduce new conflicts of interest and vision that encourage the participants to be creative.

4) Participants from outside your industry will have a harder time seeing the kind of specific applications your group might be jumping to already. When trying to generate new ideas, holding off on looking for application is your friend.

I use these principles often when putting together Double Happiness Workgroups.

Good luck.

He was kind enough to forward me some leads on sustainability case
studies. Perhaps they might be of interest?

All of these cases are from Harvard, at: http://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/cases

I believe they cost is like $7/each to see the whole thing.

A few interesting cases regarding sustainability:

·         Ikea’s Global Sourcing Challenge: Indian Rugs and Child
Labor (HBS 2006)

·         Forest Stewardship Council (HBS 2002) [non profit org case]

·         UBS and Climate change: Warming up to Global Action (HBS 2007)

·         Sustainable Development at Shell (A) (HBS 2003)

Below are the blurbs on each:

Ikea’s Global Sourcing Challenge: Indian Rugs and Child Labor (HBS 2006)

Case summary: Traces the history of IKEA's response to a TV report
that its Indian carpet suppliers were using child labor. Describes
IKEA's growth, including the importance of a sourcing strategy based
on its close relationships with suppliers in developing countries.
Details the development of IKEA's strong culture and values that
include a commitment "to create a better everyday life for many
people." Describes how, in response to regulatory and public pressure,
IKEA developed a set of environmental policies that grew to encompass
a relationship with Greenpeace and WWF on forest management and
conservation. Then, in 1994, Marianne Barner, a newly appointed IKEA
product manager, is surprised by a Swedish television documentary on
the use of child labor by Indian carpet suppliers, including some that
supply IKEA's rugs. She immediately implements a strict policy that
provides for contract cancellation if any IKEA supplier uses child
labor. Then Barner is confronted by a German TV producer who advises
her that he is about to broadcast an investigative program documenting
the use of child labor in one of the company's major suppliers. How
should she react to the crisis? How should the company deal with the
ongoing issue of child labor in the supply chain?

Forest Stewardship Council (HBS 2002)

Case summary: In just a few years the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
made impressive progress toward its mission of promoting
"environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically
viable management of the world's forests." By 2001, 25.5 million
hectares of forests in 66 countries had been certified as meeting
FSC's standards for sustainable forestry. With members in 59
countries, the FSC had managed to bring forestry's mainstream close to
its viewpoint, with 80% of the industry recognizing the need for
third-party certification. However, by mid-2002, the formula that had
brought success to the organization as a small start-up was proving
inadequate to sustain the healthy growth of a global, mature,
multi-stakeholder organization. Its management and staff were finding
themselves lacking critical skills to take the organization to the
next level. Some of its governing structures were paralyzing it.
Serious imbalances between supply and demand of certified wood were
threatening to break the organization. Moreover, competing
certification schemes backed by powerful business groups were moving
swiftly to capitalize on those imbalances and displace FSC as the
global standard of choice for certification. Finally, the organization
also suffered from a chronic financial weakness. In that context,
Heiko Liedeker, FSC's executive director, is compelled to rethink the
organization.

UBS and Climate change: Warming up to Global Action (HBS 2007)

Case summary: Marco Suter, Executive Vice-Chairman, UBS Board of
Directors, carefully studied the chart on his desk. It showed the
public commitment of major financial institutions to help mitigate
global warming. Evidently, UBS lagged behind its competitors. The
graph was part of a report that environmental specialists and senior
executives at UBS had compiled. It suggested the company adopt a more
progressive policy on climate change. Suter thought about the options
that the working group had generated. These ranged from stabilizing
the company's current carbon emissions to complete carbon neutrality.
The UBS Corporate Responsibility Committee would meet early next week.
Suter wondered which option he should support.

Sustainable Development at Shell (A) (HBS 2003)

Case summary: Describes the complex and challenging process by which
social and environmental concerns are integrated into the existing
strategy of a large, multinational firm. Details the circumstances
leading up to a large-scale effort to transform Shell's strategy to
take into account principles of sustainable development. This case
describes corporate-level sustainable development initiatives and the
process through which a comprehensive sustainable development strategy
was initiated and developed.

Through thinking about self-organizing events I stumbled onto the
fascinating world of democratic management and in particular the
Brazilian company SEMCO. I am a big fan.

SEMCO is a model of a self-regulated system at work...employees set
their own hours, suggest their pay, all meetings are voluntary, etc.

What is cool about them is that they have figured out how to use there
people well and stay innovative even as a big company. They have
navigated the volatile economic environment in Brazil with amazing
success...for 20+years!

The key to it all seem to be radical transparency...something that
seems to be easier in privately-held companies.

To get the details check out Ricardo Semler, the principle at SEMCO. He
has written two books about the company. I would suggest starting with
the first one "Maverick" because it details the changes of the company
more over time. Maverick has a ridiculous 80's biz cover but you have
to get beyond that kind of thing.

SEMCO: http://www.semco.com.br/en

Interview: http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Expert-Voices/Ricardo-Semler-Set-Them-Free/