brainstorming for presentation topics is usually a timed activity

12 Selecting a Topic: Brainstorming your ideas

Learning Objectives

It is important to spend time thinking about your speech topic before you begin the speech making process.

• Select a topic that you can research.
• Connect the topic to your own interests and the audience.

Selecting a Topic

Before crafting the body of your speech, you must select a topic, determine a purpose, and write a thesis statement. When choosing your speech topic, brainstorm to generate many ideas, and distill those ideas to find your singular topic. As you begin to prepare for any speech, it’s important to pin down exactly about what you plan to talk. You might have been given a specific topic by a professor or supervisor, or you may be simply invited to speak at an event where the topic is up to you. Knowing how to carefully select your topic is an important first step in preparing for a successful speech.

Brainstorming

One of the best ways to help solidify your speech topic is to brainstorm. You can brainstorm by yourself, or you might want to bring in a few friends, colleagues, or classmates to help you come up with ideas in a group setting. You can brainstorm using a number of different exercises.

Word Association

Start with a broad topic idea. What words, topics, or other subjects do you associate with that first topic? Now what words, topics, or other subjects do you associate with the following word? Continue this chain of word association to give you a broad spectrum of ideas.

Also known as mind-mapping, clustering gives your word association a visual form. Start with your main idea and draw a circle around it, thinking of it as the hub of a wheel. Now, begin to write other associated ideas, topics, or subcategories related to that main topic around the hub, and connect them as separate spokes. From each spoke, begin to jot down other associated ideas and thoughts. As your cluster begins to grow, you might want to connect smaller spokes to one another and create new links between subjects.

Freewriting

This is probably the simplest brainstorming method of all. Set a timer and begin writing whatever thoughts or ideas come to mind about your particular subject. You might find it easier to type your freewriting instead of writing it by hand, so you can keep up with your thoughts faster. Whatever you do, don’t stop writing.

Another way of freewriting is to record yourself talking for a set period of time and then transcribe your key points to go back to and clarify later. Once your time is up, go back and highlight or circle relevant points or topics that stick out for you. You’ll refine these later.

Distill Your Ideas into One Topic

Once you’ve brainstormed your many ideas, it’s time to refine your ideas and distill them into one topic. Look for themes, patterns, and commonalities when going through your brainstorming notes. Use these themes to help guide you toward a singular topic.

Do a Little Homework

While you will definitely research your topic, you might want to do some “presearch” – that is, a little research before the real research. Do a quick scan to see what others have said or written about your topic. This might give you even more ideas on how to refine and distill your topic, or more appropriately adapt it to your audience or venue.

Key Takeaways

It is important to brainstorm your topic and the possibilities of the topic.

• Consider how you will continue to develop this topic through researching and connecting with your audience.
• You might consider audience’s understanding of this topic and how you can add value to their knowledge.
• Once you have selected a topic, you can move to your next speech making step.

Public Speaking Copyright © by Dr. Layne Goodman; Amber Green, M.A.; and Various is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Table of contents

What is brainstorming?

Definition of brainstorming.

Brainstorming is a creative thinking technique for coming up with new ideas and solving problems. Teams use this ideation method to encourage new ways of thinking and collectively generate solutions. Brainstorming encourages free thinking and allows for all ideas to be voiced without judgment, fostering an open and innovative environment. This process typically involves a group of people, although it can be done individually as well.

This guide will help you get the most out of every creative session. When you're ready to start your next free thinking exercise, jump into Miro’s brainstorming tool to generate ideas and turn them into action.

What is the main purpose of brainstorming?

The primary purpose of a brainstorming session is to generate and document many ideas, no matter how “out there” they might seem. Through this lateral thinking process, inventive ideas are suggested, which sparks creative solutions. By encouraging everyone to think more freely and not be afraid to share their ideas, teams can build on each other’s thoughts to find the best possible solution to a problem. Brainstorming usually takes place in a group setting where people get together to creatively solve problems and come up with ideas. However, it’s also useful for individuals who need to explore novel solutions to a problem. Sitting down by yourself and writing down solutions to potential problems is a great way to brainstorm individually. Focusing your mind on a defined problem allows you to think of many creative ways to get to an answer. While brainstorming normally allows for free-form methods of thinking and doesn’t require many rules, the best results usually stem from controlled sessions. Posing questions and role-playing different scenarios during the brainstorming session is a smart way to pull out unusual ideas and never-before-thought-of solutions.

Benefits of brainstorming

Why is brainstorming such a popular approach to solving problems and generating ideas? Here are some of its many advantages:

Encourages creativity

Brainstorming sessions are meant to be free of judgment. Everyone involved is meant to feel safe and confident enough to speak their minds. There will be some good and some bad ideas, but this doesn’t matter as long as the final outcome is one that can solve the problem. This kind of free-thinking environment, along with a few essential brainstorming rules, encourage creativity in the workplace.

Fosters collaboration and team building

Brainstorming is not only good for problem-solving. It also allows employees and team members to understand how the people around them think. It helps the team get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and helps build a more inclusive and close-knit workforce.

Generates innovative, revolutionary ideas

Brainstorming is the perfect mix between a free-thinking, creative environment and one that is governed by rules. Being faced with a defined problem or asking questions like “What do we do in X scenario?” forces everyone in the room to come up with ideas and solutions. No two people think alike. So, combining the good parts of everyone’s answers will result in holistic and revolutionary solutions.

Establishes different perspectives

One of the major benefits of brainstorming is that it allows and encourages all members of the session to freely propose ideas. This type of environment fosters courage in people who may not usually offer their perspective on a problem. Garnering a range of different perspectives can lead to a never-before-thought-of solution.

Introduces many ideas quickly

The beauty of brainstorming is that it encourages teams to come up with many ideas in a relatively short period of time. Ideas are thrown around, and every train of thought is documented. Different perspectives give different answers, and sifting through a few good answers in quick succession may lead to the perfect solution in no time.

Types of brainstorming techniques

There are plenty of creative brainstorming techniques to choose from. Here are some of the most popular ones:

Reverse brainstorming

In a typical brainstorming session, the group is asked to consider solutions to a problem. This means that they will spend time thinking about the outcome — the end goal — rather than the root of the problem — the starting point. Reverse brainstorming is simply the opposite: teams are asked to ideate on the problem instead of the solution. This type of brainstorming is done before the start of an important project, as it helps teams anticipate any future obstacles that might arise. To help frame this way of thinking, use a Reverse Brainstorming Template to get the team started.

Random word brainstorming

One of the main goals of a brainstorming session is to come up with new ideas. One of the best ways to do this is to say the first words that come to mind when a specific topic or subject is mentioned. Random word brainstorming allows for exactly that. The team is given a problem, and they need to shout out the first words that they think of, regardless of what they are. These words are then written down and later put into interesting combinations to see if they will lead to a usable solution. This brainstorming method is extremely fast and usually very efficient at solving a defined problem. The Random Words Brainstorming Template can help get you started.

The 5 Whys Method

Like the reverse brainstorming method, the 5 Whys method aims to look at the root causes of a problem to stop that same issue from arising again. This method attempts to curb the problem before it can reoccur by asking the question “why?” over and over until it can no longer be answered. Once you reach this stage, you have arrived at the root cause of the issue.

SCAMPER model

Developed by Bob Earle, an author of creativity books for kids, the SCAMPER model was originally a game aimed at imagination development in adolescents. It has, however, become popular in the corporate world as a means of improving and encouraging creativity in team members when dealing with complex, defined problems. Using this model, your team will view a problem through 7 filters: substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, and reverse.

Rapid ideation

Rapid ideation brainstorming is almost the exact same thinking model as random word brainstorming. In this method, however, everyone writes down the solutions they are thinking of instead of shouting them out. This gives participants a bit more privacy with their immediate thoughts — possibly leading to even more creative and revolutionary outcomes.

Starbursting

Once again, brainstorming can change based on the team’s perspective and each session’s expected outcome. Starburst brainstorming focuses on getting the team to ask questions instead of coming up with answers.

How to hold a brainstorming workshop

Ready to harness the power of a well-run brainstorming session? Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to organize a successful brainstorming workshop:

1. Assign a facilitator

When done as a group, a brainstorming session needs to have boundaries. You need to choose someone who will facilitate the session and provide guidelines for the thinking exercises that the group will partake in. This is so the session doesn’t get too scattered and stays on the right track. The facilitator should pose questions and guide the group from start to finish.

2. Establish context and ensure group understanding

A brainstorming session cannot be properly carried out without context. The group must understand why they are meeting and what the end goal of the session is. Everyone should also understand the meaning of brainstorming and what to expect from the brainstorming process. The brainstorming method that will be used should also be established (see point 5) and explained at the outset.

3. Define an objective

While brainstorming is often looked at as a form of free-thinking creativity, it is best to try to stay within certain rules. It’s essential that you define a clear objective and use the session to reach your predetermined goal.

4. Set a time limit

Setting a defined time limit before the session starts is important to the success of your brainstorming session. No doubt your team could come up with countless ideas, but there has to be a limit on how long the session can run. Knowing that you need to solve a problem within one hour, for instance, will help the team focus on the job at hand and come up with ideas faster. It will also keep everyone thinking about the same problem.

5. Decide on the brainstorming technique

The brainstorming technique that will be used must be decided on before the session begins. The best way to do this is to look at the problem at hand. If you’re looking to prevent obstacles from arising in the future, try the “5 Whys” technique. If you’re looking to come up with new marketing ideas or get creative with workplace conflicts, try the rapid ideation technique.

6. Set some ground rules

As stated above, the best and most productive brainstorming sessions are those that allow for free thinking and creativity within preset boundaries. Brainstorming ground rules are essential to to the success of the session, as they keep everyone focused on the topic at hand and ensure that no one goes off track.

7. Capture all ideas

The entire point of a brainstorming session is to come up with as many ideas as possible, regardless of whether the standalone suggestion will lead to success. This means that you need to use the right tools to document the ideas being suggested. Miro has a host of idea-capturing tools, including a simple-to-use visual platform for remote brainstorming sessions and digital sticky notes .

8. Discuss and vote on ideas

After all the ideas have been captured, it’s time to discuss them. The team needs to be productive in choosing a creative idea that suits the problem, or they can try combining a few ideas to come up with a holistic solution. To make decisions as a group and come to an agreement, teams can use the dot voting method . This technique reveals group priorities and helps everyone reach a consensus on the direction to take.

9. Turn ideas into action

Once the final idea has been chosen, it’s time to create a plan of action and a deadline for the idea to be put in place. Transform your ideas into detailed, tangible steps with the Action Plan Template . This will help with coordination between team members and ensures that nothing is missed.

Tips for your brainstorming activities

While all brainstorming sessions look a little different, here are some best practices to get the most out of yours:

Record all ideas

If you want to have a successful and productive brainstorming session, it’s important that you capture every idea suggested, good and bad. An idea might seem silly when first brought up, but it might become an invaluable idea as the session moves on. Capture everything, and right at the end, work out which ideas best suit the problem.

Ensure that everyone’s ideas are heard

When brainstorming is done as a group activity, everyone needs to feel comfortable and confident to propose ideas. The best way to make sure the environment fosters these feelings is to make the session feel like a conversation, not a presentation. Create a safe and open environment that gives everyone equal opportunity to voice their opinions and ideas.

Focus on quantity

People often like to say, "Focus on quality, not quantity," but it’s the opposite when brainstorming. In a brainstorming session, you should focus on getting as many ideas on the board as possible, even if they're only one-word ideas. These can all be used to come to a holistic solution at the end of the session. Each suggestion could be invaluable if you're coming up with a combined idea.

Brainstorming should be a fun and creative endeavor. You shouldn’t be too rigid — though some ground rules are important. If your team has weekly brainstorming sessions, try new brainstorming techniques and activities each time you meet. This will keep your team members on their toes and help make them excited about the next meeting. It will also encourage out-of-the-box thinking, which is essential to any successful brainstorming session.

Avoid criticism

We’ll say it again: there are no bad ideas in a brainstorming session. This is the attitude that all team members must adopt when entering the session. No one should be criticized for the ideas that they propose. The best way to foster an environment that is devoid of criticism and encourages creativity is to maintain a relaxed approach. This will make everyone feel comfortable and happy to contribute their ideas.

Discover more

Guide to collaborative brainstorming, when to use brainstorming (and which techniques are best), what is brainwriting, what is reverse brainstorming, how to conduct a brainstorming session, get on board in seconds, plans and pricing.

Chapter 9: Preparing a Speech

9.1 selecting and narrowing a topic, learning objectives.

• Employ audience analysis.
• Determine the general purpose of a speech.
• List strategies for narrowing a speech topic.
• Compose an audience-centered, specific purpose statement for a speech.
• Compose a thesis statement that summarizes the central idea of a speech.

There are many steps that go into the speech-making process. Many people do not approach speech preparation in an informed and systematic way, which results in many poorly planned or executed speeches that are not pleasant to sit through as an audience member and don’t reflect well on the speaker. Good speaking skills can help you stand out from the crowd in increasingly competitive environments. While a polished delivery is important and will be discussed more in Chapter 10 “Delivering a Speech” , good speaking skills must be practiced much earlier in the speech-making process.

Analyze Your Audience

Audience analysis is key for a speaker to achieve his or her speech goal. One of the first questions you should ask yourself is “Who is my audience?” While there are some generalizations you can make about an audience, a competent speaker always assumes there is a diversity of opinion and background among his or her listeners. You can’t assume from looking that everyone in your audience is the same age, race, sexual orientation, religion, or many other factors. Even if you did have a fairly homogenous audience, with only one or two people who don’t match up, you should still consider those one or two people. When I have a class with one or two older students, I still consider the different age demographics even though twenty other students are eighteen to twenty-two years old. In short, a good speaker shouldn’t intentionally alienate even one audience member. Of course, a speaker could still unintentionally alienate certain audience members, especially in persuasive speaking situations. While this may be unavoidable, speakers can still think critically about what content they include in the speech and the effects it may have.

Good speakers should always assume a diversity of backgrounds and opinions among their audience members.

TEDx UniversityofTulsa – Audience – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Even though you should remain conscious of the differences among audience members, you can also focus on commonalities. When delivering a speech in a college classroom, you can rightfully assume that everyone in your audience is currently living in the general area of the school, is enrolled at the school, and is currently taking the same speech class. In professional speeches, you can often assume that everyone is part of the same professional organization if you present at a conference, employed at the same place or in the same field if you are giving a sales presentation, or experiencing the nervousness of starting a new job if you are leading an orientation or training. You may not be able to assume much more, but that’s enough to add some tailored points to your speech that will make the content more relevant.

Demographic Audience Analysis

Demographics are broad sociocultural categories, such as age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, education level, religion, ethnicity, and nationality that are used to segment a larger population. Since you are always going to have diverse demographics among your audience members, it would be unwise to focus solely on one group over another. As a speaker, being aware of diverse demographics is useful in that you can tailor and vary examples to appeal to different groups of people. As you can read in the “Getting Real” feature in this chapter, engaging in audience segmentation based on demographics is much more targeted in some careers.

Psychological Audience Analysis

Psychological audience analysis considers your audience’s psychological dispositions toward the topic, speaker, and occasion and how their attitudes, beliefs, and values inform those dispositions. When considering your audience’s disposition toward your topic, you want to assess your audience’s knowledge of the subject. You wouldn’t include a lesson on calculus in an introductory math course. You also wouldn’t go into the intricacies of a heart transplant to an audience with no medical training. A speech on how to give a speech would be redundant in a public speaking class, but it could be useful for high school students or older adults who are going through a career transition. Students in my class recently had to theme their informative speeches around the topic of renewable energy. They were able to tie their various topics to a new renewable energy production plant that opened that semester on our campus. They had to be careful not to overrun their speech with scientific jargon. One student compared the concept of biogasification to the natural gas production that comes from living creatures like humans and cows. This comparison got a laugh from the audience and also made the seemingly complex concept more understandable.

The audience may or may not have preconceptions about you as a speaker. One way to positively engage your audience is to make sure you establish your credibility. In terms of credibility , you want the audience to see you as competent, trustworthy, and engaging. If the audience is already familiar with you, they may already see you as a credible speaker because they’ve seen you speak before, have heard other people evaluate you positively, or know that you have credentials and/or experience that make you competent. If you know you have a reputation that isn’t as positive, you will want to work hard to overcome those perceptions. To establish your trustworthiness, you want to incorporate good supporting material into your speech, verbally cite sources, and present information and arguments in a balanced, noncoercive, and nonmanipulative way. To establish yourself as engaging, you want to have a well-delivered speech, which requires you to practice, get feedback, and practice some more. Your verbal and nonverbal delivery should be fluent and appropriate to the audience and occasion. We will discuss speech delivery more in Chapter 10 “Delivering a Speech” .

The circumstances that led your audience to attend your speech will affect their view of the occasion. A captive audience includes people who are required to attend your presentation. Mandatory meetings are common in workplace settings. Whether you are presenting for a group of your employees, coworkers, classmates, or even residents in your dorm if you are a resident advisor, you shouldn’t let the fact that the meeting is required give you license to give a half-hearted speech. In fact, you may want to build common ground with your audience to overcome any potential resentment for the required gathering. In your speech class, your classmates are captive audience members.

When you speak in a classroom or at a business meeting, you may have a captive audience.

Presbyterian Women – Business Meeting – CC BY-NC 2.0.

View having a captive classroom audience as a challenge, and use this space as a public speaking testing laboratory. You can try new things and push your boundaries more, because this audience is very forgiving and understanding since they have to go through the same things you do. In general, you may have to work harder to maintain the attention of a captive audience. Since coworkers may expect to hear the same content they hear every time this particular meeting comes around, and classmates have to sit through dozens and dozens of speeches, use your speech as an opportunity to stand out from the crowd or from what’s been done before.

A voluntary audience includes people who have decided to come hear your speech. This is perhaps one of the best compliments a speaker can receive, even before they’ve delivered the speech. Speaking for a voluntary audience often makes me have more speaking anxiety than I do when speaking in front of my class or my colleagues, because I know the audience may have preconceived notions or expectations that I must live up to. This is something to be aware of if you are used to speaking in front of captive audiences. To help adapt to a voluntary audience, ask yourself what the audience members expect. Why are they here? If they’ve decided to come and see you, they must be interested in your topic or you as a speaker. Perhaps you have a reputation for being humorous, being able to translate complicated information into more digestible parts, or being interactive with the audience and responding to questions. Whatever the reason or reasons, it’s important to make sure you deliver on those aspects. If people are voluntarily giving up their time to hear you, you want to make sure they get what they expected.

A final aspect of psychological audience analysis involves considering the audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and values, as they will influence all the perceptions mentioned previously. As you can see in Figure 9.1 “Psychological Analysis: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values” , we can think of our attitudes, beliefs, and values as layers that make up our perception and knowledge.

Figure 9.1 Psychological Analysis: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values

At the outermost level, attitudes are our likes and dislikes, and they are easier to influence than beliefs or values because they are often reactionary. If you’ve ever followed the approval rating of a politician, you know that people’s likes and dislikes change frequently and can change dramatically based on recent developments. This is also true interpersonally. For those of you who have siblings, think about how you can go from liking your sisters or brothers, maybe because they did something nice for you, to disliking them because they upset you. This seesaw of attitudes can go up and down over the course of a day or even a few minutes, but it can still be useful for a speaker to consider. If there is something going on in popular culture or current events that has captured people’s attention and favor or disfavor, then you can tap into that as a speaker to better relate to your audience.

When considering beliefs, we are dealing with what we believe “is or isn’t” or “true or false.” We come to hold our beliefs based on what we are taught, experience for ourselves, or have faith in. Our beliefs change if we encounter new information or experiences that counter previous ones. As people age and experience more, their beliefs are likely to change, which is natural.

Our values deal with what we view as right or wrong, good or bad. Our values do change over time but usually as a result of a life transition or life-changing event such as a birth, death, or trauma. For example, when many people leave their parents’ control for the first time and move away from home, they have a shift in values that occurs as they make this important and challenging life transition. In summary, audiences enter a speaking situation with various psychological dispositions, and considering what those may be can help speakers adapt their messages and better meet their speech goals.

Situational Audience Analysis

Situational audience analysis considers the physical surroundings and setting of a speech. It’s always a good idea to visit the place you will be speaking ahead of time so you will know what to expect. If you expect to have a lectern and arrive to find only a table at the front of the room, that little difference could end up increasing your anxiety and diminishing your speaking effectiveness. I have traveled to many different universities, conference facilities, and organizations to speak, and I always ask my host to show me the room I will be speaking in. I take note of the seating arrangement, the presence of technology and its compatibility with what I plan on using, the layout of the room including windows and doors, and anything else that’s relevant to my speech. Knowing your physical setting ahead of time allows you to alter the physical setting, when possible, or alter your message or speaking strategies if needed. Sometimes I open or close blinds, move seats around, plug my computer in to make sure it works, or even practice some or all of my presentation. I have also revised a speech to be more interactive and informal when I realized I would speak in a lounge rather than a classroom or lecture hall.

“Getting Real”

Marketing Careers and Audience Segmentation

Advertisers and marketers use sophisticated people and programs to ensure that their message is targeted to particular audiences. These people are often called marketing specialists (Career Cruising, 2012). They research products and trends in markets and consumer behaviors and may work for advertising agencies, marketing firms, consulting firms, or other types of agencies or businesses. The pay range is varied, from $35,000 to $166,000 a year for most, and good communication, creativity, and analytic thinking skills are a must. If you stop to think about it, we are all targeted based on our demographics, psychographics, and life situations. Whereas advertisers used to engage in more mass marketing, to undifferentiated receivers, the categories are now much more refined and the target audiences more defined. We only need to look at the recent increase in marketing toward “tweens” or the eight-to-twelve age group. Although this group was once lumped in with younger kids or older teens, they are now targeted because they have “more of their own money to spend and more influence over familial decisions than ever before” (Siegel et al., 2004).

Whether it’s Red Bull aggressively marketing to the college-aged group or gyms marketing to single, working, young adults, much thought and effort goes into crafting a message with a particular receiver in mind. Some companies even create an “ideal customer,” going as far as to name the person, create a psychological and behavioral profile for them, and talk about them as if they were real during message development (Solomon, 2006).

Facebook has also revolutionized targeted marketing, which has led to some controversy and backlash (Greenwell, 2012). The “Like” button on Facebook that was introduced in 2010 is now popping up on news sites, company pages, and other websites. When you click the “Like” button, you are providing important information about your consumer behaviors that can then be fed into complicated algorithms that also incorporate demographic and psychographic data pulled from your Facebook profile and even information from your friends. All this is in an effort to more directly market to you, which became easier in January of 2012 when Facebook started allowing targeted advertisements to go directly into users’ “newsfeeds.”

Markets are obviously segmented based on demographics like gender and age, but here are some other categories and examples of market segments: geography (region, city size, climate), lifestyle (couch potato, economical/frugal, outdoorsy, status seeker), family life cycle (bachelors, newlyweds, full nesters, empty nesters), and perceived benefit of use (convenience, durability, value for the money, social acceptance), just to name a few (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2000).

• Make a list of the various segments you think marketers might put you in. Have you ever thought about these before? Why or why not?
• Take note of the advertisements that catch your eye over a couple days. Do they match up with any of the segments you listed in the first question?
• Are there any groups that you think it would be unethical to segment and target for marketing? Explain your answer.

Determine Your Purpose, Topic, and Thesis

General purpose.

Your speeches will usually fall into one of three categories. In some cases we speak to inform, meaning we attempt to teach our audience using factual objective evidence. In other cases, we speak to persuade, as we try to influence an audience’s beliefs, attitudes, values, or behaviors. Last, we may speak to entertain or amuse our audience. In summary, the general purpose of your speech will be to inform, to persuade, or to entertain.

You can see various topics that may fit into the three general purposes for speaking in Table 9.1 “General Purposes and Speech Topics” . Some of the topics listed could fall into another general purpose category depending on how the speaker approached the topic, or they could contain elements of more than one general purpose. For example, you may have to inform your audience about your topic in one main point before you can persuade them, or you may include some entertaining elements in an informative or persuasive speech to help make the content more engaging for the audience. There should not be elements of persuasion included in an informative speech, however, since persuading is contrary to the objective approach that defines an informative general purpose. In any case, while there may be some overlap between general purposes, most speeches can be placed into one of the categories based on the overall content of the speech.

Table 9.1 General Purposes and Speech Topics

Choosing a Topic

Once you have determined (or been assigned) your general purpose, you can begin the process of choosing a topic. In this class, you may be given the option to choose any topic for your informative or persuasive speech, but in most academic, professional, and personal settings, there will be some parameters set that will help guide your topic selection. Speeches in future classes will likely be organized around the content being covered in the class. Speeches delivered at work will usually be directed toward a specific goal such as welcoming new employees, informing about changes in workplace policies, or presenting quarterly sales figures. We are also usually compelled to speak about specific things in our personal lives, like addressing a problem at our child’s school by speaking out at a school board meeting. In short, it’s not often that you’ll be starting from scratch when you begin to choose a topic.

Whether you’ve received parameters that narrow your topic range or not, the first step in choosing a topic is brainstorming. Brainstorming involves generating many potential topic ideas in a fast-paced and nonjudgmental manner. Brainstorming can take place multiple times as you narrow your topic. For example, you may begin by brainstorming a list of your personal interests that can then be narrowed down to a speech topic. It makes sense that you will enjoy speaking about something that you care about or find interesting. The research and writing will be more interesting, and the delivery will be easier since you won’t have to fake enthusiasm for your topic. Speaking about something you’re familiar with and interested in can also help you manage speaking anxiety. While it’s good to start with your personal interests, some speakers may get stuck here if they don’t feel like they can make their interests relevant to the audience. In that case, you can look around for ideas. If your topic is something that’s being discussed in newspapers, on television, in the lounge of your dorm, or around your family’s dinner table, then it’s likely to be of interest and be relevant since it’s current. Figure 9.1 “Psychological Analysis: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values” shows how brainstorming works in stages. A list of topics that interest the speaker are on the top row. The speaker can brainstorm subtopics for each idea to see which one may work the best. In this case, the speaker could decide to focus his or her informative speech on three common ways people come to own dogs: through breeders, pet stores, or shelters.

Figure 9.2 Brainstorming and Narrowing a Topic

Overall you can follow these tips as you select and narrow your topic:

• Brainstorm topics that you are familiar with, interest you, and/or are currently topics of discussion.
• Choose a topic appropriate for the assignment/occasion.
• Choose a topic that you can make relevant to your audience.
• Choose a topic that you have the resources to research (access to information, people to interview, etc.).

Specific Purpose

Once you have brainstormed, narrowed, and chosen your topic, you can begin to draft your specific purpose statement. Your specific purpose is a one-sentence statement that includes the objective you want to accomplish in your speech. You do not speak aloud your specific purpose during your speech; you use it to guide your researching, organizing, and writing. A good specific purpose statement is audience centered, agrees with the general purpose, addresses one main idea, and is realistic.

An audience-centered specific purpose statement usually contains an explicit reference to the audience—for example, “my audience” or “the audience.” Since a speaker may want to see if he or she effectively met his or her specific purpose, the objective should be written in such a way that it could be measured or assessed, and since a speaker actually wants to achieve his or her speech goal, the specific purpose should also be realistic. You won’t be able to teach the audience a foreign language or persuade an atheist to Christianity in a six- to nine-minute speech. The following is a good example of a good specific purpose statement for an informative speech: “By the end of my speech, the audience will be better informed about the effects the green movement has had on schools.” The statement is audience centered and matches with the general purpose by stating, “the audience will be better informed.” The speaker could also test this specific purpose by asking the audience to write down, at the end of the speech, three effects the green movement has had on schools.

Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement is a one-sentence summary of the central idea of your speech that you either explain or defend. You would explain the thesis statement for an informative speech, since these speeches are based on factual, objective material. You would defend your thesis statement for a persuasive speech, because these speeches are argumentative and your thesis should clearly indicate a stance on a particular issue. In order to make sure your thesis is argumentative and your stance clear, it is helpful to start your thesis with the words “I believe.” When starting to work on a persuasive speech, it can also be beneficial to write out a counterargument to your thesis to ensure that it is arguable.

The thesis statement is different from the specific purpose in two main ways. First, the thesis statement is content centered, while the specific purpose statement is audience centered. Second, the thesis statement is incorporated into the spoken portion of your speech, while the specific purpose serves as a guide for your research and writing and an objective that you can measure. A good thesis statement is declarative, agrees with the general and specific purposes, and focuses and narrows your topic. Although you will likely end up revising and refining your thesis as you research and write, it is good to draft a thesis statement soon after drafting a specific purpose to help guide your progress. As with the specific purpose statement, your thesis helps ensure that your research, organizing, and writing are focused so you don’t end up wasting time with irrelevant materials. Keep your specific purpose and thesis statement handy (drafting them at the top of your working outline is a good idea) so you can reference them often. The following examples show how a general purpose, specific purpose, and thesis statement match up with a topic area:

Topic: My Craziest Adventure

General purpose: To Entertain

Specific purpose: By the end of my speech, the audience will appreciate the lasting memories that result from an eighteen-year-old visiting New Orleans for the first time.

Thesis statement: New Orleans offers young tourists many opportunities for fun and excitement.

Topic: Renewable Energy

General purpose: To Inform

Specific purpose: By the end of my speech, the audience will be able to explain the basics of using biomass as fuel.

Thesis statement: Biomass is a renewable resource that releases gases that can be used for fuel.

Topic: Privacy Rights

General purpose: To Persuade

Specific purpose : By the end of my speech, my audience will believe that parents should not be able to use tracking devices to monitor their teenage child’s activities.

Thesis statement: I believe that it is a violation of a child’s privacy to be electronically monitored by his or her parents.

Key Takeaways

• Getting integrated: Public speaking training builds transferrable skills that are useful in your college classes, career, personal relationships, and civic life.
• Demographic, psychographic, and situational audience analysis help tailor your speech content to your audience.
• The general and specific purposes of your speech are based on the speaking occasion and include the objective you would like to accomplish by the end of your speech. Determining these early in the speech-making process will help focus your research and writing.
• Brainstorm to identify topics that fit within your interests, and then narrow your topic based on audience analysis and the guidelines provided.
• A thesis statement summarizes the central idea of your speech and will be explained or defended using supporting material. Referencing your thesis statement often will help ensure that your speech is coherent.
• Getting integrated: Why do some people dread public speaking or just want to avoid it? Identify some potential benefits of public speaking in academic, professional, personal, and civic contexts that might make people see public speaking in a different light.
• Conduct some preliminary audience analysis of your class and your classroom. What are some demographics that might be useful for you to consider? What might be some attitudes, beliefs, and values people have that might be relevant to your speech topics? What situational factors might you want to consider before giving your speech?
• Pay attention to the news (in the paper, on the Internet, television, or radio). Identify two informative and two persuasive speech topics that are based in current events.

Career Cruising, “Marketing Specialist,” Career Cruising: Explore Careers , accessed January 24, 2012, http://www.careercruising.com .

Greenwell, D., “You Might Not ‘Like’ Facebook So Much after Reading This…” The Times (London) , sec. T2, January 13, 2012, 4–5.

Siegel, D. L., Timothy J. Coffey, and Gregory Livingston, The Great Tween Buying Machine (Chicago, IL: Dearborn Trade, 2004).

Solomon, M. R., Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being , 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2006), 10–11.

• Communication in the Real World: An Introduction to Communication Studies. Provided by : University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing edition, 2016. This edition adapted from a work originally produced in 2013 by a publisher who has requested that it not receive attribution.. Located at : https://open.lib.umn.edu/communication/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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Guide: How to have effective brainstorms every time

Reading time: about 16 min

• Visual collaboration
• Teams converge too quickly around a small number of ideas.  
• Unengaged collaborators bring down the energy and creativity of the group as a whole.  
• Ideas get lost to the ether while participants wait their turn to share.  
• Extroverted or loud attendees dominate the discussion over more introverted collaborators.  
• Too many random participants are invited without any real reason for them being involved nor any context on why they were invited.  
• Brainstorms are scheduled without a clear goal for what the team is trying to accomplish.

But as the trend toward hybrid and remote work persists, it’s clear that brainstorming is here to stay—and luckily, teams are learning that the issues above aren’t inherent to the practice of brainstorming itself, but rather are hallmarks of bad brainstorming execution .

In other words: It doesn’t have to be this way!

If you feel like your team is spinning its wheels on less-than-effective brainstorming that is more performative than purposeful, we’re here to help.

Whether you’re a leader, a regular facilitator, or just a participant, this guide will help you build the in-person and virtual brainstorming skills needed to actually drive impact and innovation for your business—while helping you get better ideas, get better engagement, and build stronger teams.

What is the purpose of brainstorming?

All this evidence that the way most teams execute brainstorming is flawed begs the question: Why do we brainstorm at all?

Effective brainstorming allows teams to:

• Generate large quantities of ideas quickly : With a meaningful problem to solve, a context-filled agenda provided beforehand, and an experienced facilitator, it is possible to have a brainstorming session that generates many high-quality ideas more efficiently than each individual could do on their own.  
• Involve stakeholders early in the process : Brainstorming with key stakeholders from the start—instead of involving them after you’ve already generated ideas—can save you time and money because you will avoid decisions that aren’t feasible, are too costly, or won’t have the necessary personnel available to make them successful. This consideration becomes especially important during economic downturns when companies are tightening budgets and evaluating each dollar of spend.  
• Get multiple perspectives from different team members : Each participant will have unique insights informed by their role, team, background, and personality, and brainstorming is one of the best ways to get diverse voices involved from the start.  
• Uncover opportunities for innovation : We often think about brainstorming in the context of producing some kind of end product (like a marketing asset, a piece of imagery, or a literal product). But brainstorming process improvements, bottlenecks that could be removed, team working agreements, or workback schedules could uncover just as much opportunity to innovate as a business and impact your bottom line.  
• Build team unity and connectivity : Developing good brainstorming habits—and familiarity with how your team thinks and comes up with good ideas—pays dividends later on when you have more challenging problems to tackle because you know who to put on certain projects and how to set yourself up for success. Good brainstorms can also improve buy-in, performance, and morale because team members were able to voice their opinions on a project.

Want to avoid disjointed communication and lack of innovation in your brainstorms? Check out our on-demand webinar on strengthening hybrid collaboration.

How to participate in an effective brainstorm

To set your brainstorm up for success, it’s important to follow some basic guidelines for each stage of the brainstorming process.

Before you brainstorm

Send an agenda

Everyone dreads getting pinged with “Hey, can I grab you for a quick call?” out of nowhere. Confusion and annoyance is not a good foot to start on, yet this method of initiating a braindump out of nowhere is all too common.

By preparing an agenda beforehand, you accomplish two things:

• You clarify your own thinking and research on the problem to be solved instead of putting the burden of understanding the problem immediately on other people. This preparation might cause you to realize you can actually invite fewer people to the meeting than you initially thought so you can prevent bloating people’s calendars.  
• You show respect to the time, attention, and creativity of those you are inviting by giving them appropriate context and an opportunity to do deep thinking beforehand and ask any clarifying questions. This is especially impactful for more introverted collaborators who aren’t great thinkers when put on the spot.

If you’re invited to a brainstorming session that doesn’t have an agenda attached: Ask for one! If you’re feeling confused or out of the loop on why a brainstorming session was added to your calendar without context, chances are other invitees are, too. Speak up to get the information you need—and if no agenda is provided, you might suggest postponing the meeting or coordinating asynchronously so you don’t waste valuable time.

Set up your meeting board in Lucidspark

By recording everything in a persistent location like a team huddle board, you can seamlessly move from live ideation as a group to asynchronous idea pruning—or vice versa, if you’d prefer to brainstorm asynchronously and individually and then meet afterward to discuss ideas live.

As a bonus, you can use Lucid’s integration with Google Calendar to attach your team board to all your meeting invites, essentially allowing it to function as an agenda!

Understand your team’s preferred collaboration styles

Whether you’re facilitating a brainstorming session or just participating in one, knowing the mix of introspective, expressive, and relational collaborators in your group can help you better tailor your discussion to make sure everyone feels heard.

Discover the collaboration styles on your team so you can collaborate more effectively as a group.

​​During your brainstorm

Choose a framework or template

Many teams struggle with striking a balance between brainstorms that are so freeform and unfocused they don’t generate any feasible ideas, and brainstorms that are so tightly structured they don’t allow any room for creativity.

Using a template as a framework for your brainstorming can solve these problems by providing just enough structure to focus your ideation on a discrete problem while still giving space for documenting novel idea—assuming you’re utilizing a visual canvas like Lucid that lets you capture off-the-cuff ideas more naturally and at the moment they come to mind.

Templates also lower the barrier to engagement for more reserved team members because they provide a framing device that makes it easier to generate ideas than going in cold.

Don’t worry about duplicate ideas

There is a tendency to self-prune as you brain dump and delete duplicate ideas in the name of efficiency. This is counterintuitive, as duplicate ideas sourced independently from members of your team can indicate a natural consensus. Pausing to prune duplicate ideas also slows down your own ability to come up with new ideas.

Remember: There is always time to consolidate after the team has had time to consider what you generated during your brainstorm.

Set a timer

Constraints can be useful in brainstorming sessions (especially when you have a limited amount of time with your group), and setting a timer is one of the easiest constraints you can introduce.

Try breaking up your brainstorm into discrete units—like brain-dumping, group evaluation, and voting—and set timers for each. This structure can help you maintain momentum throughout your whole brainstorm. It also prevents the slog that can happen when teams spend too much time on one phase of the brainstorm, as well as the rush that happens at the end of meetings when teams realize they spent too much time on a tangent and didn’t get to the most important items.

Break out into smaller groups

If you have a big problem to tackle, splitting your group into smaller subgroups—and then coming together at the end of the meeting to present your small groups ideas to the larger whole—can be a useful technique.

Smaller groups can also help generate more quality ideas, since each person will have more opportunity to speak up when they spend a majority of the brainstorm in a group of three or four instead of fighting for attention in a group of a dozen or more.

If you’re using Lucid, you can easily do this with Breakout Boards .

Leverage Collaborative AI

Give Collaborative AI a prompt and watch as it generates ideas on the fly. If those aren’t enough, all you have to do is choose your favorite idea out of the mix and generate even more ideas based on that. From there, collaborative AI can sort and synthesize your ideas, giving you more context to work with inside of your brainstorming session. 

After the brainstorm

Revisit your goals

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the ideation process and miss where ideas may be completely off-track from the stated brief or goal of the brainstorm that was surfaced beforehand in the agenda.

Leave time to go back through your ideas and evaluate:

• Did we accomplish what we hoped to accomplish?  
• Does this meet the customer need we set out to solve for?  
• Do we have enough breadth of ideas or are there other avenues we need to explore?  
• Is there enough potential for depth in the ideas we do have to accomplish the needs of this project?  
• Are our ideas feasible given the scope, timing, and budget of the project?  
• Have we been appropriately intensive and innovative in our thinking?

Don’t be afraid to schedule more time

Sometimes a problem is too big to handle in 30 or 60 minutes. Assuming your discussion was productive and participants were engaged, consider scheduling more brainstorming time for a later date as needed.

You could invite a smaller group the second time to keep the discussion more tightly focused, and you should encourage participants to refer to the notes from the first session to treat the additional meeting as a continuation of the discussion and not a cold start.

Prioritize ideas to develop and set action items

As you do further brainstorming work, start converging around ideas and setting priorities based on your discussions with your team. You can even convert your ideas into formal action by formalizing your Lucidspark brainstorming board into Lucidchart intelligent diagrams.

Thank the participants

This one is easy! Sending a personalized message to one of your fellow collaborators acknowledging a unique idea of theirs you liked or how engaged they were in the session can strengthen the morale of the team and inspire people to engage even more in future brainstorming sessions because they feel their voice is valued.

Common brainstorming misconceptions—and how to fix them

Misconception #1: brainstorming is only for teams that touch the product.

If your assumption is that you don’t really have a need to brainstorm regularly because you aren’t on the product, design, marketing, or other so-called “creative” teams, you are incorrect!

Everyone at your company can and should be a champion of innovation , and effective brainstorming is a key to unlocking innovation in your role. You can apply brainstorming to process improvements, org design, or sales outreach techniques just as much as product launches and marketing campaigns.

Explore six common use cases (with templates) for using Lucidspark to brainstorm, including process improvements, strategic planning, and value stream mapping.

Misconception #2: There’s only one way to brainstorm

When most people think of brainstorms, they probably think of the most common application of brainstorming: meeting as a group, throwing out a bunch of random ideas without any structure, talking about a few of your favorites, and then leaving.

While freeform discussion like this has its place, if this is your only experience with brainstorming, it’s no wonder it doesn’t work for a lot of teams. The reality is there are many methods for brainstorming. Here are three alternate brainstorming frameworks you can try:

• Brainwriting : Focuses on having participants asynchronously write ideas into a shared board first anonymously and then talk through the ideas and build off of each other’s. Brainwriting removes bias from the brainstorm process because people can’t judge the idea based on who shared it and how it was shared, and it gives people more time to be thoughtful before speaking up.

• Reverse brainstorming : Rather than thinking of a problem and then determining possible solutions, reverse brainstorming flips the script by forcing you to consider how you would achieve the exact opposite of what you want.

• Mind mapping : Mind maps are non-linear diagrams used to organically capture ideas and make connections to idea branches loosely connected to a main starting topic or question. These diagrams can help your brainstorm to be more visual from the start instead of over-indexing on chat and writing out lengthy explanations of ideas.

Try out these templates or dozens of other brainstorming techniques and find which ones work best for your team!

Misconception #3: Brainstorming is only for net-new ideas

Nope! Consider also hosting a brainstorming session for:

• How you might repurpose or combine existing work into new deliverables  
• How you could revisit a previous brainstorming board for insights that may have been overlooked, instead of starting from scratch  
• Ways you can eliminate duplicate workflows and consolidate work across cross-functional teams

Tips for unlocking deep engagement during team brainstorms

Even teams that have the fundamentals and best practices down pat might find their brainstorms still falling flat on occasion. Don’t fret—this is common and doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong. Many companies are still struggling to effectively brainstorm as remote or hybrid teams.

Effective brainstorming is part science, but also part art and magic: You can do all the right things to cultivate an environment for effective collaboration, but you ultimately can’t force engagement.

If you’re looking to increase engagement on your team, here are some tips that can have a lasting positive impact on your ability to host effective in-person or virtual brainstorming sessions.

Leave your role and title at the door

The phenomenon of the HiPPO (highest-paid person in the office) dominating brainstorming discussion exists for a reason and is a symptom of people bringing too much of themselves and their ego into a brainstorming session instead of focusing on the quality of ideas. If you can encourage people to leave their roles at the door (i.e., a designer doesn’t only have to share an idea about design, and an engineer can share marketing ideas), people will be less intimidated to share ideas—and you might be surprised when people are willing to share.

Follow up and follow through every time

No one likes to feel like they’ve wasted their time, and it’s easy to get disenchanted by regular requests to brainstorms when you see your ideas go unused.

If you're facilitating a brainstorming session, you need to take the follow-up steps seriously so the attendees know exactly what action is being taken as a result of the ideas that were generated. And If there are reasons for not proceeding with a certain idea, provide context on why—when you are transparent in your reasoning, you can help people still feel valued and you won’t discourage them from sharing weird, crazy ideas in the future.

Build real relationships with the people you work with

Don’t worry—this is not a kumbaya call to know the intimate details of the lives of all your team members. But knowing what motivates someone professionally, what they’re passionate about, how they think, and what conditions allow them to be their most creative is crucial to stepping up your brainstorms.

Visual collaboration unlocks best-in-class brainstorming

If you’re still struggling to see the purpose of brainstorming—especially as remote work has kept you from your physical whiteboard sessions—it might be that you’re simply using the wrong platform for collaboration. This is where the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite comes in.

Simply using a Lucidspark board as the home for all of your brainstorming sessions solves many of the problems we outlined in the intro of this guide:

• Teams converge too quickly around a small number of ideas : Brainstorming in Lucid is easier because you have an infinite canvas for dropping ideas in any direction and making visual connections between ideas with connecting lines, instant emoji reactions, and embedded notes on sticky notes. Using a text-heavy document or spreadsheet as the host document for brainstorming makes it harder for people to participate and jot down ideas quickly. Though you can brainstorm in any product within the Lucid Suite, Lucidspark will be best suited for this part of your workflow.  
• Unengaged collaborators bring down the energy while loud participants dominate discussion : With Lucid, it’s easier to manage a variety of collaboration styles—even extreme ones. The visual canvas creates a more even playing field where introverted collaborators can use sticky notes to capture their more abstract ideas in writing before sharing them with the team, while more extroverted collaborators can better channel their excited energy with features like timers and voting sessions.  
• Ideas get lost while participants wait to share : When you set up team folders and create a Lucid team huddle board for every recurring meeting, you don’t ever have to worry about ideas being lost because you’re creating rich, effortless documentation as you go along. Your board will be an enduring artifact of every discussion you’ve had that you can revisit, build off of, or even turn into a template for future projects.  
• Brainstorms are scheduled without a clear goal : Because Lucid tightly integrates to the rest of your tech stack, you can always have your brainstorming board embedded in all of the places where you need to be able to see and build on your ideas. You can even embed important documentation and context directly into your Lucid board, saving you time on having to build out an agenda from scratch.

For modern teams looking to replicate all the best parts of in-person brainstorms into remote and hybrid work settings, the Lucid Suite provides the foundation for uncovering your best ideas and driving innovation.

Start your journey to better brainstorming—get our free worksheet and checklist for evaluating visual collaboration platforms.

About Lucid

Lucid Software is a pioneer and leader in visual collaboration dedicated to helping teams build the future. With its products—Lucidchart, Lucidspark, and Lucidscale—teams are supported from ideation to execution and are empowered to align around a shared vision, clarify complexity, and collaborate visually, no matter where they are. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucid.co.

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43 brainstorming techniques and games for creating new ideas

Finding new and innovative ideas is a vital part of the growth and success of any team or organization . While brainstorming techniques are rightly perceived as creative and exciting , it’s important to find a framework and idea-generation process that empowers your group to generate meaningful results. 

Innovation is important for many businesses, but what brainstorming activities might you use to help make true innovation a reality? Find out in this collection of effective brainstorming techniques!

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In this post, we’ll explore a host of effective brainstorming techniques in categories such as creative exercises and visual idea generation games, all of which can be used to help your group brainstorm be more effective and gratifying for all involved.

We’ll also explore talk about the benefits of group ideation and share some examples of brainstorming sessions that utilize these methods. Let’s get started! 

What are brainstorming techniques?

Brainstorming is a process of enabling people to think freely and creatively when trying to come up with ideas, solutions, or sharing knowledge.

Brainstorming techniques are proven activities and frameworks for coming up with lots of ideas quickly. They’ll often include steps to shift perspective, facilitate team collaboration and refine initial ideas into something even better.

Some examples of brainstorming activities include classic mind mapping and brain writing where you quickly try to generate as many ideas as possible.

Teams often use these techniques to generate creative ideas to tough problems and to explore possible solutions . They can also be used as part of more in-depth brainstorming workshops where team members then refine and choose ideas to put into action.

Some of the core concepts of brainstorming include: reserving judgment, go for quality over quantity, listen to all ideas, and think outside of the box in the pursuit of radical new ideas and creative solutions. Bring these concepts and a proven technique to your session and you’re already on the route to success!

If you’re finding your team with a problem they don’t know how to solve, a technique that encourages creative thinking might be just the ticket! Use these activities as part of a complete workshop process to refine those ideas into something actionable.

In SessionLab, it’s quick an easy to create an effective agenda for a brainstorming workshop in minutes. Drag and drop blocks in the session planner to create your structure. Add timing for each item to ensure you stay on time. Color-code your blocks to get an instant sense of your learning flow.

Core group brainstorming techniques

Brainstorming has been around as long as individuals and teams have tried to find creative and innovative solutions, or come up with new ideas or products. Whether a group is ideating on how to solve an organizational problem or generate ideas for new features or initiatives, getting people together to quickly ideate and come up with something new is time well spent.

In this section, we’ll first explore some of the core techniques that have been used time and again to create meaningful results and great ideas.

Popcorn Brainstorming

One of the classic brainstorming techniques, chances are you’ve done a popcorn brainstorm already. It’s been used by everyone from school teachers to CEOs to generate ideas and create energy around new initiatives – much like the popping of corn in a microwave!

Start by posing a question or problem statement and invite participants to take a minutes silence to think on it. Once the minute is up, start a timer and invite everyone to contribute ideas out-loud and build on each other’s ideas too. Have a single person take notes and encourage quality over quantity: no evaluation, no criticism or discussion yet – just rapid ideation!

Brainstorming – Popcorn and Round Robin   #idea generation   #brainstorming   Simple, classic brainstorming with two variants. Popcorn – where participants speak out-loud and Round Robin – where participants work in silence and pass their ideas to the next person in turn. 

Round-Robin Brainstorming

A tried and tested idea generation technique, Round-Robin Brainstorming provides a little more structure and ensures everyone in a group can contribute to a brainstorm by ensuring the discussion isn’t dominated by the loudest voices. 

In this group method, seat everyone in a circle and hand them an index card. In silence, everyone writes an idea on their index card before passing it to the person to their left. Each participant then writes an idea based on their neighbour’s card and passes that along.

The result is a more relaxed session that encourages a combination of idea development and co-creation while ensuring everyone is heard. Perfect for teams with big personalities!

SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) is a tried and tested technique that teams often using when planning new initiatives or solving problems. It also happens to be a great tool for generating new ideas while also taking into account potential problems and opportunities.

The act of brainstorming around your weaknesses or threats can result in innovative solutions and ideas you might not have otherwise come up with. Try using each point of the process as a jumping off point for ideation or explore a topic from each of the different angles for best results.

SWOT Analysis   #project planning   #strategic planning   #environmental analysis   #planning   #issue analysis   #online   #remote-friendly   A SWOT Analysis is used in project planning, strategic planning and other processes where agreement is needed about the current situation of a project, team, department or organization. It stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Brainwriting

No single person is as smart or as creative as a group. With the brain writing technique, tap into the ideas and approaches of multiple collaborators and co-create effectively.

Start by writing down the topic or area for which you’ll be generating ideas. Have all team members silently write down an idea related to the topic on a card and then, pass that idea to the person to their right. The receiving player reads the card and then adds an idea inspired by the original OR enhances the original idea before passing the card along.

By asking participants to grow and improve on one another’s ideas, Brain writing helps a group ideate effectively and come up with better ideas. You can even bring this to an online brainstorming session by using an online whiteboard and have participants pass post-its to the working spaces of their partners.

Brainwriting   #gamestorming   #idea generation   Some of the best ideas are compilations from multiple contributors. Brainwriting is a simple way to generate ideas, share them, and subsequently build on them within a group. Access to multiple hands, eyes, and minds can yield the most interesting results.

Question storming

Sometimes, shifting perspective and starting from a different angle can generate the best ideas. Q-Storming, or question storming invites participants to brainstorm questions, rather than solutions.

After rounds of gathering qualifying data and assumptions, ask your group to think of all those questions that they still have which might help the team think the matter through. This approach can be really useful at finding ideas your team might not have considered and ensuring that what you come up with is truly going to solve the problem at hand.

Walking Brainstorm

Brainstorming methods come in many forms – you might have a quick-fire session that encourages excitement and verbal exchanges. Alternatively, you might find your group will create better ideas by working together in a more relaxed, introvert-friendly manner.

Walking Brainstorm is designed to help large groups work on idea generation dynamically but without creating scenarios where only the loudest participants are heard. 

Create a space where different topics or questions are spread on posters/post-its around a room or virtual space. Silently and individually, each participant is encouraged to walk around and visit each question/topic in turn and add ideas to each. By moving around and working individually, this method helps create a more reflective, dynamic ideation session and can also help ensure group-think doesn’t set in! 

Walking Brainstorm   #brainstorming   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   This introvert-friendly brainstorming technique helps groups of any size to generate and build on each other’s ideas in a silent but dynamic setting. As the participants keep moving, the exercise is ideal to kick-off a full day workshop or re-energize the group after lunch.

For those who prefer a more organized approach to idea generation, mind mapping is a great activity for creating ideas quickly and effectively. 

Begin by writing the key topic in the center of a piece of paper or in an online whiteboard. Invite participants to brainstorm related topics and ideas by adding branches to the central idea and create new nodes or elements. As a facilitator, you’ll want to group ideas by color and also amend the thickness of the branches to show the strength of various ideas and concepts. 

When you’re done mind mapping, the result will be a diagram that visually represents your ideas and makes it clear how the various parts interrelate – a great resource for idea development or for future sessions!

Mind map   #idea generation   #concepts   #create   #issue analysis   #design   A mind map is a diagram used to represent a number of ideas or things. Mind maps are methods for analyzing information and relationships.

Brain Netting

The concept of brain netting is to not only take your brainstorming online, but to use online tools and virtual spaces to make the session a truly engaging experience. 

The key is to use an online tool that the group is familiar with, can co-create in easily and which works both synchronously or asynchronously. Using an online whiteboard or shared document for brain netting means participants can contribute in both a live online workshop as well as in their own time. This is a unique benefit of online brainstorming, and it’s one we’d recommend taking advantage of with your team!

We’d especially recommend using an online tool that supports easy commenting, images, videos and links – encourage your group to use whatever assets best communicate their ideas!

Six Thinking Hats

Exploring a problem or idea from multiple perspectives is a great way to generate new ideas and inform your brainstorming process. In this brainstorming activity, start by explaining the six different hats and that at various points, each person will wear the different hats to explore your chosen topic. For example, the green hat is for creative thinking while the white hat is all about information and facts.

Invite the group to start with the blue hat, which is to control the process and then move between hats to explore, define, ideate, identify risk and gather information around a topic in a sequence. By asking the group to all wear the same hat at the same time, you can ensure your brainstorm moves forward while also ensure all perspectives are explored.

The Six Thinking Hats   #creative thinking   #meeting facilitation   #problem solving   #issue resolution   #idea generation   #conflict resolution   The Six Thinking Hats are used by individuals and groups to separate out conflicting styles of thinking. They enable and encourage a group of people to think constructively together in exploring and implementing change, rather than using argument to fight over who is right and who is wrong.

Rapid writing

Different teams and workshops need different approaches to generating fresh ideas. While a carefully structured approach can be effective, using quick-fire brainstorming techniques like Rapid Writing can help create a sense of energy, urgency, and get heaps of ideas out quickly.

For this method of brainstorming, start by setting a timer and encouraging your participants to get as many ideas out as possible within that time limit. Remember that at this stage in the idea generation process, there is no such thing as a bad idea and by quickly ideating without being critical, your group can be creative without prematurely shutting down possible ideas. Be sure to collect all the ideas and share them without judgment at the end, whether you’re brainstorming online or in person!

Lotus Blossom

Some of the most effective techniques are those that encourage free-thinking and rapid ideation while also having some rules that can keep things structured. Lotus Blossom combines these concepts while also creating a great visual representation of your brainstorming activity. 

Lotus Blossom helps facilitate idea generation by working out from a central concept and adding eight additional themes or ideas inspired by the first on sticky notes. Once you have those eight ideas, you then invite participants to take each of those and add another eight and effectively blossom them around the original. By clustering ideas in this way, this ideation method also creates a visual resource you can come back to later and follow the brainstorming process from start to finish.

Lotus blossom   #concepts   #create   #design   #idea generation   The lotus blossom method is a creativity exercise. It is a framework for idea generation, starting from one central theme. Eight conceptual themes grow out from the main theme and each of them are used as central theme to generate 8 more themes. Explore!

Starbursting

Complete freedom without an ideation framework isn’t always the best way to find and develop ideas. Structured techniques like Starbursting can help guide a team through more effective idea generation and ensure all key elements are considered at an early stage.

To begin, create a six-pointed star on a large piece of paper or online whiteboard. At the tip of each point of the star, write down the words Who, What, Why, Where, When and How. Invite the group to brainstorm ideas and questions related to each of these points in turn.

At this stage, the group only needs to brainstorm questions in each of these sections, leaving answers until later, though creating follow-up questions can also be helpful in effectively ideating on your central concept or problem.

When ideating on solutions to problems, it’s very easy to come to the table with underlying assumptions that can affect the course of the idea generation process. You can avoid this potential pitfall by using The 5 Whys to go further and deeper in a very simple, group-friendly manner.

Kick-off by working as a group to create a problem statement that you’ll work on solving. Once you have a concise statement, ask the group why you have this problem and discuss the answer. After working together to form a cohesive answer, ask the group why you have the problem again. By repeating the process, you and your team can dig deeper and find the root cause of the issue and move past the first, most obvious ideas.

The 5 Whys   #hyperisland   #innovation   This simple and powerful method is useful for getting to the core of a problem or challenge. As the title suggests, the group defines a problems, then asks the question “why” five times, often using the resulting explanation as a starting point for creative problem solving.

Creative brainstorming techniques 

All brainstorming is creative. Generating ideas and finding solutions often asks groups and teams to find new ways of looking at things but in this next section, we’ll look at techniques that aim to approach the ideation process from a unique or especially creative starting point.

If you’re finding your typical exercises aren’t yielding results or want to try something new, creative games like those below can create space for innovation. Let’s dig in!

Imagie-ination

Words are often our primary tool when it comes to starting a brainstorm or kicking off an idea generation workshop. While these kinds of techniques are tried and tested, it can also be useful to try something different that can unlock your team’s creativity. 

With Imagie-ination, you’ll use images to help your group generate ideas that go beyond the norm. First, collect an assortment of images for your brainstorm and write down a simple description of the topic you want to generate new ideas around. Have each participant select an image and then come up with as many ideas as they can for how the image relates to the topic. 

After the first round, you’ll then cluster ideas together and find an image and title to best illustrate those clusters. This kind of clustering and titling can help refine the ideas your team has generated and move them towards action – a great outcome for any brainstorming session!

Imagie-ination   #idea generation   #gamestorming   Images have the ability to spark insights and to create new associations and possible connections. That is why pictures help generate new ideas, which is exactly the point of this exercise.

Bad idea brainstorming

Idea generation is at its best when groups are encouraged to add their ideas without being self critical or overthinking. Often, individuals involved in ideation can put pressure on themselves to offer only great ideas and so don’t contribute everything that comes to their minds.

Use this brainstorming technique to help free your group’s creativity and encourage them to come up with the absolute worst ideas they can in relation to a central topic or problem. Like reverse brainstorming, this brainstorming technique is a great way to find alternative routes to more creative ideas. Just be sure to use a swot analysis to figure out what should make it into reality!

Bad Idea Brainstorm   #brainstorming   #creative thinking   #idea generation   Name all the bad ideas to make room for good ones. Coming up with the perfect solution right off the bat can feel paralyzing. So instead of trying to find the right answer, get unstuck by listing all the wrong ones.

Brainstorm questions instead of solutions

Our first instinct when it comes to problem-solving can often be to jump straight to giving answers and finding solutions. Though this can be effective, when it comes to generating creative ideas, a different tact can be more effective. 

With this reverse brainstorming game, challenge participants to offer questions instead of solutions so they can respond to a central concept creatively and from a new angle. If you’re finding your group can become blocked when generating ideas, it might be that your existing questions or frameworks aren’t sufficient. By taking a new ideation approach, you can unblock your team!

Brainstorm questions instead of solutions   #questions and answers   #brainstorming   When we are given a problem our reflex is to find answers. But it can be difficult to leave the comfort zone and to come up with creative answers. This exercise will encourage to think out of the box.

Stakeholder Round Robin Brainstorm

Bringing together groups of different stakeholders with their own areas of expertise is a great idea whether you’re brainstorming or finding solutions. That said, it’s worth noting that in these kinds of mixed groups, participants will be coming from different places and have different priorities and approaches to idea generation. 

Start by creating a flipchart or whiteboard space for each stakeholder’s perspective and writing this at the top. Give each stakeholder two minutes to brainstorm on the central idea from their perspective and add those to their flipchart before then inviting each participant to move to the next one and brainstorm from this different perspective. By using this round-robin brainstorming exercise, you can help the group understand the perspectives and insights each member brings to the table while also generating fresh ideas as a result!  

Backcasting

A simple change in perspective can have a massive impact on how your team approaches solving a problem. Backcasting is a simple but effective brainstorming exercise where a team is invited to work backwards from an ideal future state in order to come up with concrete actions they can take today.

Start by listing your long term goals in a time frame of 1-20 years. Then work backwards from that state to today, listing every action necessary to achieve that goal state. Collect insights on what difficulties might come up, what steps your team needs to take and what resources you might need in order to brainstorm effectively and find a new way to reach your team’s long term goals!

Backcasting   #define intentions   #create   #design   #action   Backcasting is a method for planning the actions necessary to reach desired future goals. This method is often applied in a workshop format with stakeholders participating. To be used when a future goal (even if it is vague) has been identified.

Walking Questions

A brainstorming technique with a What if learning style, Walking Questions is a great way of encouraging group members to share knowledge, ask questions to personal problems, and explore a topic dynamically. 

Best used at the end of a training session or workshop, each participant writes a question they have on the top of a sheet of paper then hands it to the person to their right. The person receiving the paper then writes any ideas or answers they have underneath and passes it to the next person.

By the end, the original piece of paper will be returned to the owner filled with ideas and answers from the entire group. It’s a great way of generating ideas from a group quickly and efficiently and of utilizing everyone’s expertise in a structured way. Give it a go! 

Walking questions   #what if learning style   #idea generation   #learning   This is a great facilitation technique to answer open questions of trainees with a “What if” learning style. It prevents the facilitator from answering all questions herself. With this method trainees can:  close knowledge gaps find solutions for personal problems imagine themselves using their new knowledge in future and prepare themselves for obstacles

Guided Imagery

Coming up with new ideas doesn’t always have to be boisterous! You can also get the creative juices flowing in a relaxed way by tapping into mindfulness and imagination with this method.

Start by inviting participants to close their eyes and get comfortable. Next, progress through a guided meditation designed to inspire creativity. Afterward, ask your group to reflect on what came up for them in the meditation and use this as the basis for further brainstorming!

Guided Imagery   #idea generation   #creativity   #online facilitation   #reflection   This can be used for idea generation especially when the group is stuck.

Headlines from the future

Starting from the desired outcome and working backward with a reverse brainstorming technique can be a great way to solve a problem. Thinking into the future can also be inspiring in a way that encourages free thinking and big ideas – a great result for any brainstorming workshop.

In this idea generation game, ask your group to imagine it’s twenty years in the future and that your project or organisation has been a huge success. Invite each participant to draft a headline and sketch an image for a New York Times feature of this reality. Encourage big, bold ideas and debrief by discussing any common themes or ideas before moving onto idea development as a team! 

Headlines from the Future   #creative thinking   #design   #idea generation   #creativity   Get inspired today by a world 20 years away. Sometimes it helps to start from the end. This exercise will help you align with your team on an audacious vision for your project – one that you can work backward from.

Brainstorming techniques for problem solving and refining ideas

When you want to go beyond initial brainstorming and generate more refined ideas, the following complex idea generation techniques can effectively guide you through the process.

These activities combine brainstorming with idea evaluation, idea selection, and then going into concept development to help you come up with the best options. Let’s dig in! 

25/10 Crowd Sourcing

Group ideation can be tricky to manage, and not all techniques are up to the task of managing creative input from large groups effectively. 25/10 Crowd Sourcing is a fantastic exercise that not only invites big, bold ideas, but can ensure everyone takes part in generating ideas as a group.

After first inviting participants to write a big, bold idea on an index card, start a timer and invite the group to move around the space and exchange cards without reading. Stop the timer and ask each person to read the idea and give it a score from 1 to 5. Repeat five times so that each idea has a score out of twenty-five and then find and share the top ten ideas with the group.

Group brainstorming techniques with a mix of blind scoring and sharing can be especially useful in avoiding bias and encouraging bold ideas – especially useful when ideating in large groups!

25/10 Crowd Sourcing   #idea generation   #liberating structures     You can help a large crowd generate and sort their bold ideas for action in 30 minutes or less! With 25/10 Crowd Sourcing , you can spread innovations “out and up” as everyone notices the patterns in what emerges. Though it is fun, fast, and casual, it is a serious and valid way to generate an uncensored set of bold ideas and then to tap the wisdom of the whole group to identify the top ten. Surprises are frequent!

3-12-3 Brainstorm

Brainstorming is often associated with fast ideation and energetic idea generation sessions. While many standard techniques can be slowed down and run in different ways, there can be obvious benefits to maintaining energy and proving the value of short working bursts to your ideation group. 

The 3-12-3 Brainstorm technique taps into the power of speed to generate great ideas and can help a team generate, develop, and present ideas in just less than twenty minutes. By combining speed and structure, this ideation method can help a group pressed for time use the session effectively, and we love how much ground can be covered by a group with this exercise!

3-12-3 Brainstorm   #gamestorming   #idea generation   This format for brainstorming compresses the essentials of an ideation session into one short format. The numbers 3-12-3 refer to the amount of time in minutes given to each of three activities: 3 minutes for generating a pool of observations, 12 for combining those observations into rough concepts, and 3 again for presenting the concepts back to a group.

Mash-Up Innovation

Some of the best ideas come from taking existing ideas and putting them together. Brainstorming that takes advantage of what your group already knows and loves can really supercharge the idea generation process and this creative exercise is a perfect example of that.

In Mash-Up innovation, first ask your group to brainstorm around three different topics or areas and add them to a shared space or whiteboard. Next, organize your participants into small groups who will spend the next twelve minutes combining and mashing up as many of the elements as possible to make even better ideas. After a short idea presentation, you can even take your group through an idea development stage to really make the most out of this activity. You’ll be surprised at what comes out!

Mash-Up Innovation   #hyperisland   #innovation   #idea generation   Mash-ups is a collaborative idea generation method in which participants come up with innovative concepts by combining different elements together. In a first step, participants brainstorm around different areas, such as technologies, human needs, and existing services. In a second step, they rapidly combine elements from those areas to create new, fun and innovative concepts. Mash-ups demonstrates how fast and easy it can be to come up with innovative ideas.

Large group brainstorming can be dynamic, exciting, and productive but without structure and strong facilitation, it can also become disorganized and frustrating. 1-2-4-All is a classic idea generation process that not only helps ideas find space to allow idea development but also ensures the entire group can contribute to the session. 

Start by inviting silent self-reflection on a shared challenge or question before then moving to pairs, foursomes, and then entire group ideation. One of the many benefits of this brainstorming technique is that everyone gets a chance to contribute freely and share their ideas in a structured way. In groups where conversation can become dominated by strong personalities or not everyone gets a chance to speak, this method is well worth employing. 

1-2-4-All   #idea generation   #liberating structures   #issue analysis   With this facilitation technique you can immediately include everyone regardless of how large the group is. You can generate better ideas and more of them faster than ever before. You can tap the know-how and imagination that is distributed widely in places not known in advance. Open, generative conversation unfolds. Ideas and solutions are sifted in rapid fashion. Most importantly, participants own the ideas, so follow-up and implementation is simplified. No buy-in strategies needed! Simple and elegant!

One will get you Ten

Ideas most often spring from other ideas, and the sharing and co-creation of ideas during a brainstorm or idea generation workshop is where the magic really happens. This technique uses the sharing of ideas between teams as a central concept and it’s a great way of having participants communicate and learn from one another’s ideas meaningfully. 

After first generating ideas solo and as a team, this ideation game asks team members to pair up with members of another team and share ideas. Each member then returns to their own team and presents two ideas – one of their own, and one from the other team – while the rest of the team guesses whose is whose. It’s interesting to see how participants package and present generated ideas and find ways to improve them organically as part of a rapid ideation.  

One will get you Ten   #thiagi   #idea generation   #team   If I give you a dollar and you give me a dollar, we both end up where we began. But if I give you an idea and you give me an idea, we end up with two ideas each, benefiting from a 100 percent return on our investment. In One Will Get You Ten, we leverage this principle so that you and all other participants receive a 1000 percent return on your investment on ideas.

The Creativity Dice

When approaching the idea generation process it can be tempting for a team to go with what’s worked in the past and get locked into what appears to be working. Games that challenge the status quo and challenge teams in ways they don’t expect can be especially effective when generating ideas. 

The Creative Dice is a brainstorming technique that encourages participants to work in three minute bursts and work on either specification, investigation, ideation, incubation, Iteration or integration based on a roll of the dice. By moving between different modes, this method prevents premature closure of one line of ideation and keeps the session energized and engaging. What’s more, the non-linear thinking can help with idea development too!

The Creativity Dice   #creativity   #problem solving   #thiagi   #issue analysis   Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

Affinity Map

Using brainstorming techniques to get a large number of ideas together quickly and efficiently is a great first step to developing new solutions or solving problems. But what to do once you’ve generated lots of ideas and want to work on idea development? Affinity Map is a great method for organizing your group’s brainstormed ideas and for both seeing and challenging existing patterns.

Starting with a simple brainstorm, Affinity Map asks that the group collectively organizes the ideas into columns or groups based on relationships. By doing this idea clustering as a group, your team can take ownership of the idea generation process and discover patterns of thinking together! It’s a great way of identifying and improving a group’s natural inclinations while also creating meaningful ideas.

Affinity Map   #idea generation   #gamestorming   Most of us are familiar with brainstorming—a method by which a group generates as many ideas around a topic as possible in a limited amount of time. Brainstorming works to get a high quantity of information on the table. But it begs the follow-up question of how to gather meaning from all the data. Using a simple Affinity Diagram technique can help us discover embedded patterns (and sometimes break old patterns) of thinking by sorting and clustering language-based information into relationships. It can also give us a sense of where most people’s thinking is focused

Fun brainstorming games

Brainstorming is often a fast-paced and engaging process that results in a group having fun. Creative brainstorming games that help participants have fun while generating ideas are also effective ways of loosening folks up and getting into new ways of thinking. If you’re finding your group stuck

In this section, we’ll look at brainstorming games that intentionally take a fun angle as a means to create better ideas.

Energy, fun, and creativity go hand-in-hand, and brainstorming techniques that encourage these items and generate ideas quickly and effectively – especially with large groups!

In MindSpin, teams of 3-5 participants are challenged to write as many ideas as they can in two five-minute rounds. Whenever a person writes an idea, they slam it down on the table. If they cannot think of one, they can take an idea from the person on their left and hopefully be inspired to write an additional card they also slam on the table. Remember that this brainstorming game is designed to be fast and loud while getting creative juices flowing. Encourage all participants to really slam their ideas down and keep things moving!

MindSpin   #teampedia   #idea generation   #problem solving   #action   A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.

Figure storming

One potential difficulty when generating ideas is that not everyone feels comfortable sharing or holds back their ideas for fear of judgment. Creative brainstorming is all about removing restrictions or hesitation, and enabling your group to ideate freely – figure storming is a great method for achieving this!

Start by asking the group how a famous person, fictional character or well-known creative would approach the problem or topic at hand. You might ask how Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Bennett or Barack Obama might think about the ideas or concepts at hand. By inhabiting a different person’s perspective, not only can teams and individuals access new ideas, but they can also do so free of judgment. Also, it can be great fun to invite Atilla the Hun or Cleopatra to your creative exercises!

Flip and Rip

Images can often unlock our creativity but when using them to generate ideas, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to start. This visual brainstorming technique places some rules on how a group will both source and use images, and can encourage some really creative ideas!

Start by giving participants two magazines or image sets each. Then, invite each person to tear our whatever images stand out to them or grab their attention. Next, give them a problem statement and encourage them to find the connections between the problem and their chosen images. These unexpected connections between visuals can then be used as the foundation for further ideas! Plus, who doesn’t love the sound and feeling of tearing paper!

Flip and Rip   #idea generation   #problem solving   #creativity   #online   Creativity through pictures and images

Forced Connections

An important part of the ideation process is giving your team permission to be silly and bring ideas to the table without fear of judgement or inhibitions. Empowering your team to be creative without limiting themselves can massively affect the effectiveness of your brainstorming and so it’s worth spending time to unblock your participants early.

Assemble a collection of random objects or images and invite participants to choose two or more items and brainstorm how they might be used together or connected in some way. Encourage out-of-the-box thinking and unusual ideas by bringing a collection of odd items to the table and you’ll be surprised at all the ideas your team can generate!

The Thing from the Future

Science fiction and speculative thinking about the future has long been a great source of ideas. In this brainstorming exercise, invite groups to co-design their ideal future by creating tangible objects with their imaginations.

Begin by sourcing a heap of prototyping materials and craft supplies. Invite participants to imagine an ideal future state and create an object that has time travelled back to the present. After spending some time creating strange and wonderful objects, participants then present them to the group and tell stories about the objects to inform future strategies and ideas.

If you’re looking for a fun, practical exercise to bring to your brainstorming session and encourage creative thinking, this activity is a great choice!

The Thing from the Future   #imagination   #storymaking   #idea generation   #issue analysis   Help a group to time-travel and tap their imagination by fictional objects. With tangible objects and the stories your participants make up w/ them you’ll get so much richer inputs and context to inform joint visioning / strategizing: The future doesn’t look that far away when you can pick it off the shelf.

Making Lemonade

Sometimes, the best ideas come from moments of adversity or struggle. This brainstorming exercises leverages the power of positive thinking and attempting to make the best of a bad situation to generate creative ideas.

Start by sharing a couple of negative scenarios that might radically change something in the world. For example, everyone in the world has a cold, it rains constantly or we lost all our customers over night.

Next, ask your group to take something that appears negative and aim to reframe it to be as positive as possible while coming up with ideas of how that change might actually have a positive impact. Rain every day? That might be the end of drought and a boom to umbrella sales!

Making Lemonade   #creative thinking   #creativity   #design   #idea generation   Try on a relentlessly positive, can-do attitude before tackling the big stuff. The proverb goes “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Practice the art of positive thinking to unlock creative ideas. Use this as a warm-up before brainstorming or to energize your team meetings.

Visual brainstorming techniques

Visual brainstorming is a great way of helping your teams out of creative roadblocks and encouraging fresh ideas. When words fail, images can enliven, invigorate and inspire your process. In this section, we’ll look at some great brainstorming techniques that focus on drawing or creating visual responses when ideating. Let’s take a look! 

Brainstorming shouldn’t stop when you have your first good idea. Fast iteration and refinement can help your group discover better ideas and develop ideas in record time. With 6-8-5, you can encourage your team to move from brainstorming to idea development in just a few minutes, and by asking participants to draw, you can keep things flowing easily!

Start by inviting your group to sketch 6-8 ideas in response to a central question or topic in five minutes. Encourage your team to be rough and not to worry about finesse at this stage – remember that the first stage of brainstorming works best when it’s free and unrestricted!

After a quick round of presenting ideas, go through the sketching process again and encourage idea development or ideas that have come out of group sharing. The result will be a heap of ideas and sketches you can move forward with too! 

6-8-5   #gamestorming   #idea generation   Part of the reason we end up with under-developed ideas is that we stick with the first good idea we have — rather than taking the time to explore complementary approaches. 6-8-5 is designed to combat this pattern by forcing us to generate lots of ideas in a short period of time. The activity can then be repeated to hone & flesh out a few of the best ideas.

Four Step Sketch

Visual brainstorming techniques can be great right at the start of the process but they can be equally effective later on when it comes to idea development. In this exercise pulled from the design sprint playbook, take your group through a structured ideation process that encourages reflection, quick sketching and a completed idea too.

Begin by reviewing any existing materials or outputs from earlier exercises before then having your group do a round of Crazy 8’s, where they create eight sketched variations on their idea. At this stage, you then invite participants to finesse their idea and create a final polished sketch to share with the team. By mixing reflection, ideation and development, this brainstorming technique offers a structured path towards better ideas!

Four-Step Sketch   #design sprint   #innovation   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper,  Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

Drawing Together

Visual thinking is a powerful tool for any creative process or brainstorming workshop. This brainstorming game asks teams to tell stories about a personal or group challenge personal by expressing themselves with just five simple symbols drawn on paper. After a first draft, participants are then invited to refine their stories with colour, size and placement before the group interprets them.

By expressing themselves in a novel way, participants can exercise their creative muscles and consider new ways to express ideas nonverbally.

Drawing Together   #skills   #liberating structures   #visual methods   You can help people access hidden knowledge such as feelings, attitudes, and patterns that are difficult to express with words. When people are tired, their brains are full, and they have reached the limits of logical thinking, you can help them evoke ideas that lie outside logical, step-by-step understanding of what is possible. Stories about individual or group transformations can be told with five easy-to-draw symbols that have universal meanings. The playful spirit of drawing together signals that more is possible and many new answers are expected. Drawing Together cuts through the culture of overreliance on what people say and write that constrains the emergence of novelty. It also provides a new avenue of expression for some people whose ideas would otherwise not surface.

Brainstorming games for warming up

Generating ideas and thinking creatively isn’t always easy. Finding ways to energize and prepare your group for brainstorming with simple and fun warm-ups can help ensure the success of the workshop or session and introduce key idea generation concepts too.

While these creative games don’t necessarily create ideas in themselves, they are a great way to get teams ready for the next step. Let’s take a look!

When it comes to warming people up for an idea generation workshop, simple is best. With Draw Toast, you can introduce your group to visual thinking, working memory and systems thinking, all through the prism of a simple warm-up that works well online or offline!

For this creative exercise, invite your participants to illustrate how to make toast with a sketch or diagram without using any text. Afterward, share observations and insights as a group and outline the fact that there is no right or wrong diagram, and that differing and unique approaches to a problem or concept are all valid and useful. Not only is this a fun, fast brainstorming technique, but it prepares a group for the next stages of idea generation too!

Draw toast   #problem solving   #opening   #design   #gamestorming   #idea generation   You can use the Draw Toast exercise to introduce people to the concepts of visual thinking, working memory, mental models and/or systems thinking. This also works as a nice warm-up exercise to get people engaged with each other and thinking visually. Plus, it’s fun!

The Paper Clip Method

Even established and successful groups have preconceptions about brainstorming or how to generate ideas. Warming up a team by introducing the power of brainstorming practically can prevent stumbling blocks later on and ensure everyone is on the same page when approaching the brainstorming process.

The Paper Clip Method is a creative exercise that challenges your group to brainstorm all possible uses for a paper clip. After some silent brainstorming, debrief by sharing what the group has come up with and highlight how the group has cumulatively come up with a greater quality and quantity of ideas than any single person could.

The paper clip method   #sharing   #creativity   #warm up   #idea generation   #brainstorming   The power of brainstorming. A training for project leaders, creativity training, and to catalyse getting new solutions.

Apple-Drawing Ideation

Learning how to approach creative brainstorming as a group is a worthwhile way to kick-off your idea generation workshop. In this simple creative game, split your participants into groups and invite them to take it in turns to fill a grid with drawings of apples, with the challenge that no apple can be the same as another. 

When the time is done or the grid is full, debrief and highlight some of key concepts for effective brainstorming including the fact quantity is a precursor to quality and that we should try to build on the ideas of others. This brainstorming game is flexible by design  and you can use it with something other than apples for a more practical application: e.g., draw 30 logos, write 30 taglines, draw 30 new cars.

Apple-Drawing Ideation   #hyperisland   #innovation   #idea generation   The purpose of this simple exercise is to demonstrate three key principles useful for creativity and idea generation: quantity is a condition for quality; building on the ideas of others; the ideas we come up with are usually all the same. The format is simple, with small groups standing and drawing apples. At the end of the exercise, the whole group reflects and draws out learnings and reflections.

Activities to support a brainstorming workshop

We’ve covered everything from fast and fun creative games to in-depth brainstorming techniques, but what about if you’re looking for ways to improve or kick start your brainstorming process? Preparing for a brainstorming workshop with research on inspiration collection can really help your team make the most of the upcoming session.

In this section, we’ll look at some techniques and methods you can use to inform, enable and improve your group brainstorm and bring better quality ideas to the table! 

Rapid Research

Like all effective workshops, idea generation sessions generally want to limit the number of participants in the room to ensure productivity. That said, ideas and insight can come from anywhere in an organisation and this brainstorming technique can tap into the expertise of people outside of the room.

Start by asking participants to think of a colleague or peer outside the room and call them to get a perspective on the topic or question at hand. For remote teams, you can arrange quick calls or use Slack or other tools to get quick and useful feedback. After collecting input, bring the group back together to share and document insights. You’ll be surprised at how quickly and effectively you can get a wide variety of useful information!

Rapid Research   #hyperisland   #innovation   #idea generation   A simple exercise that complements exploratory, discursive, and creative workshops with insights and opinions from outside. Use this exercise when brainstorming ideas, developing a new product or service or creating a strategy or plan that will include others. Participants phone a co-worker and ask them questions relevant to the task. This quickly generates meaningful input from a range of “outside” perspectives. Often, participants will be surprised at how simple it was to solicit this input and how valuable it is to the process.

Lightning Demos

No idea is wholly original. Brainstorming is all about taking existing ideas and learning from others while also bringing our own insights to the table.

With this activity, you and your group will look for inspiration from how other organizations, products or thought leaders have solved or approached the problem or topic at hand. Invite participants to spend a little time gathering 2-3 examples before then presenting ideas back to the group. By the end of the exercise, you’ll have a set of ideas you can use as the basis for further discussion or idea development.

If you’re working online, collect demos in an online whiteboard and even explore the possibility of gathering inspiration before the workshop if your team has a busy schedule.

Lightning Demos   #design sprint   #innovation   #idea generation   This is an exercise to inspire your team with products or services that they think they can use as inspiration for their concepts in the next phases of their design sprints.

The Medici Effect

Great ideas can often come from sources outside of your own industry or field. The Medici Effect is inspired by Frans Johansson’s book The Medici Effect, which explores how game-changing ideas and breakthroughs can occur when concepts and ideas from one area are applied to another and used as the basis for innovation.

In this exercise, invite participants to find examples of how individuals from other fields have achieved their goals and come up with great ideas. Think of successful scientists, creatives, business owners, musicians, entrepreneurs, educators etc. have found success and what inspiration you and your team might take from them. If working online, encourage participants to include images, links and quotes so you can create an inspiration wall for further exploration of the problem you are trying to solve!

Brainstorming session templates

Are you looking to run a workshop or meeting where you need a complete group process to come up with ideas and turn those into actions? 

Check out the brainstorming session templates below to see how to build upon an initial brainstorming session with appropriate idea selection and prioritization tools to arrive at sound group decisions.!

Ideation Workshop

In this one-day workshop template, follow an entire ideation process from start to finish, going from brainstorming and idea generation through to idea development and pitching. Tap into concepts such as disruptive cases, future tech & trends and opposite thinking to create innovative ideas and empower your team!

One Hour Brain Sprint

Have imited time for group brainstorming? Try the One Hour Brain Sprint to generate ideas quickly and effectively, all while avoiding unproductive discussions and the pitfalls of some brainstorming approaches.

One-hour Brain Sprint

Remote Problem Solving Workshop

Want to solve problems with your remote team? This virtual workshop template includes several stages of ideation and development and provides a great example of how you might utilize lightning demos and research as a basis for experimental ideas and solutions.

Remote problem solving workshop

What are the benefits of group brainstorming ?

While the primary measure of success for a brainstorming workshop will be the quantity and quality of ideas generated, the benefits of this kind of session can go much further.

Establishing an ideation mindset and encouraging creative thinking will benefit your organization in the long term, and finding new ways to push your team in the direction of generating effective ideas has positive effects for your whole organization. Let’s see some of the benefits that can come from bringing team members together for a brainstorming session.

Encourage creativity 

Creative games and exercises can yield instant results when it comes to creatively engaging a team and generating ideas but beyond that, regular brainstorming can help participants be more creative in their regular work and find methods of finding new ideas and solutions that work for them. Being creative is a wonderful way to engage a group and getting out of a regular workflow can be the key that unlocks innovation.

Inclusive, easy-to-understand activities

Brainstorming is a simple group activity that is easy to understand and contribute to. Whatever skill level or competency a person has, the first stage of the idea generation process is something that can be involved in with little overhead or difficulty. This can have massive value in helping a team come together toward a shared goal in an inclusive and simple way!

Diverse ideas

Relying on certain teams or individuals to generate ideas alone can lead to stagnation. By pooling together a diverse group of people to contribute to generating and developing ideas, brainstorming can be a great way to find innovative approaches and diverse ways of thinking. Every point of view you bring to the table is another way of approaching the issue and the results generated by diverse groups are often more robust and multi-facted than those made in a silo.

Quantity of ideas

When it comes to brainstorming techniques, quantity often comes before quality. In order to find great ideas, a group first needs to flush out as many ideas as possible and share before moving onto idea development. The best brainstorming exercises encourage the creation of large amounts of ideas in a short period of time, providing a great foundation for the next steps! 

Get past creative blocks

Problem solving or idea generation can go around in circles if a team isn’t given the freedom to think creatively and approach things from a new angle. Brainstorming methods like those featured here are great ways to unblock a team’s creative and find new ways to approach stalled conversations.

Improve team morale

Brainstorm sessions are often fun and energetic by their nature, and games and exercises that focus on idea generation allow for everyone to contribute and feel heard as part of their team. These kinds of idea generation activities can really help bring a team together and improve team morale too – everyone wants to take part in developing new ideas and being creative!

Get project buy-in

Involving participants across departments and specialties early in the process by inviting them to contribute to generating and developing ideas can not only lead to great ideas but also ensure that a project is followed through on. Get buy-in early by involving stakeholders in early brainstorming sessions and help that creative energy continue throughout your project!

Kickstart projects with energy

The opening stages of a project can determine the tone for the rest of it, and by kicking off your projects with a fun, energetic brainstorming workshop, you can ensure everyone is energised for the work ahead. Try creative games to help your team approach the project with a sense of creativity and experimentation and use brainstorming techniques that see proven results to help move a team forward effectively.

Brainstorming sessions made simple

An effective brainstorming session means creating a balanced agenda of activities and group discussions while keeping everyone engaged.

With SessionLab, you  drag, drop and reorder blocks  to build your step-by-step agenda.

Your session  timing   adjusts automatically  as you make changes and when you’re done, you can  share a beautiful printout  with your colleagues and participants.

Explore  how facilitators use SessionLab  to design effective workshops that create results or  watch this five minute video  to see the planner in action!

Over to you

Brainstorming can be simple or complex, visual or virtual, but whatever method you choose to use, the results should be the same – great ideas. Finding new ways to facilitate innovation is something we’re passionate about here at SessionLab, and we hope you find the above brainstorming techniques useful! 

Did we miss anything? Are there any great brainstorming or idea generation methods you’d like to add? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

James Smart is Head of Content at SessionLab. He’s also a creative facilitator who has run workshops and designed courses for establishments like the National Centre for Writing, UK. He especially enjoys working with young people and empowering others in their creative practice.

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What is brainstorming? Tips, methods, and templates

While you might stumble upon design inspiration in solitude, collaboration is key to building a successful product. Brainstorming has been a cornerstone for creatives since before there were fancy digital tools for it—or since before it was called brainstorming.

French salons and design charrettes were early iterations of the modern brainstorm, where groups of people would come together to work through solutions to problems. Today, brainstorming remains fundamental to the design process.

This guide provides a step-by-step walkthrough of brainstorming, covering its definition, significant advantages, various methods, and the process of conducting your own session.

What is brainstorming?

Brainstorming promotes free thinking to generate ideas for a certain problem or topic.

While you can brainstorm alone, the real magic happens when you round up a team. Groups bring diverse ideas to the table, allowing you to build on one another's concepts and maintain a continuous flow of creative thinking .

In a brainstorming session, participants share creative ideas and insights, and throw possible solutions into the mix. You’ll likely toss out some propositions altogether, but others may guide a project's first, next, or final step.

3 key benefits of brainstorming

Here are three main benefits of brainstorming with your team.

Boosts collaboration and teamwork

Group brainstorming transforms an individual thinking process into a collective effort, boosting collaboration within your team.

In a brainstorming session, everyone gets a say. Make sure every voice counts and each person's ideas receive recognition.

Stimulates creative thinking

Brainstorming allows ideas to run wild, resulting in unconventional and innovative ideas you probably wouldn't think of otherwise.

Promote an open, nonjudgmental environment in your brainstorming session, giving your team permission to explore ideas they might have not gotten a spotlight before.

Generates creative ideas

When teams come together to brainstorm, the mixture of ideas from diverse perspectives yields creative solutions. With more ideas to choose from, you can expedite the decision-making process.

Types of brainstorming 

Different brainstorming techniques provide unique ways to generate ideas and solve problems. The type of brainstorming you should use depends on how your team works together, the specific problem, and your desired results.

Check out these seven FigJam templates that can power up your team brainstorm.

Brainwriting

Brainwriting prompts you to write and record as many innovative ideas as possible. Invite a team member to add their input to your idea, continuing this tag-team process until everyone contributes to each idea. Have a facilitator gather and present all the written ideas for an overview.

Reverse brainstorming

Instead of generating ideas for solutions, reverse brainstorming generates as many potential causes or factors contributing to the problem as possible. For example, imagine your product struggles with customer retention. You’ll want to:

• Define the problem.
• Identify a flaw in your system, like poor customer service.
• Reverse the idea by turning negatives into desired positives—for example, great customer service.
• Consider ways to achieve the desired positive, like better training for your customer service team.

This technique can help identify issues that might not be immediately obvious.

5 whys brainstorming

With the 5 whys method , you keep asking "why" until you get to the bottom of a problem. Instead of stopping at the first answer, you find issues lurking beneath the surface. Once you've exposed the core problem, you can capture it in a problem statement .

For more information on this brainstorming technique, check out this article on the 5 whys .

The crazy 8 exercise is a team drawing challenge where everyone helps sketch eight new ideas. No need for perfection or logic—your only goal is to be creative. Sometimes the wildest inspiration hits when you least expect it.

Mind mapping

Mind mapping begins with a main idea in the middle, with branches connecting related ideas. Once you organize your thoughts, it’s easier to break down complex ideas.

For more information on this type of brainstorming, check out this article on how to mind map .

Starbursting

Starbursting poses questions to inspire solutions for a problem or topic. For example, if you’re brainstorming a new product, each point on the star might represent a key product question, like:

• Who is my target audience?
• What are the features of the product?
• Where is this product being used?
• Why would my target audience want this product?
• When is the best time to launch this product?

Discuss these five questions, then craft new questions based on your answers.

Production vision board

A production vision board helps you visualize your strategy, outline goals, and quickly map out product features and user needs. This helps maintain momentum in your brainstorming session without getting bogged down in details.

How to run a brainstorming session in 5 steps

Ready to run your own brainstorming session? Here’s how to do it in five easy steps.

1. Define the topic and send invites.

Before you start your brainstorm, you need to outline what you're tackling—the topic or problem. This gives your team an understanding of what kind of ideas you’re after and why they’re involved.

Invite team members who offer diverse perspectives and insights related to the topic at hand. Keep the group size manageable to ensure active participation and a dynamic exchange of ideas.

2. Set up the environment.

Many teams run remote brainstorming sessions, especially since studies of virtual brainstorming show that it can be more effective than in-person brainstorming. Most people feel more at ease sharing ideas behind a screen instead of under the spotlight.

Provide your team with pre-session tasks, like individually brainstorming before the main event. This gets people mulling over the topic or problem and gives you a head start with initial ideas. You’re aiming for quantity here, not perfection. Even half-baked ideas are welcome.

Pro tip: To help manage expectations and ensure every minute matters, send your team a meeting agenda template before your session.

3. Choose a facilitator to guide the session.

For any brainstorming session to run smoothly, a designated facilitator should be there to help guide the discussion, keep track of time, and ensure everyone has a chance to contribute.

Extroverts might dominate, while introverts may shrink away from the limelight. Newbies and junior team members may feel overshadowed by higher-ups. Your facilitator should have the leadership skills necessary to keep everyone engaged.

Pro tip: Use a Figma timer to help your team stay on track with idea presentations.

4. Review the ideas.

Review ideas and spot the big contenders. Which ideas are the most relevant, feasible, and have the largest potential impact?

If team members are reluctant to speak up, consider offering a prize to encourage brainstorming participation . Figma's Andrea Helmbolt recommends gift cards to a coffee shop, stickers, or selfie sticks to reward those tossing out ideas.

Pro tip: Encourage participation and minimize angst with voting widgets that let members weigh in anonymously.

5. Create an action plan.

After selecting your most promising ideas, devise a plan of action. Start by assigning tasks and setting deadlines so everyone understands the expectations.

After the meeting, share a brief recap focusing on key ideas, breakthroughs, and the consensus. Inject excitement by highlighting positive takeaways and revealing exciting possibilities uncovered during the brainstorm.

Pro tip: Create a poll to gather feedback about the brainstorming session so you can make the next round even better.

Enhance collaboration and boost creativity with FigJam

Start brainstorming with the FigJam shared online whiteboard across departments to build and deliver inspired designs. Try these Figma tips and tricks to keep brainstorming sessions exciting and effective:

• Get expert tips for how to run a remote brainstorm from the Figma team.
• Explore these mind map examples to help you visualize how ideas connect so you can find new solutions.
• Kick off your next brainstorming session with these icebreaker ideas.

Ready to organize an inspiring brainstorming session? Start brainstorming with FigJam .

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10 effective brainstorming techniques for teams

Group brainstorming, if done properly, can promote creative thinking, bring a team together, and help you land on the perfect idea.

Productive group brainstorming can really feel like a win: The team leaves feeling energized, accomplished, and excited for the next steps. Effective brainstorming techniques can help achieve this. On the other hand, when a brainstorm session misses—whether it feels unproductive, repetitive, or negative—the team may collectively feel uninspired. 

There are a lot of factors that can derail a brainstorm, but here are some of the common reasons a brainstorming session goes wrong:  

• Unbalanced conversation. Extroverted personalities and quick thinkers dominate the conversation, leaving no time for other teammates to contribute. 
• The anchoring effect. Participants converge on the first few ideas that are brought up in a brainstorm, which stifles new ideas and prevents the team from moving on. 
• Awkward silence. Participants are unprepared, leaving you with an hour full of painful silence or—worse yet—a meeting that is cut short to put everyone out of their misery.
• Disconnected teams. Remote working during the pandemic requires brainstorming through videoconferencing. The inherent awkwardness combined with the tendency of people to talk over one another makes it hard to capture the creative energy that comes from having everyone in one room. 

Implementing the following group brainstorming techniques can help you avoid these common woes and instead bring your team together to yield the perfect idea .

10 effective team brainstorming techniques 

Brainstorms typically have three steps: idea capture, discussion and critique, and selection. The following strategies will help you and your team, whether you’re in person or remote , through all three stages. 

1. Brainwriting 

In this nonverbal brainstorming method, everyone writes down three ideas that relate to the topic of the brainstorm. Allow about four to six minutes for this process. Then everyone passes their ideas to the person on their right (or left, whichever you prefer), who will then build off of the ideas, adding bullet points or creative strategies . If your team is remote, they can use a communications platform like Slack to share ideas. After another few minutes, everyone will pass the piece of paper again until it makes it all the way around the table. Once the ideas have made it around the circle, the group discusses them and decides which ideas are best to pursue. 

This technique can alleviate two of the biggest brainstorm pitfalls—unbalanced conversation and the anchoring effect—by ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to contribute and eliminating the bias toward the first idea. 

2. Rapid ideation 

In rapid ideation, everyone writes down as many ideas as possible in a set amount of time before any ideas are discussed, critiqued, or fleshed out. For this brainstorming technique, you will need to set (and stick to) a time constraint, otherwise you’ll risk losing the sense of urgency. 

This brainstorming exercise can be helpful to avoid the all-too-common scenario when an idea is shot down before it has time to grow, transform, and develop. By allowing everyone to capture their ideas before the critique begins, rapid ideation avoids the inevitable, premature shooting down of ideas. The time constraint can also prevent people from talking themselves out of an idea before they share it with a group—a common brainstorming mishap.

3. Figure storming

In figure storming, the group picks a well-known figure who is not in the room—it could be a boss, a fictional character, or a well-known public figure—and discusses how that person would approach the problem or think about this idea . For example, you might ask: How would Oprah Winfrey approach this problem? It seems like a silly question, but putting yourself in someone else’s shoes can help you and your team approach the problem a different way. 

Teammates can sometimes be hesitant to put forth their creative ideas, but if someone else’s name is attached to the ideas—Oprah’s, for example—they are more likely to share it. Also, this brainstorming method removes some barriers that usually restrict creative thinking, like budget and time. 

4. Eidetic image method

This visualization-based method recommended by author and psychologist Jacqueline Sussman employs vivid images stored in our minds from all of our life experiences. Begin with intention-setting: Have the group close their eyes and clearly set an intention for what they will create—for example, an innovative smartphone. Each person in the group sets the intention in their mind that they will come up with a new phone design unlike previous ones.

After these intentions are set, you will have everyone close their eyes again and pull forth the first eidetic image: the company’s current phone design. Once everyone in the group has that image in their mind, you can all begin building upon that design. Ask the group to picture the current design in their favorite color or in their ideal size. Ask them to add features they wish the current design had originally included. Maybe they’ll add a better camera or a larger screen. After everyone has arrived at an image of their ideal phone design in their mind, you will randomly ask a team member to share exactly what their enhanced version looks like. Once they’ve shared, record that idea. Now have everyone picture that new version of the phone and you can begin layering ideas on top of it. In the end, you can end up with hundreds of new concrete ideas—ranging from the color to the features to the size.

This method works best when the goal isn’t to reinvent the wheel but rather to enhance it. While the group should not focus on costs, their ideas should remain in the realm of possibility.

5. Online brainstorming, aka brain netting 

For this group brainstorming technique, all you need is a central location for team members to write down their ideas. If all of your employees are in the same time zone, you can host real-time brainstorms over Slack to develop ideas together. If your team is distributed , you can put together a running Google doc that allows team members to write down their ideas whenever inspiration hits, allowing for busy schedules and time differences. For teams in the same city, one option is to use WeWork On Demand or WeWork All Access to book a conference room or common space for in-person brainstorming together.

After everyone writes down their ideas, it’s important to follow up to decide which ideas to pursue, so this technique is best used for idea capture, with separate meetings for critique, planning, and execution. 

This technique encourages remote employees to participate and puts everyone on the same playing field. You can also keep everyone’s identity anonymous if that helps the team contribute more freely. 

6. Round-robin brainstorming 

In a round-robin brainstorm, every member of the meeting participates, contributing one idea to the brainstorm . The first rule is that the group has to make it around the whole room at least once before anyone can contribute a second idea or criticize, elaborate on, or discuss any of the ideas. The second rule is that no one can say, “My idea was already said.” You can come back to that person at the end when they’ve had more time to think. It’s also a good idea to give the team some time to prepare ideas before the brainstorm meeting. 

Like rapid ideation, this technique encourages (read: requires) everyone to participate and allows the team members to get all of their ideas out before moving on to the critique phase of the brainstorm. 

7. Step-ladder technique

The step-ladder technique, while a bit complex, is a great way to make sure the group isn’t heavily influenced by the first few ideas or by the loudest people in the room. 

To use the step-ladder technique, a facilitator first introduces the brainstorming topic and then everyone leaves the room except for two people. If you’re working with remote team members, you can use breakout rooms in a videoconferencing app to facilitate this. Those two brainstorm together for a few minutes before a third person comes back into the room. The third person shares some of their ideas, before discussing the ideas that the first two discussed. Individuals return to the room one by one, sharing their ideas before learning about the other ideas that have been discussed. Outside the room, the other teammates can either continue to brainstorm and write down ideas or go back to individual work, but they should not discuss their ideas with anyone until they are inside the room. 

If your group is too big, you’re better off going with a simpler technique, as the step-ladder technique takes some time. 

8. Mind mapping

Sometimes, the first idea shared with the group isn’t the right idea, but it sparks three better ideas—that’s where mind mapping comes in. In this technique, the group starts with one idea and then draws lines connecting sub-ideas to the first one. Mind mapping is a visual way to approach brainstorms and can be helpful for those who think visually . 

9. Starbursting 

Starbursting is a later-stage brainstorming technique that can be implemented when a group has already selected an idea to elaborate upon and potentially execute. 

In a starburst brainstorming session, your team will start with an idea or challenge at the center and then create a six-point star around it. Each point represents a question: who, what, when, where, why, and how. For example, who is this product targeting? When would be a good time to launch it? What is our motivation for creating this product? 

Because it focuses on questions rather than answers, starbursting encourages the group to examine an idea from every angle. Presenting an idea in this way frees the person who generated the idea from having to defend it or figure out how to execute it on their own. Instead, the team works on solutions together .

10. Change of scenery

If your team is all in the same space, moving your brainstorm outside to a casual lunch place or even a different floor in your building can help get new ideas flowing. Physical space plays a big part in how employees work, think, and feel. When a team is constantly brainstorming together in the same room, with the same group of people, the brainstorms may feel repetitive and uninspiring. The change of scenery provided by a brand-new space, even for a short period of time, can help people think differently and devise new ideas. 

Five tips for running effective team brainstorming sessions 

No matter which technique you use, these tips can help you get the most out of your brainstorming sessions : 

• Allow people to prep. On-the-spot creativity is hard to spark, so factor in some prep time. Make sure to email your team the prompt, topic, or problem you are trying to solve as early as possible so the team can start to come up with ideas on their own. This means at least one full day before the brainstorm, if not two—10 minutes before the meeting is not quite enough time to get those creative juices flowing. 
• Set a clear intention. Are you looking for very feasible, we-can-make-this-happen-this-month ideas, or are you looking for never-been-done-before ideas? Make sure your desired outcome is clear before the meeting begins. 
• Invite new people. If the same team brainstorms together each week or month, the ideas can get stale and the group can start to converge on the same few ideas each time. Inviting a fresh perspective shakes things up, so make sure that you invite people from different backgrounds and teams.
• Foster an inclusive, supportive environment. “No bad ideas” has become a brainstorming cliché, but if someone’s idea gets shot down quickly, they’re less likely to have the confidence to share their next idea.  
• Follow up. Recognize that a brainstorm serves a purpose—to foster new ideas, solutions, products, etc.—but you need to follow up in order to bring these ideas to life. Make sure to set aside ample time to narrow down your ideas and pursue a few in a structured manner. 

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Benefits of team brainstorming 

Traditionally, brainstorming activities are used to produce and concept new ideas, but, if done properly, the benefits of a brainstorm can extend beyond ideation. 

• Boosts group morale

Brainstorming as a group boosts group morale because the team is working toward a common goal in a creative and supportive setting. Brainstorms allow teammates to get face-to-face time together, which is important for team bonding. Withholding criticisms during the idea-capture phase of the brainstorm is essential for achieving this benefit. 

• Promotes creative thinking 

Oftentimes, people buzz through their day from task to task without a moment to breathe, even in creative fields. Setting aside time specifically to let ideas flow freely without distraction is important and keeps those creative muscles in shape . Also, rallying people behind a shared topic or idea can help employees feel less isolated and actually make employees more productive. 

When people walk into a traditional meeting, they’re expected to be prepared and have the answers to questions. Brainstorms take that pressure off and allow people to contribute half-baked ideas, even if those ideas aren’t fully thought through or the perfect solution. Those ideas can help trigger new ideas from other people in the room, and the ideas build off of one another (see: mind mapping).  

• Brings together diverse ideas

The whole is better than the sum of its parts: Brainstorming in a group setting can yield better results than brainstorming on your own because everyone comes with their own strengths and perspective . 

• Yields a large quantity of ideas

The sheer number of ideas produced in a group brainstorm makes a strong case for its effectiveness. Every idea won’t be a winner, but among the ideas that the team comes up with, a handful will be worth pursuing. That is why it’s important to follow up each brainstorm with a planning session to push those ideas into reality. 

These group brainstorming techniques will help structure your brainstorming session for maximum efficiency, and if you need an extra boost of creative energy, check out these creativity quotes to invigorate you and your team. 

This article was originally published on October 16, 2019, and has been updated throughout by the editors.

Jenna Wilson was a senior associate on the social media team at WeWork and a writer for Ideas by WeWork . She wrote about impact, sustainability, and WeWork’s employees around the world.

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29 brainstorming techniques: effective ways to spark creativity

Bright ideas don’t come as easily as flicking on a light. 

When it’s up to one individual to dream up a solution, it can be time-consuming and cause a lot of pressure. And when it comes to a group of people tasked with solving a problem, ideas might clash. Not to mention, everyone has a preferred method for their creative madness, making it difficult to get every team members’ wheels turning in the same direction.

That’s where brainstorming techniques come in. These techniques provide structure for brainstorming sessions, ignite creativity across all brainstormers, and ensure your ideas come to fruition. And luckily, there are lots of effective brainstorming techniques to choose from. 

What is brainstorming?

Here’s a general brainstorming definition: it’s an approach taken by an individual or team to solve a problem or generate new ideas for the improvement of a product, organization, or strategy. 

No matter your preferred method, most brainstorming techniques involve three steps:

Capture ideas

Discuss and critique the ideas

Choose which ideas to execute

Every brainstorming technique also involves the same ingredients. All you need is an individual or group of people, a problem to solve or an opportunity to address, and time. 

Brainstorming challenges

The golden rule of all brainstorming sessions is quantity over quality. The more ideas you have, the better your chances are that one will be worthy of execution. For these reasons, especially in group brainstorming sessions, be sure all team members check their criticisms at the door and let it be known that the only bad ideas are no ideas. 

Of course, not every brainstorming session will go off without a hitch. Some common brainstorming challenges include:

Unbalanced conversations, sometimes due to extroverts dominating discussions

The anchoring effect, meaning brainstormers cling to the first few ideas shared and don’t move on to others

Awkward silences, which often occur when participants are not prepared 

Perhaps you’ve experienced some of these uncomfortable brainstorming sessions yourself. Thankfully, there are plenty of tried-and-true, and also some unorthodox, brainstorming techniques and tools that tackle just these issues.

Analytic brainstorming techniques

When you need to look at an idea from all angles or vet a problem thoroughly, analytic brainstorming techniques might be worth implementing. Consider the following brainstorming methods and tools to generate and qualify ideas.

1. Starbursting  

A visual brainstorming technique, starbursting should be used once you or your team of brainstormers has homed in on a single idea. To begin starbursting, put an idea on the middle of a whiteboard and draw a six-point star around it. Each point will represent a question:

Consider every question and how it might pertain to your idea, such as, “Who will want to buy this product?” or, “When will we need to launch this program?” This will help you explore scenarios or roadblocks you hadn’t considered before.

Best for: large group brainstorms, vetting ideas thoroughly

2. The five whys, a.k.a. why analysis

Similar to starbursting, the five whys brainstorming technique helps you evaluate the strength of an idea. Challenge yourself to ask “why” questions about a topic or idea at least five times and consider what new problems you surface—and, importantly, note how you can address them. To help organize your thoughts, consider using a flowchart or fishbone diagram in hand with this brainstorming technique.

Best for: individual and group brainstorms, vetting ideas thoroughly

3. SWOT analysis

You might be familiar with SWOT analysis as it relates to strategic planning , and you might also be surprised to know that this concept can also be applied as a brainstorming exercise to help qualify an idea. The notion? Discuss the following aspects of your topic to determine whether it’s worth executing: 

Strengths : how does the idea dominate or stand out from competitors?

Weakness : are there any flaws in the idea that could jeopardize its execution?

Opportunities : what else can you capitalize on based on this idea?

Threats : what are potential downfalls that could arise if the idea is launched?

4. How Now Wow  

The How Now Wow brainstorming technique is all about categorizing ideas based on how unique they are and how easy they are to implement. Once you’ve collected several ideas, either individually or from team members, talk through where they fall in the How Now Wow spectrum:

How ideas are ideas that are original but not executable. 

Now ideas are unoriginal ideas that are easily executable.

Wow ideas are never-been-pitched before ideas that are also easy to implement.

Obviously, you want as many “Wow” ideas as possible since these are executable but also because they might set you apart from competitors or dispel monotony in a company. To help organize your ideas, consider using a matrix of four squares with difficulty weighted on the Y-axis and innovation on the X-axis. 

Best for: individual and group brainstorms, homing in on an executable solution

5. Drivers analysis

Just as the name implies, driver analysis is a brainstorming technique that analyzes the drivers or “causes” of a problem. To use this brainstorming technique, simply keep asking yourself or your team of brainstormers: “What’s driving [insert problem]?” and then, “What’s driving [insert answer to the previous question]?” Similar to why analysis, the deeper you dig into a problem, the more well-vetted it will be and the more confident you will be in executing solutions for those problems. 

6. Mind mapping

Another visual brainstorming technique, mind mapping addresses the anchoring effect—a common brainstorming challenge where brainstormers fixate on the first ideas instead of coming up with new ones. Mind mapping does this by using the first idea to inspire other ideas. 

You’ll need a large piece of paper or whiteboard to do this. Begin by writing down a topic and then drawing lines connecting tangential ideas to it. This essentially helps you paint a picture of your topic at hand and what might impact its execution or even expedite it.

Best for: individual and group brainstorms, visual thinkers

7. Gap filling, a.k.a. gap analysis

When you’re struggling with how to execute an idea, that’s where gap filling comes in—to address the obstacles standing in your way. Begin by starting with a statement of where you are and then a statement of where you want to be. For example, “Our company creates smart watches; we want to expand our portfolio to also include fitness trackers.”

It’s worth writing these out on a large piece of paper or a whiteboard for all of your brainstormers to see, perhaps using a flowchart or mind map to do so. Then, list obstacles that are preventing you from getting where you want to be and work through solutions for each of them. By the end of your brainstorming session, you should have a clearer plan of how to get where you want to be. 

Best for: individual and group brainstorms, visual thinkers, honing in on an executable solution

Quiet async brainstorming techniques

Best for businesses that are crunched for time or teams with more introverted individuals, these quiet brainstorming techniques allow brainstormers to contribute ideas on their own time and often anonymously. Look to the following methods to get your creative juices flowing, especially for remote teams with frequent virtual meetings .   

8. Brainwriting, a.k.a. slip writing

A nonverbal and in-person brainstorming technique, brainwriting addresses the brainstorming challenge of unbalanced conversations head-on. That’s because it requires participation and teamwork from every brainstormer, beginning with each person writing down three ideas relating to a topic on three separate slips of paper. Then everyone passes their ideas to the right or left and their neighbor builds on those ideas, adding bullet points and considerations. 

The slips of paper continue to be passed around the table until they’ve made it all the way around. Then, the brainstorm facilitator can digest all of the ideas themselves, or the brainstormers can discuss each idea out loud and determine what’s worth pursuing. Pro tip: limit this brainstorming technique to no more than 10 people to not be overwhelmed with ideas or time constraints.

Best for: group brainstorms and introverted team members

9. Collaborative brainwriting

You can think of collaborative brainwriting like a herd of cows grazing in a field, except it’s brainstormers grazing on ideas throughout a week, anonymously jotting down thoughts or ideas. Oftentimes a brainstorming facilitator will kick off this technique by posting a large piece of paper, sticky notes, or sharing a cloud-based document to jot down a few brainstorming ideas.

From there, team members can build off of those ideas on their own time and anonymously provide feedback. Be sure to set a clear deadline of when the brainstorming session closes to ensure all brainstormers have an opportunity to chime in.

Best for: individual brainstorming 

10. Brain-netting, a.k.a. online brainstorming

Great for remote teams, brain-netting is essentially a place for a team to brain dump their own ideas, whether that’s a Slack channel, Google Doc, or your project management tool . 

The notion is that brainstormers can add ideas whenever inspiration strikes and that the list will be ever-evolving. Of course, the team leader might want to inform their team of brainstormers of any important dates or deadlines when they need solutions to a problem. They may also want to hold a meeting to discuss the ideas. All brainstormers’ identities can be left anonymous even in the meeting. 

Best for: group brainstorms, introverted team members, remote teams

11. SCAMPER  

The SCAMPER brainstorming technique encourages brainstormers to look at an idea from different angles and it uses its acronym to inspire each lens: 

Substitute : consider what would happen if you swapped one facet of a solution for another.

Combine : consider what would happen if you combined one facet of a solution with another.

Adapt : consider how you could adapt an idea or solution in a new context.

Modify : consider how you can modify an idea to make it higher impact.

Put to another use : consider how else you could leverage your idea.

Eliminate : consider what you could remove from the idea or solution so that it’s simplified.

Reverse effective : finally, consider how you could reorganize an idea to make it most effective . 

When used in a group brainstorming session, you might want to use templates to track responses or pair the SCAMPER method with a brainwriting session to encourage all brainstormers to evaluate ideas from every angle. 

12. Lightning Decision Jam

Known as LDJ for short, the Lightning Decision Jam brainstorming technique requires 40 minutes to one hour to complete. What will you have by the end? Tangible results and buy-in from an entire team of brainstormers. 

This brainstorming technique is great for remote team alignment . It all begins with writing down positives about a topic or what’s working regarding the topic, then writing down negatives and identifying what needs to be addressed most urgently. This is followed by a few minutes of reframing problems as questions, then brainstorming solutions for those problems. 

Finally, your team uses a matrix to determine how high impact and how high effort your solutions are to decide which ideas are worth pursuing. For a more robust explanation of LDJ, watch this video by design agency AJ&Smart, which created the brainstorming technique. 

Best for: group brainstorms, remote workforces, tight deadlines, honing in on an executable solution

13. The idea napkin

Similar to LDJ, the idea napkin is essentially a brainstorming template that distills a broad topic into tangible solutions. How it works: Every brainstormer has an “idea napkin” that they commit one idea to, beginning by writing down their idea, as well as an elevator pitch for it. 

The idea napkin also includes a column for who the idea is targeting—meaning who you’re solving a problem for (customers, teammates, etc.)—and a column noting what problems your idea addresses. Brainstormers can fill out their napkins ahead of or during a brainstorming session, each is expected to present or share them. The final ideas will be placed on an impact and effort matrix to determine which are worth pursuing. 

Best for: group brainstorms, honing in on an executable solution

Roleplaying brainstorm techniques

Drama lovers rejoice! These roleplay brainstorming techniques encourage brainstormers to figuratively walk in someone else’s shoes or put on their hat—or six hats, in one instance—to address a problem or dream up ideas from a new perspective. An added benefit of this? When brainstormers take on a personality that’s not their own, it lowers inhibitions since it’s technically not their point of view being brought to the table.

14. Six thinking hats

This brainstorming technique requires a minimum of six brainstormers to wear imaginary hats—hence the name— that require them to look solely at an idea from one specific angle. For instance, one brainstormer might be wearing an impact hat and only concern themselves with the impact of an idea and another might be wearing a constraints hat and only looking at the constraints of an idea. 

You can pick and choose which angles are most important to your organization. And by the end of the group discussion, the whole brainstorming group should be able to hang their hats feeling confident about the ideas you’ll pursue.

Best for: group brainstorms (six or more people), introverted team members, vetting ideas thoroughly

15. Figure storming

Ever heard the phrase, “What would Abe do?” That’s pretty much the premise of this brainstorming technique in that brainstormers take on the identity of a famous or prominent figure, whether that’s a leader or celebrity, and put themselves in their brain space and how they’d approach an idea. 

This helps teams look at a topic through a different lens and, in the case of group brainstorms, alleviates any nervousness that brainstormers will put out bad ideas. Because they’re not putting out their ideas—they’re sharing someone else’s. So go on and give yourself a new job title for the day.

Best for: individual and group brainstorms, extroverted team members

16. Role storming  

Role storming is similar to figure storming in that brainstormers take on different personalities to dream up ideas, but with one dramatic twist—brainstormers act out those ideas. 

Generally, brainstormers are asked to take on the role of an average person who will be affected by the idea or solution in question, whether that’s an employee, client, or another party, and they act out a scenario that could stem from the idea to help them decipher what problems might arise from it. Consider this brainstorming technique for more extroverted teams. 

Best for: group brainstorms, extroverted team members

17. Reverse brainstorming

Reverse brainstorming is grounded in a little bit of chaos. It encourages brainstormers to play the role of disruptors by brainstorming problems first and then solutions. To kick off the brainstorming questions, a team leader will usually ask, “How do we cause [insert problem]?”

Once your team has listed the causes, they’ll have a new and different perspective for coming up with solutions to problems. 

Best for: group brainstorms, idea generation, problem-solving

18. Reverse thinking

Reverse thinking is a bit of a mashup of the figure storming and six thinking hats brainstorming techniques. It encourages brainstormers to merely ask themselves, “What would someone else do in this situation?” Then, it prompts them to think through why that person’s solution would work or not and if your current solution is more effective. 

Best for: group brainstorms, extroverted team members, vetting ideas thoroughly

Group brainstorm techniques

Most brainstorming techniques can be applied to groups of brainstormers, but these specific brainstorming techniques promote (and some even require) participation from everyone. When facilitated well, group brainstorming techniques not only yield more ideas but they can also:

Boost team morale through lighthearted brainstorming games and by involving participation in every step of the brainstorming process

Promote creative thinking, especially when brainstormers are given time to prepare their ideas and  a structured approach to solve problems

Bring more diverse ideas together, thanks to the unique perspective each brainstormer has and their individual strengths

All this to say, group brainstorming techniques are all about putting people’s heads together. 

19. Eidetic image method

The eidetic image method is grounded in setting intentions, and it begins with group members all closing their eyes to do just that. For example, if a company is setting out to design a new smartwatch, the brainstorming facilitator would encourage all brainstormers to close their eyes and quietly meditate on what smartwatches currently look like. 

Then the group would discuss and close their eyes once more and quietly imagine new features to add to the device. They’d all open their eyes and discuss again, essentially layering on the possibilities for enhancing a product. This brainstorming technique is ideal for revamping or building on an existing product or solution. 

Best for: visual thinkers, creating an idea anew

20. Rapid ideation

Great for teams that get sidetracked or have difficulty staying focused in meetings, the rapid ideation brainstorming technique encourages brainstormers to race against a clock and come up with as many ideas as possible—and importantly, not take themselves too seriously. This can be done by having brainstormers shout out ideas to a facilitator or write them on a piece of paper. You might find that some of the same ideas keep popping up, which likely means those are worth pursuing. 

Best for: extroverted team members, tight deadlines

21. Round-robin brainstorming

Participation is required for the round-robin brainstorming technique. Everyone must contribute at least one idea before the entire group can give feedback or share a second idea.

Given the requirement that everyone must share an idea, it’s best to allow brainstormers time to prepare ideas before each round-robin brainstorming session. This brainstorming technique is great for introverted team members and also for larger groups to ensure everyone can contribute. Moreover, the round-robin brainstorming technique also promotes the notion that the only bad idea is no idea. 

Best for: introverted team members and developing a surplus of ideas

22. Step-ladder brainstorming

Ideal for medium-sized groups of five to 15 people, the step-ladder brainstorming technique prevents ideas from being influenced by the loudest brainstormers of a group. 

Here’s how it works: A brainstorming facilitator introduces a topic to their group of brainstormers and then dismisses all but two brainstormers from the room. The two brainstormers left in the room discuss their ideas for a few minutes and then one brainstormer is welcomed back into the room and shares their ideas before the original two brainstormers divulge their ideas. 

Brainstormers are added back into the room one by one, with each new brainstormer sharing their ideas before the rest of the group divulges theirs, and so forth. Once the entire brainstorming group is back in the room, it’s time to discuss the ideas they’ve built together, step by step. 

Best for: introverted team members, vetting ideas thoroughly, honing in on an executable solution

23. Charrette

You might want to book a few rooms for this one. The charette brainstorming technique helps break up a problem into smaller chunks and also breaks up your brainstormers into separate teams to address them. 

For instance, you might reserve three rooms, write a topic or problem on a whiteboard, and have three sets of brainstormers walk into those rooms to jot down their ideas. Then, the sets of brainstormers rotate rooms and build off of the ideas of the group that was there before them. Consider it effective teamwork at its best.

Best for: vetting ideas thoroughly, honing in on an executable solution

More brainstorming techniques

For more unconventional approaches to get your individual or your team’s wheels turning, consider adding some of these brainstorming techniques to your arsenal of ways to ideate. 

24. ‘What if’ brainstorming

A very off-the-cuff brainstorming technique, “what if” brainstorming is as simple as throwing out as many “what if” questions surrounding a topic as possible, similar to the rapid ideation brainstorming technique. For instance, “what if this problem occurred in a different country,” or, “what if this problem occurred in the 1800s?” 

Walking through the scenarios might help spur new obstacles pertaining to your problem. Essentially, the “what if” brainstorming technique helps your team evaluate all the possibilities.

Best for: individual and group brainstorms, creating an idea anew, vetting ideas thoroughly

25. Change of scenery  

It’s no secret that physical surroundings can impact your team workflow and even creativity. When your brainstorming session is in a rut, consider relocating to another location, perhaps a park, a walking meeting, or even a coffee shop.

Being in a new setting might spur new ideas and even loosen up your brainstormers so that they’re more open to sharing ideas and helping you achieve quantity over quality.  

Best for: individual and group brainstorms, creating an idea anew

26. Random word picker

As this name implies, this brainstorming technique is a little random. Begin by tossing words into a hat and then pull them out and discuss how they relate to your brainstorming topic at hand. You may want to use a template to keep track of your thoughts and any new ideas the word association sparks.

To further organize your thoughts, consider pairing this brainstorming technique with word banking, meaning categorizing random words together and then drawing associations between their category and the brainstorming topic. 

Best for: group brainstorms, creating an idea anew

27. Storyboarding

Turns out, storyboarding isn’t only for television and film. You can also apply this as a brainstorming technique, meaning illustrating or drawing a problem and possible solutions. Consider it another way to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, especially those your solution impacts. It’s also a means to visualize any roadblocks you might experience when executing a solution. 

Best for: individual or group brainstorms, problem-solving, vetting ideas thoroughly

28. Wishing

Wishing is as simple as it sounds: You just wish for the solution you want to build. Think: “I wish our company was carbon neutral,” and then think of the possible ways in which you could achieve this, as well as areas that might be impossible to address for this. This will help uncover obstacles you might face and maybe even shed light on what you’re capable of overcoming. 

Best for: individual or group brainstorms, creating an idea anew

29. Crazy eights

A short and fun brainstorming technique, crazy eights delivers on quantity by encouraging brainstormers to think quickly using a template that has eight boxes and only eight minutes on the clock to sketch out eight ideas. Once the timer stops, the group discusses their ideas. 

For a larger group, consider having each brainstormer narrow in on only three ideas and give them a longer time limit of six minutes to sketch them out in more detail.

Best for: group brainstorms, visual thinkers, developing a surplus of ideas

8 tips for a productive brainstorming session

No matter which brainstorming technique is right for you and your team, consider the following best practices to brainstorm most effectively . Of course, it all begins with the brainstorming facilitator and how they set the tone for the session.

1. Allow time to prep 

A brainstorming facilitator isn’t the only one in a brainstorming session who needs time to prepare for a meeting . They also should give brainstormers some context ahead of the session, such as in the form of a meeting agenda , to get in the correct mindset for the brainstorming session. 

At least one day is standard but as little as two to 10 minutes is useful. Moreover, brainstorming facilitators should also have a few ideas in their back pocket for any creative ruts that might creep in.

2. Set a clear intention

The more context you can provide brainstormers from the get-go, the more fruitful ideas they can produce. For instance, clearly spell out what types of ideas you’re looking for. Whether it’s quickly executable ones or ones that are entirely pathbreaking, identify specific targets to address. 

Additionally, be sure to let brainstormers know of any constraints you or your organization is operating under, including project timelines or budgets, so they’re generating executable ideas.

3. Invite new teammates and ideas

When the same people brainstorm together over and over, they can tend to produce the same ideas over and over. For this reason, consider introducing new people to your brainstorming session to shake up the usual and lend a fresh perspective—and hopefully fresh ideas—to your brainstorming topics. Invitees can be colleagues from different departments, customers or clients for a focus group, or an outside consultant.

4. Promote inclusivity

Every brainstorming session should be considered a safe space to share ideas—even unconventional ones. Remember, the only bad ideas are no ideas, and any idea shared shouldn’t be shot down or judged. In addition, the brainstorm facilitator should ensure every brainstormer is treated equally and given the same amount of time to talk. This might mean setting a timer for each brainstormer to talk and acknowledging those who are dominating conversations. Likewise, every brainstormer should be open and curious to ideas.

5. Think out of the box

Creative thinking begins with not taking ourselves too seriously. Just as you encourage inclusivity, encourage imperfections and out-of-the-box thinking, too. This could include anything from fun team building games to unique icebreaker questions. Hey, even a bevy of silly ideas to build off of is better than no ideas at all. Brainstorming techniques like wishing can encourage team members to open up.

6. Amplify creativity with music

Similar to how a change of scenery can inspire new ideas, even a little background music can promote creativity. Consider putting some on for your brainstorming session, and for the best results ensure it’s:

Instrumental

In a major key

On a fixed tempo and volume

7. Mix and match brainstorming techniques

Just as brainstorming techniques aren’t necessarily one-size-fits-all, they also aren’t all one-type-fits-every-session. Be prepared to pivot your brainstorming technique depending on what your group of brainstormers is most receptive to and also how many ideas you're juggling. 

8. Execute your ideas 

Coming up with bright ideas is great. But they’re pretty useless unless you effectively execute them. While some brainstorming techniques build the execution process into them, others might require you to follow up with brainstormers using project templates to map out a plan using creative solutions. 

Brainstorming is about quantity over quality

When done right, a brainstorming session shouldn’t feel like a chore but rather an opportunity to create something together, especially when your brainstorming technique supports different styles of thinking and expression. 

And whether you're operating as an individual or on a team, there’s something uniquely satisfying about seeing your ideas come to fruition. Get the creative ideas flowing, then customize your workflow management tool to turn those ideas into action. 

Related resources

Your guide to RACI charts, with examples

How to give and take constructive criticism

4 ways to establish roles and responsibilities for team success

Listening to understand: How to practice active listening (with examples)

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Brainstorming

What is brainstorming.

Brainstorming is a method design teams use to generate ideas to solve clearly defined design problems. In controlled conditions and a free-thinking environment, teams approach a problem by such means as “How Might We” questions. They produce a vast array of ideas and draw links between them to find potential solutions.

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How To Use Brainstorming Best

Brainstorming is part of design thinking . You use it in the ideation phase. It’s extremely popular for design teams because they can expand in all directions. Although teams have rules and a facilitator to keep them on track, they are free to use out-of-the-box and lateral thinking to seek the most effective solutions to any design problem. By brainstorming, they can take a vast number of approaches—the more, the better—instead of just exploring conventional means and running into the associated obstacles. When teams work in a judgment-free atmosphere to find the real dimensions of a problem, they’re more likely to produce rough answers which they’ll refine into possible solutions later. Marketing CEO Alex Osborn, brainstorming’s “inventor”, captured the refined elements of creative problem-solving in his 1953 book, Applied Imagination . In brainstorming, we aim squarely at a design problem and produce an arsenal of potential solutions. By not only harvesting our own ideas but also considering and building on colleagues’, we cover the problem from every angle imaginable.

“It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one.” — Alex Osborn

Everyone in a design team should have a clear definition of the target problem. They typically gather for a brainstorming session in a room with a large board/wall for pictures/Post-Its. A good mix of participants will expand the experience pool and therefore broaden the idea space.

Brainstorming may seem to lack constraints, but everyone must observe eight house rules and have someone acting as facilitator.

Set a time limit – Depending on the problem’s complexity, 15–60 minutes is normal.

Begin with a target problem/brief – Members should approach this sharply defined question, plan or goal and stay on topic.

Refrain from judgment/criticism – No-one should be negative (including via body language) about any idea.

Encourage weird and wacky ideas – Further to the ban on killer phrases like “too expensive”, keep the floodgates open so everyone feels free to blurt out ideas (provided they’re on topic).

Aim for quantity – Remember, “quantity breeds quality”. The sifting-and-sorting process comes later.

Build on others’ ideas – It’s a process of association where members expand on others’ notions and reach new insights, allowing these ideas to trigger their own. Say “and”—rather than discourage with “but”—to get ideas closer to the problem.

Stay visual – Diagrams and Post-Its help bring ideas to life and help others see things in different ways.

Allow one conversation at a time – To arrive at concrete results, it’s essential to keep on track this way and show respect for everyone’s ideas.

To capture everyone’s ideas in a brainstorming session, someone must play “scribe” and mark every idea on the board. Alternatively, write down your own ideas as they come, and share these with the group. Often, design problems demand mixed tactics: brainstorming and its sibling approaches – braindumping (for individuals), and brainwriting and brainwalking (for group-and-individual mixes).

Take Care with Brainstorming

Brainstorming involves harnessing synergy – we leverage our collective thinking towards a variety of potential solutions. However, it’s challenging to have boundless freedom. In groups, introverts may stay quiet while extroverts dominate. Whoever’s leading the session must “police” the team to ensure a healthy, solution-focused atmosphere where even the shiest participants will speak up. A warm-up activity can cure brainstorming “constipation” – e.g., ask participants to list ways the world would be different if metal were like rubber.

Another risk is to let the team stray off topic and/or address other problems. As we may use brainstorming in any part of our design process—including areas related to a project’s main scope—it’s vital that participants stick to the problem relevant to that part (what Osborn called the “Point of View”). Similarly, by framing problems with “How Might We” questions, we remember brainstorming is organic and free of boundaries. Overall, your team should stay fluid in the search for ways you might resolve an issue – not chase a “holy grail” solution someone has developed elsewhere. The idea is to mine idea “ore” and refine “golden” solutions from it later.

How to Supercharge Brainstorming with AI

Learn more about brainstorming.

The Interaction Design Foundation’s course on Design Thinking discusses Brainstorming in depth.

This blog offers incisive insights into Brainstorming workshops .

Jonathan Courtney’s article for Smashing Magazine shows Brainstorming’s versatility .

Literature on Brainstorming

Here’s the entire UX literature on Brainstorming by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Brainstorming

Take a deep dive into Brainstorming with our course Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .

Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and General Electric, have rapidly adopted the design thinking approach, and design thinking is being taught at leading universities around the world, including Stanford d.school, Harvard, and MIT. What is design thinking, and why is it so popular and effective?

Design Thinking is not exclusive to designers —all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering and business have practiced it. So, why call it Design Thinking? Well, that’s because design work processes help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, businesses, countries and lives. And that’s what makes it so special.

The overall goal of this design thinking course is to help you design better products, services, processes, strategies, spaces, architecture, and experiences. Design thinking helps you and your team develop practical and innovative solutions for your problems. It is a human-focused , prototype-driven , innovative design process . Through this course, you will develop a solid understanding of the fundamental phases and methods in design thinking, and you will learn how to implement your newfound knowledge in your professional work life. We will give you lots of examples; we will go into case studies, videos, and other useful material, all of which will help you dive further into design thinking. In fact, this course also includes exclusive video content that we've produced in partnership with design leaders like Alan Dix, William Hudson and Frank Spillers!

This course contains a series of practical exercises that build on one another to create a complete design thinking project. The exercises are optional, but you’ll get invaluable hands-on experience with the methods you encounter in this course if you complete them, because they will teach you to take your first steps as a design thinking practitioner. What’s equally important is you can use your work as a case study for your portfolio to showcase your abilities to future employers! A portfolio is essential if you want to step into or move ahead in a career in the world of human-centered design.

Design thinking methods and strategies belong at every level of the design process . However, design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. What’s special about design thinking is that designers and designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply these human-centered techniques in solving problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, and in our lives.

That means that design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees , freelancers , and business leaders . It’s for anyone who seeks to infuse an approach to innovation that is powerful, effective and broadly accessible, one that can be integrated into every level of an organization, product, or service so as to drive new alternatives for businesses and society.

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Structured brainstorming: a guide to intentional ideation

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Brainstorming is an effective tool for generating ideas and creating innovative solutions. But it can sometimes get off track, even in the best of circumstances. 

At their worst, brainstorms feel like a waste of precious time. Why’s that? Reluctant participants. Mixed personalities. Lack of clear guiding frameworks or next steps. 

Adding a layer of structure to the activity can make all the difference. Structured brainstorming keeps all the creative benefits that come from the free flow of ideas, but controls the process just enough to make sure it’s productive.

After all, constraints help boost creativity.

What is structured brainstorming?

In a structured brainstorming session, a team leader presents guidelines, rules, or common goals that'll help guide the brainstorming session . 

While there’s not one “perfect” way to define a structured brainstorm, contrast it with an unstructured or spontaneous brainstorm, where activities flow freely without concrete rules. In contrast, a structured brainstorm keeps the focus on your end goals and helps everyone feel comfortable in sharing their ideas. 

For example: Say Company A wants to come up with some ideas to reverse its declining inbound sales pipeline from Q1 to Q2. Sales and marketing leaders gather the members of their teams on a call and ask them to pitch some ideas to buck the trend. 

While it could prove productive, this exercise is unstructured. There are no real rules governing how it should play out. 

Now, let’s take the same scenario and reimagine it as a structured brainstorming activity. This time, the same sales and marketing leaders ask members of their teams to prepare by examining their inbound marketing motion and a sales deck from a recent demo call.

When the meeting begins, the teams start with an icebreaker question . Then, the groups are split into two, given five minutes each, and asked to produce a minimum of three potential next steps. Whether they realize it or not, these teams are participating in a structured brainstorm.

Structured brainstorming reinvigorates the typical brainstorm by adding a layer of focus and direction — and usually produces better results.

Advantages of structured brainstorming

Structured brainstorming doesn't simply provide structure for structure's sake. It offers significant benefits over its less-focused counterpart.

Participants can prepare ahead of time

Some people thrive at improvisation. Others, not so much. 

It’s why giving everyone an equal opportunity to speak is integral to having an effective brainstorming session. Asking participants to prepare before the session does just that. 

When participants prepare for a brainstorm, they’re not just thrown into a situation without context. The simple act of informing your team about the topic of discussion will help them relax and improve the quality of the session dramatically. Calm people are open enough to get creative. 

But preparing also gives your team time to ruminate on the topic of discussion. 

Imagine a book club where folks aren’t allowed to finish reading the book ahead of time. Compare it to one where everyone’s already on the same page (literally). It shouldn’t surprise us when the depth and breadth of engagement with the subject matter is better at the latter. Such is the magic of preparation.

Everyone is encouraged to participate

Teams usually include people of all different personalities. The quiet types. The extroverts. The ones just there for the pizza. 

In a structured brainstorm, it’s easier to elicit feedback and participation from the whole group. For example, by requiring a minimum number of responses, you make sure everyone gets a place at the table. 

This doesn’t just encourage the more reserved members of your team to share their ideas. It also makes it harder for the extroverted or more experienced voices to steer the flow of conversation into one specific area.  

And this is important. After all, the best ideas often come from ‌junior members of your team operating outside the boundaries of your daily context. One method that helps teams incorporate everyone's feedback is the stepladder technique .

The stepladder technique is a brainstorming and decision-making method that brings in more team members to provide input as the exercise goes on. Designed to encourage participation from all members of a group, this exercise is a natural hedge against the impacts of conformity and groupthink in working groups.

Focus is directed 

Finally, structured brainstorming makes it easier to place focus where it belongs: on the problem at hand. 

Random acts of conversation tend to meander, well, randomly. But when an area of focus is clearly defined, you’re much more likely to walk out of that meeting with actionable ideas and clear next steps. 

Companies run on good ideas. And often, the quality and consistency of those ideas depend on your team's ability to engage with the tough questions. Structured brainstorming makes that much easier.

When to use structured brainstorming

In any organization, there are still times when traditional, unstructured brainstorming sounds appealing. But structured brainstorming cuts through the chaos of large meetings or the limitations of remote interactions to elevate the quality of ideas. 

When you’re part of a remote or distributed workforce 

There’s something about Zoom or Microsoft Teams calls that makes it easy for participants to blend into the background. When working remotely, adding a layer of structure to a brainstorm makes it easier for people to cut through the digital noise and make meaningful contributions to the discussion. 

This is especially true when your team is scattered across various time zones. One way to address this issue? By conducting a hybrid brainstorm. Hybrid brainstorms allow individuals to prepare by themselves asynchronously before collaborating in real-time.

You should use a template to get inspired and add process to the asynchronous and real-time parts of the collaboration.

When you need to build repeatable processes around idea generation

Remember: Unstructured brainstorms aren’t inherently bad. For the right group and context, they can unlock some truly inspired thinking. (This is the magic of the ‘watercooler’ in action.) The issue? The results of unstructured brainstorms can be difficult to replicate. 

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. And if you’re not regularly coming up with ideas to tackle your company’s biggest challenges, it can be hard to assess the quality of those ideas. 

Structured brainstorming presents an opportunity to create a qualitative goal around the number of ideas generated. And that makes innovation easier to repeat. 

When you’re presenting to a large group

Some of the worst participation at a brainstorm can come at company all-hands meetings. If you’re presenting to 100 people, many will just wait for someone else to offer an idea. 

Imposing some guidelines around participation will mitigate anyone’s fears of looking silly in front of a large group. It also reinforces the notion that their input is welcome and needed for the brainstorm to go well.

Structured brainstorming: Getting started

Sometimes, an unstructured brainstorm makes sense. But when you’re looking to generate repeatedly and consistently great feedback from your whole team, structured brainstorming presents unique advantages. 

Looking to take your next brainstorming session to a new level? Check out our suite of templates for brainstorming , both live and asynchronous. Energize group collaboration with templates for use cases spanning daily stand-ups, quarterly meetings, and much more.

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Critical Thinking Toolbox: How to Brainstorm

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Brainstorming is an essential part of critical thinking and a tool that people use to invent an idea, find a solution to a problem, or answer a question.

Like: naming a puppy, or . . .

Considering a lot of bad ideas before we get to a good one is how brainstorming works. We start by opening our minds and assuming that a lot of failures will be part of the process.

6 Elements of the Perfect Brainstorm

Brainstorming is simple and natural. However, when groups of people collaboratively brainstorm, we can have wildly different experiences -- from awesome idea-generating sessions to complete chaos. We have provided some tips to helps your students enhance their brainstorming skills.

1. Pick a question or problem to solve.

• "What should we name our classroom pet?"
• "Where should we take our next field trip?"
• "What is the purpose of life?"
• "Why is stealing wrong?"
• "Why should we take care of our planet?"
• "If I traveled back in time and killed my grandparents, would I still exist?"
• "Why do emigrants move to America?"
• "Why did some people in the 1950s think racial desegregation was a bad idea?" (This question can be tough, because kids have to imagine themselves in the position of someone with whom they disagree.)

You see, brainstorming is a tool that you can use to develop critical thinking. Use it to open up students' minds to other perspectives.

2. Pick a time and place.

When brainstorming -- thinking creatively -- our brains function at maximum capacity. Pick a time when everybody is rested and in good spirits, because students will need all that energy to do advanced thinking.

3. Encourage discussion and ideas.

Somebody needs to be in charge of writing ideas down and keeping the group focused. Choose someone who writes quickly and legibly.

Everyone should suggest ideas. There should be no pressure to make every idea a "brilliant" one. The objective of brainstorming is to produce as many ideas as possible. It is forbidden to criticize other people's ideas. Remember, just because somebody offers an idea, that doesn't mean you have to actually do it (thank goodness!).

Rabbit trails are OK, but they should always lead back to the topic.

4. Set a time limit.

When people focus on creating ideas, it is a very exhilarating activity. But, as mentioned before, the process works our brains at maximum capacity. Never brainstorm for more than an hour.

5. Write all the ideas down and organize.

Make sure that everybody can see the ideas as they are written down. We prefer whiteboards. Put the ideas into different categories. For example, you could organize the answers to "why stealing is wrong" under the following headings:

• Practical Reason: "It causes chaos in society."
• Moral Reason: "Almost all religions say it is wrong."
• Odd Reason: "If I traveled back in time, took my own stuff, and gave it to myself in the future, would that still be stealing?"

6. Get rid of bad ideas.

Cull the list until only a few of the best ideas remain. During brainstorming, most of your ideas are going to be useless. After the brainstorm session is over, spend time discussing which ideas might actually work the best.

Bigger Ideas, Bigger Brains

Brainstorming is not simply a means to an end. It's more than just coming up with ideas. The process puts us in a creative frame of mind and heightens our curiosity. Being curious opens us to see things from perspectives that are not our own. Finally, seeing things from other perspectives makes us more critical thinkers, which in turn makes our brains bigger.

What kinds of brainstorming work do you facilitate in your classroom?

70 Brainstorming Questions to Get Your Best Ideas Out

Brainstorming, is a tried-and-true method for sparking fresh ideas and solving problems. It’s where honest conversations thrive, and innovative solutions are born.

One essential to productive brainstorming is asking the right questions. Well-crafted questions can ignite engaging discussions and drive creativity.

In this article, we explore brainstorming questions, what they are, and how to use them effectively. Plus, we offer a selection of questions you can use in your next brainstorming meeting

What are Brainstorming Questions

Why brainstorming questions are important, how to ask better brainstorming questions, questions for creative idea generation, questions for gathering information, exploratory questions, observational questions, introspective questions, retrospective questions, refining questions, prioritization questions, actionable questions, problem-solving questions, decision-making questions.

Brainstorming questions are prompts used during brainstorming sessions to generate ideas, solutions, or insights on a specific topic or problem. These questions are designed to encourage creative thinking, foster collaboration, and spark innovation. Brainstorming questions often have open-ended or exploratory formats to inspire a wide range of responses.

Spark creativity : Brainstorming questions stimulate creativity and encourage participants to think beyond conventional boundaries. They get individuals to generate a wide range of ideas and potential solutions.

Solve problems : They guide teams in exploring different angles and perspectives, which can lead to innovative problem-solving approaches.

Accept diversity : Questions can prompt participants to consider various viewpoints which can lead to well-rounded and inclusive solutions.

Engage participants : Engaging questions keep participants involved by creating a dynamic and interactive environment that fosters collaboration.

Maintain focus : They provide structure to discussions, making sure that the brainstorming process remains relevant to the topic at hand.

Team building : Brainstorming questions promote open communication and trust among team members. When individuals feel heard and valued, it strengthens team cohesion.

Inspire innovation : Encourage participants to challenge the status quo and explore unconventional solutions.

Creating better brainstorming questions is an iterative process that involves understanding your goals, adapting to your audience, and refining your questioning techniques over time. To generate better brainstorming questions;

Start with a clear goal : Define the purpose of the brainstorming session and what you hope to achieve. This clarity will help you come up with relevant questions easily.

Avoid closed-ended questions : Instead of questions with yes/no answers, use open-ended questions that invite discussion and exploration.

Focus on “What If” and “How Might” : Use questions that begin with phrases like “What if…” or How might we… . These encourage imaginative thinking and idea generation.

Understand your audience : Consider the participants' backgrounds, expertise, and perspectives. Tailor your questions to their knowledge and interests.

Focus on a single topic : Keep your questions focused on one aspect or challenge to maintain clarity and prevent confusion

Ask one question at a time : Keep questions concise and specific. Asking multiple questions simultaneously can lead to confusion.

Brainstorming Question Types

Brainstorming questions can be categorized into different types based on their purpose and function. Here are some common types of brainstorming questions along with examples:

These questions encourage thinking outside the box and explore unconventional approaches.

• What are some unconventional ways to approach this problem?
• How can we infuse humor into this project?
• How might we reimagine our product to appeal to a completely different audience?
• Can we merge two unrelated concepts to create something new?
• How can we infuse art and aesthetics into our product/service?
• If money and resources were no issue, what wild ideas could we explore?
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They facilitate the collection of facts, data, and knowledge about a particular topic to make informed decisions or develop comprehensive solutions.

• What sources can we use to research this topic effectively?
• What data or research do we need to gather before making a decision?
• Who are the experts or stakeholders we should consult for insights?
• What are the key facts and figures we need to fully understand the situation?
• How have others (competitors) approached similar problems in the past?
• What are the current industry trends and market dynamics we should be aware of?
• How can we effectively collect and organize relevant information?

Used to delve deeper into a subject, uncover hidden insights, and understand the broader context.

• What are the potential consequences of our actions in the long term?
• How does this idea fit within the broader industry landscape?
• What are the underlying causes of this issue?
• Can we identify any hidden opportunities or risks?
• What if we look at this problem from a different angle?
• What are the key unknowns in this scenario?
• How can we look at this situation from a historical context?

They are especially useful for monitoring current conditions and identifying emerging developments.

• What do we notice happening in the market right now?
• How are our customers reacting to our current products?
• What patterns or trends can we observe in our data?
• What can we learn from the successes and failures of others in our field?
• How are changes in consumer behavior affecting our business?
• What feedback have we received from recent surveys or reviews?

They invite individuals to explore their own feelings, motivations, and values, which can be important in decision-making and team dynamics.

• What are our individual strengths and weaknesses?
• What motivates us to solve this particular problem?
• How can we align our personal goals with our collective mission?
• What beliefs or assumptions do we hold that might be influencing our perspective?
• How can our individual values contribute to the team’s success?
• What fears or reservations do we have about this project?

They help in understanding past performance, identifying areas for improvement, and celebrating achievements.

• What worked well in our previous project, and why?
• What could have been done differently to achieve better results?
• How did we handle challenges and setbacks in the past?
• What feedback did we receive from stakeholders in previous projects?
• What were the key milestones and turning points?
• What have we accomplished since we started this journey?

Find a comprehensive list of retrospective questions here.

Help with the optimization and improvement of existing processes, ideas, or strategies. They support the fine-tuning of plans and approaches for better results.

• How can we streamline our processes to improve efficiency?
• What elements of our project can be simplified or eliminated?
• Are there any redundant or unnecessary steps in our workflow?
• How can we improve the user experience of our product or service?
• What aspects of our project need further polish and refinement?
• What feedback have we received that can help us fine-tune our approach?

Help determine which tasks, goals, or projects should take precedence. They help allocate resources wisely and align efforts with overarching objectives.

• What are the most critical tasks that need immediate attention?
• How can we allocate our limited resources most effectively?
• What factors should we consider when ranking our priorities?
• What are the potential consequences of deprioritizing certain tasks?
• Which ideas align best with our organization’s mission and values?
• What criteria should we use to determine our top priorities?

They emphasize turning ideas into tangible actions with clear responsibilities and timelines.

• What specific steps can we take to implement this idea?
• Who will be responsible for each aspect of the project?
• What are the deadlines for each phase of our plan?
• How can we measure and track progress toward our goals?
• What resources do we need to execute this plan successfully?
• Are there any potential obstacles or roadblocks we should address in advance?

Used to dissect complex issues, identify their root causes, and explore potential solutions.

• What is the root cause of the issue we’re facing?
• What are the alternative solutions available to us?
• How can we break down the problem into smaller, more manageable parts?
• What potential barriers or obstacles might we encounter?
• Who should be involved in the problem-solving process?
• What strategies have been successful for similar problems in the past?
• How can we test and validate potential solutions before full implementation?

Help define criteria, evaluate options, and consider ethical and long-term implications to make informed decisions.

• What are the key criteria we should consider when making this decision?
• Who are the stakeholders and what are their interests?
• What are the pros and cons of each available option?
• What information or data do we need to make an informed decision?
• What is our contingency plan in case the decision doesn’t bring the expected results?
• What ethical considerations should guide our decision-making process?
• How can we make sure that the decision is effectively communicated and executed?

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

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Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

Home » Business » 50 Easy Brainstorming Activities, Games, and Exercises

50 Easy Brainstorming Activities, Games, and Exercises

A brainstorming exercise can be a great way to encourage team members to share their best ideas to create new and innovative solutions to a given problem. The key to effective brainstorming is to use a warm-up exercise to get creative juices flowing and encourage different perspectives. And remember, don’t judge anyone. During the brainstorming process, there is no such thing as a bad idea.

Here are 50 creative brainstorming activities for your next brainstorming session to break out of routine thinking and generate fresh ideas.

Brainstorming Warm-ups

#1. Draw Something It is a good idea to start an idea generation process in a fun way to encourage creative thinking. Drawing is a great starting point, and the idea of the game is simply to be creative.

How to Do It:

• Set a timer for one minute.
• Ask everyone in the ideation session to draw something simple and abstract (toast is a common example).
• To make the most of your time, make the drawing task related to the main problem to get everyone’s mind focused on the topic.

#2. Multi-Purpose Items This is a fun activity to encourage everyone to have an open mind and come up with creative ideas.

• Break into small groups.
• Provide groups an item like a clothes peg or paperclip.
• Set a time limit of 1-3 minutes.
• Come up with as many different uses for the item as possible.

Common Ideas

#3. Popcorn This brainstorming technique is a free flow method for coming up with lots of ideas very quickly. This is a good game to create initial ideas for later activities.

• Propose a specific problem or topic.
• Provide thinking time (usually one minute).
• Designate a note-taker to write down ideas.
• Have people call out their ideas and encourage others to respond and add to these ideas.
• Once you’ve run out of ideas, go back through the list and choose the best ones to explore.

#4. Brain Writing This is one of the most effective brainstorming techniques for generating many possible solutions and ensures that everyone has a say. Usually, due to time constraints, it will be less than ideal if you have a room full of people. Keep the group small so that everyone can participate.

• Define a problem or topic.
• Take a sheet of paper and have one person write down their idea.
• Pass the piece of paper to the next person, and they add their idea or modify the original.
• Repeat this until all group members have contributed.
• For more ideas, have multiple people write the problem in their own words so that several unique lists are created.

#5. Rapid Ideation Sometimes called “rapid writing,” “rapid ideation” is a structured version of the popcorn method.

• Set out a central problem.
• Set a time limit of 3-5 minutes.
• Have each person/team write down as many ideas as they can think of in that time.
• Once time has passed, compare notes and look for similar ideas or common themes.

#6. Mind Mapping A “mind map” is a visually connected form of free association. When mind mapping, ideas are free to grow, and the connections between ideas are visually traced.

• You will need a whiteboard and markers (or an online whiteboard).
• Start by writing down the core question.
• Set a timer (optional).
• Take turns calling out ideas/questions that are associated with the core issue.
• Draw a line between the core idea and each related point.
• Continue calling out associated ideas or questions for the core or sub-ideas.
• Continue until time runs out or enough ideas are generated.

#7. The 5 Whys The “five whys” is one of the most powerful brainstorming techniques for getting to the heart of a problem.

• Best applied in small groups.
• Take a piece of paper or whiteboard and write down your problem in the top corner.
• Regarding the problem, ask “Why?” and write down the answer.
• Then regarding the answer, ask “Why?” again.
• Repeat for five “whys.”
• Then discuss what you have learned about the cause of the issue.

Ideas to Include Quiet People

#8. Walking Brainstorm A “walking brainstorm” is a useful tool if you have enough space, such as a conference room. It is also good for addressing complex problems and ensures that everyone has an opportunity to share.

• Set up stations around a room.
• At each station, have a separate aspect of a larger problem.
• Have sticky notes available at each station.
• Individuals then quietly walk between stations, write their idea(s) on sticky notes and add them to that station.
• Allow adequate time for everyone to attend each station.

#9. Idea Napkin An “idea napkin” is a balance between producing a lot of ideas quickly and getting some depth on the ideas.

• Provide everyone with an index card.
• Set a time limit of 5 minutes.
• During this time, everyone writes down their idea and an elevator pitch.
• Have each person pitch their idea to the group.
• For large groups, break out into smaller groups to complete the task.

#10. Brainstorming with a Partner Breaking into pairs is a great approach when working with a larger group. Each pair can be assigned different aspects of the problem to solve or all work on the same problem.

• Have the group separate into pairs.
• Provide the problem to be addressed.
• Set a timer for five minutes.
• Ensure each group records all ideas, no matter how crazy they may seem.
• Compare ideas as a large group and look for common themes.

#11. Collaborative Brainwriting This is a great way to involve everyone in the ideation process while providing time for natural creativity to flow.

• In a communal area, set up a whiteboard or large flipchart and markers.
• At the top of the writing medium, write a clear problem statement.
• Members of the team/organization can freely approach the board throughout the week and add ideas or comment on others’ ideas.
• At the next meeting, discuss the ideas proposed.

Ideas for Online Groups

#12. Chat Waterfall When working with remote groups, ideas can be lost quickly in the flow of a written chat conversation, and the “chat waterfall” solves this.

• Ideal for groups of 5-15 people.
• Set up a group video chat.
• Set the theme of the brainstorming session.
• Give everyone two minutes to think quietly.
• Have everyone type their best idea(s) into the written chat, but do not send the ideas to each other just yet.
• Once everyone has written their ideas, have everyone press Send at the same time.
• Discuss the ideas.

#13. Brain Netting “Brain netting” is a great way for remote groups to brainstorm together without having to meet in real-time.

• Set up a shared online document such as a Google doc.
• Set the theme of the brainstorming session at the top.
• Allow everyone to access the file for one week and add their ideas or comments on other people’s ideas.
• At the end date, review the document for ideas.

#14. Virtual Change of Scene The “virtual change of scene” uses novelty to encourage originality in thoughts and ideas.

• The presenter should choose a background that creatively relates to the theme of the brainstorming session.
• Ideally, set a theme and have everyone set custom backgrounds to match (e.g., innovation).
• Commence your brainstorming exercise in this novel setting.
• Experiment with using a change of scene with a chat waterfall.

#15. Lightning Decision Jam This is one of the most powerful techniques for remote workgroups and can come up with some great ideas.

• In a small group, begin with the main discussion point.
• First three-minute round: Throw out as many positive points about the main issue as possible.
• Second three-minute round: Repeat the above for negative points.
• Reframe each point as questions.
• Prioritize the most urgent concerns.
• In a five-minute round, develop solutions using another brainstorming method.
• Create a matrix of solutions and weigh solutions by the ease of implementation and highest impact.

#16. Imagination Storming This method is great because it can even be done via a phone call instead of video chat. It appeals to visual thinkers and is great for product development.

• Have participants close their eyes for one minute and imagine the core topic (e.g., smartphones). They should visualize what it looks like, what it does, and how it’s used.
• Then, discuss common trends and themes of what was imagined.
• Everyone closes their eyes again for one minute. This time imagine new uses for the same thing or new features/accessories that would make it better.

#17. Random Stimulus – Version 1 “Random stimulus” is a great activity for spontaneous idea generation with online groups.

• Give each participant one minute to get an item from around their house.
• Give everyone two minutes to write down ideas related to their item.
• Now, introduce the main brainstorming topic.
• Each person has one minute to force-fit what they have written to relate to a core idea.

#18. Eight in Eight This is a version of the “crazy eights” method that can be applied online or in small groups.

• Recommend a group of eight.
• Make sure each participant has a drawing application or paper and pen/marker ready.
• Provide an issue or idea at the center of a 3 x 3 grid.
• Start a one-minute timer, and everyone must produce a drawing of the problem.
• Arrange the drawings around the central issue.
• Put one of the problem representations at the center of another 3 x 3 grid.
• Start another one-minute timer, and everyone must draw a solution to the problem.
• Complete the second exercise for all eight problems.

Visual Ideas

#19. Drawing the Problem This is a type of reverse brainstorming where participants draw pictures to represent the problem as they see it.

• Provide all participants with a sheet of paper and a marker.
• Begin by stating a general issue, e.g., “We have bad customer reviews.”
• Allow all participants five minutes to draw their representation of the problem.
• Discuss solutions openly.

#20. Draw It Out This is similar to #19, but is solution-focused. Drawing solutions can require more time than drawing the problem.

• Provide all participants with a large sheet of paper and a pen/marker.
• Begin by clearly providing a problem statement.
• Allow all participants five minutes to draw their solutions. Common approaches are:
• Draw the envisioned solution (or more than one if time permits).Draw a flowchart illustrating the steps of the problem-solving process.

#21. Drawing Off-Hand This idea is a fun and somewhat silly drawing exercise that can produce some very creative ideas.

• Set out the core issue to be addressed.
• Provide everyone with a piece of paper and pen/marker.
• Using their non-dominant hand to draw, each person draws a solution to the issue.

#22. Sticky Note Map This is a version of free-form mind mapping and is great for including quiet members of a group.

• Write the core issue/idea in the center of a whiteboard.
• Provide sticky notes to everyone in the group.
• Group members can write their idea on a sticky note and then add it to the board.
• Members should draw a line between their idea and the idea it relates to.

#23. Crazy Eights The fast pace helps to remove self-imposed limitations on creativity and discourages overthinking.

• Draw a grid of nine squares on a whiteboard.
• In the center square, write the problem statement.
• Set a timer for eight minutes.
• Take turns drawing a solution in each box around the central problem.

Creative Ideas

#24. Role-Playing Role-playing can be used to better understand a customer or user’s experience.

• You need enough participants for each role represented.
• Act out a scenario, such as a product use case.
• Treat the problem realistically, but be as creative or ridiculous as you want in other ways.
• Anyone not roleplaying can interject with ideas and comments.
• Discuss what everyone has learned about the issue.

#25. Free Association “Free association” is a simple “what comes to mind” association exercise. For this activity, participants write down everything, no matter how unrelated it may seem.

• You will need a whiteboard and pen/markers (or online whiteboard).
• Designate a writer.
• Start by writing down the core idea.
• Take turns calling out ideas/thoughts/words that come to anyone’s mind.
• Look for common themes.

#26. The 5 Senses The “five senses” technique is an effective way to brainstorm for original ideas as it involves using all of your senses.

• Close your eyes and imagine the problem you are facing (or a problem using a product, etc.) and try to experience it with your five senses: sight, smell, sound, taste, touch.
• For each sense, imagine possible solutions or ideas related to the problem at hand.
• Write down any ideas that come to you during this process.

#27. Storytelling This is good for product development or marketing teams. It involves telling a narrative about your problem and working through the scenario.

• Outline the problem to be solved.
• Best for groups of 7-15.
• Designate a storyteller in each group.
• The storyteller begins by describing a fictional narrative (e.g., about using a product that receives a lot of bad feedback).
• Other group members may ask questions, point out objections or suggest additional ideas.
• Write down a summary of your story and your group progress on the problem.
• Discuss what you have learned.

#28. Reverse Assumptions This method challenges what you think you know about an idea. It can be applied online, in groups, or alone.

• Write down the problem on a piece of paper or a whiteboard/online whiteboard (e.g., “Not enough sales.”).
• Write down what you think the problem is (e.g., “Our products are too expensive.”).
• Challenge the idea with different assumptions (e.g., “Competitors’ products are better.”).
• Continue until no new assumptions come to mind.

#29. Metaphoric Association This can be more challenging to learn than other ideas but helps generate lots of creativity.

• Think of a location, place, or object (e.g., police station).
• Try to think of what it can be a metaphor for (e.g., challenging risks/confrontation).
• Now, force this metaphor to relate to your core problem.

#30. Random Stimulus – Version 2 “Random stimulus” is a method that is designed to generate abstract creativity. Version 1 of the random stimulus exercise is included above in the Ideas for Online Groups section and is meant to be done from home.

• Before your brainstorming session, select random items equal to the number of participants.
• Pass each person an item and give everyone two minutes to write down ideas related to their item.
• Now, introduce the main brainstorming topic to the group.
• Each person has one minute to force what they have written to relate to the core idea.

#31. Writing Off-Hand This method helps with thinking with the non-dominant half of your brain and is a fun way to generate new ideas.

• Identify the core issue to address.
• Provide everyone with a piece of paper and pen.
• Set a timer of 3-5 minutes.
• Everyone writes as many ideas as they can think of with their non-dominant hand.

#32. Exaggeration This is a method designed to use absurdity to encourage creativity. By making things absurd, it’s easier to be creative.

• This works best with multiple small groups.
• Give each group an exaggeration (e.g., make it 10x as big, solve this with a zero $ budget, etc.).
• Give the groups a problem statement.
• Provide 5-10 minutes for each group to discuss the problem under their exaggerated conditions.
• Discuss the ideas generated and how they could apply in reality.

Ideas for Deep Thinking

#33. Lotus Bloom This is a technique that goes deep in search of innovative ideas, building on each suggestion to find a better idea.

• Break into groups of 3-10.
• Draw a grid of nine squares in the center of a large piece of paper or whiteboard.
• Write the central issue in the middle square.
• Try to fill out the other eight squares with related ideas.
• Repeat 2-5 times for the most promising ideas from each attempt.

#34. Six Questions This method looks at a problem from several different angles and is a popular approach to address big problems.

• Draw a 6-point star in the center of a whiteboard.
• In the center of the star, write the core topic.
• Around the points, write Who, What, Why, When, Where and How.
• Begin answering each of the questions
• If you have enough participants, small groups can be assigned to work on each question.

#35. Five Times For this method, try to rephrase your answer to the main idea/problem five times in new ways.

• This can be done as a group or individually.
• This can be used to analyze ideas generated from another brainstorming game.
• Take the central idea and write down the best solution you can think of.
• Rewrite the same solution another four times, as uniquely as possible.
• Look for how each solution might be implemented differently, even though each is based on the same statement.

#36. Stakeholder Round Robin This is a good way to come up with a large number of ideas that each fit different categories or approaches.

• Think of the stakeholders who matter to your core issue (2 is minimum, but ideally 3+).
• Before the brainstorming session, prepare a flip chart with one stakeholder listed at the top of each page.
• Set a five-minute timer to discuss the brainstorming topic from the perspective of the first stakeholder.
• Flip the chart and repeat for the next stakeholder.
• Continue until all stakeholders are discussed.
• Compare common themes between stakeholders.

Uncommon Ideas

#37. Outrageous Ideas This is one of the most creative exercises for brainstorming and is particularly good when you become stuck with other methods.

• In a group, or on your own, take a piece of paper or a whiteboard.
• Write down every idea, no matter how outrageous.
• Look at the ideas to see if any can become reality.

#38. Talking Timebomb This is a great brainstorming game and is particularly good for use with students or when you want to make a fun activity for a group.

• You will need a tool such as an online random timer (like here: https://creativetechguy.com/utilities/randomtimer) and a physical object to pass, such as a small ball or use a physical random timer (like in the Gibson Easiplay Pass The Bomb Game).
• Give the central topic or idea to be addressed.
• Set the timer to between 15-60 seconds.
• The first student starts with the timer or object.
• When the time starts, they must call out an idea or solution related to the central topic. They then pass the ball to the second student.
• The second student then also adds an idea or solution that hasn’t already been said. They then pass the ball to the next student.
• Repeat until the timer expires. The goal is not to be the person it ends on.
• For extra fun, have a low-stakes reward such as leaving 15 minutes early or a free coffee.

#39. Shiritori This is a chained word association game for groups of three or more. It is a fun way to generate a lot of ideas.

• Set a timer.
• One person starts by saying a word related to the main topic.
• The next person must say a word that is related to the main topic and starts with the last letter of the first word.
• Continue in this manner.

#40. Pushy Salesperson This game is intended to be fun while often providing surprising insights about existing products or services or when analyzing ideas from another brainstorming game.

• You need at least two people.
• Pick the product/service/solution to be discussed.
• One person has two minutes to sell the solution to the rest of the group. Like a pushy salesperson, they must continuously talk, not stopping.
• Repeat as few or as many times as you like.

#41. Like/Dislike This can be used to compare ideas generated in a previous activity or to create and compare new ideas.

• Have a group of three or more people.
• On a whiteboard, draw five columns. From left to right, label them -2, -1, neutral, +1, +2.
• Each person writes one idea/solution to the central topic on a sticky note and puts it in the neutral column.
• Have a list of 4-10 great ideas from another activity and arrange these in the neutral column.
• Each person can move up to three notes, but they can only move each note one space left or right.
• Once everyone has had a turn moving notes (voting), discuss which ideas have the greatest preference and why.

#42. The Next Big Thing This is a fun game. It is intended to be light-hearted and start conversations, but it can also be used for product idea generation.

• Provide the main issue/market to be addressed.
• Allow a certain amount of time, such as 20 minutes, for the group to quietly think of the most ambitious ideas they can. The goal is to be the next Apple or Coca Cola.
• After time is up, each person pitches their idea.

#43. Bad Ideas The “bad ideas” game is a great approach when it seems all other attempts have stalled.

• Set the core topic.
• Come up with the worst ideas possible to solve it.
• Some ideas may spur thoughts that lead to good ideas.
• If not, start working through each idea and discussing what the opposite of it looks like.

#44. 30 Circles This is designed to force participants to think outside the box by requiring a set number of solutions.

• Take a large sheet of paper or a whiteboard and draw 30 circles in a square.
• Write the problem to be addressed across the top of the square.
• In each circle, write one idea/solution to address the problem.
• Continue until all 30 are filled.
• Look for common ideas.

#45. Radaptation “Radaptation,” or “reverse adaptation” is a method that requires a lot of abstract thought. Adaptation is changing a function/feature to perform a new role. In radaptation, you take a function unchanged and apply it to an existing issue/problem.

• Think of a product or feature that is currently popular (e.g., Nike shoes).
• Now, consider what this product does in its current form, other than its core function (e.g., they look very nice).
• How can this product be used/sold for other issues (e.g., now sold as a status symbol, instead of just jogging shoes).

#46. In the Footsteps of Greatness This is a brainstorming technique intended to put participants into someone else’s shoes, usually a celebrity or someone notable.

• Before the brainstorming session, decide what the brainstorming topic will be.
• Decide what notable historical or celebrity figure’s perspective would be interesting to discuss your topic from.
• Provide both the topic and the name of a famous person to your group.
• Discuss how that person would approach your problem.

#47. What-if This approach is great for having a lot of fun while getting different perspectives on an issue, particularly if you have become stuck.

• Set a problem statement.
• Ask “What if?” and then make up your own scenario (e.g., what if this happened when we didn’t have computers?).
• Explore how different questions would be answered.
• Continue until you have enough ideas.

#48. Random Words This is a forced correlation and association game.

• Prepare a list of common words.
• Provide each participant with one word at random.
• Each person has one minute to discuss how their word relates to the main brainstorming topic.

#49. I Wish “I wish” is a similar concept to exaggeration. It removes real-world limitations from the problem-solving exercise.

• Discuss a problem statement as a group, such as “make the world’s oceans better.”
• In small groups, discuss “I wish” solutions such as “I wish there were robotic ships that picked up ocean litter.”
• Discuss the solutions.
• Are any of the solutions more achievable than they initially sounded?

#50. Yes, And “Yes, and” is a technique that is about building on what another person shares, rather than objecting to or tearing ideas down.

• Best applied after another technique has produced some good ideas.
• If no idea already exists, someone starts and suggests their best idea to address a chosen problem.
• The next person must say “yes, and” and add to the conversation without detracting from the previous statement.
• Continue until no one has anything more to add (or enough ideas are provided).

There are a lot of different ways to run a brainstorming activity. To get lots of new ideas, start with a brainstorming method that is fun and build on this with a more in-depth method. Remember, it is a creative exercise about finding original ideas. To maximize your chance of doing this, be sure to include each member of your team and try to leave choosing your favorite ideas until the end of the game or activity.

Related Posts:

• 25 Best Time Management Activities, Games & Exercises
• 50 Fun and Unique Team Outing Ideas
• 25 Time Management Tips for Students (Skills and Strategies)
• 100 Most Loved Team Building Activities that Are Awesome

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20 Helpful Brainstorming Activities

February 10, 2023 //  by  Brittney Hallmark

Sometimes, little ones have so many creative ideas that they can’t get them out fast enough. Whether alone or with a group, a brainstorming session can get the creative juices flowing and develop creative ideas and good problem-solving strategies. The following 20 ideas and activities are great for students, team leaders, or even teachers! If you need some inspiration for creative brainstorming techniques, get stuck in the article below to learn more! 

1. Do It Digitally 

Brainstorming can even be completed in a virtual environment. You can use apps or websites to organize discussions on a central topic. Create different boards with a wide variety of options and allow members of the group to brainstorm together. 

Learn More: Atlassian

2. Starbursting

Starbursting is an effective technique to use when brainstorming. By creating a star and adding a question to each section, this type of idea mapping prompts learners to ask questions to brainstorm further ideas. Provide ample time for all contributors to ask and answer the questions, but also capture their ideas. 

Learn More: Asana

3. Brainwriting

Pass a sheet of paper around- allowing everyone to contribute ideas and build upon the ideas of others. You can have everyone write down initial ideas on a piece of paper and then pass it around to the class for a collaborative brainstorming session.

4. Word Games 

Word games can be an effective way to get thoughts flowing. This creative thinking exercise can be used to help spark ideas. It can be a creative solution if you are stuck and need another option when brainstorming. Brainstorm single words that will help get thoughts flowing. Add the words into a list format and use association to help students think of new words. Use these words to then start building ideas. 

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Some minds think and process differently and benefit from a more visual approach. Doodling is a creative exercise that can inspire quality ideas. Doodling can be done over time or in a single sitting.

6. S.W.O.T.

This simple, yet effective, technique is a great way to gather thoughts about a central idea. Jot down strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats about a central concept. 

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7. Personal Idea Quadrants

Brainstorming exercises can be tweaked and made your own, like this one. Lots of ideas can be generated from an activity like this one. You can add subject areas based on the information you need to generate; including various roles and challenges. This can work for in-person teams or be used with remote teams through online tools.  

Learn More: Click Up

8. Round Robin Brainstorming

Round-robin brainstorming may offer many good thoughts and can be added to over time or in a single brainstorming process session. It’s best to limit it to no more than 6-8 ideas as contributors can piggyback ideas on one another as they each fill in and complete this box-thinking technique. Each person will have a place to write and share their thoughts, then others can respond to them. This can be done virtually, by walking around the room, passing a paper, or simply adding sticky notes to a poster. 

Learn More: Mural

9. Reverse Brainstorming 

A reverse brainstorming process may be highly productive in a supportive environment. By working backward to process from a different perspective, you may come up with positive effects and bold ideas by looking at things from a different angle. 

Learn More: Creately

10. Flow Chart 

Flow charts are a great mind-mapping activity to use when looking at a process. The power of brainstorming this way can help open doors to new opportunities. Contributors may offer fresh ideas that will help improve previous processes or create new ones.

11. Reflect 

Reflecting is often left out of the brainstorming process because of time constraints. Innovative solutions, creative ideas, and better approaches may be left out if a time limit robs us of reflection. Reflection can also be a good virtual brainstorming technique. Best of all it requires no preparation time! 

Learn More: Form Labs

12. Write Around the Room 

If you have a new team that is intimated to share silly ideas with the group, try the idea of writing around the room. This is a good way to have everyone contribute. Put up a central question, central theme, or separate ideas to encourage brainstorming. Even if everyone has a busy schedule, they can come in in their own free time and add to the ideas jotted down around the room. 

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13. Visual Brainstorming 

A visual brainstorming wall is a good way to encourage collaboration and brainstorming without the fear of judgment from peers. Present a central concept and allow contributors the opportunity to share ideas in a safe space. 

Learn More: Fresh Gigs

14. Cubing 

Cubing is a great “box-thinking” brainstorming process and is a good alternative to traditional brainstorming techniques. Learners will use the process: associate, describe, apply, pros and cons, compare, and analyze. 

Learn More: Sketch

15. Small Group Sessions 

Small group sessions are great for inspiring fresh ideas. Small groups can even help bad ideas turn into good ideas with a little tweaking. There will likely be a number of ideas so it is important to stay on task and weed out ideas that aren’t relevant. 

Learn More: Gembah

16. Whiteboards

Traditional brainstorming may have you revert back to the whiteboard. The power of brainstorming this way is that everyone has the same access to what is shared. 

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17. Storyboarding 

Storyboarding is a great student brainstorming activity, but it can also be used for people of any age. By sketching out small pictures or adding words to individual frames, you can create your own story or events sequence to jog ideas in a brainstorming process. 

Learn More: Total Team Building

18. Mind Mapping 

A mind map revolves around a central concept. Learners will write corresponding thoughts, feelings, facts, and opinions in the outer bubbles as part of their brainstorming process.  

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19. Post-It Parking Lot

Create a sticky note section for brainstorming. You can add one or additional themes to a board and allow a space for contributors to ask questions and provide answers to questions. You can either base it around a central question or concept. 

20. Mood Board or Idea Board

Visual thinking can also inspire many new ideas. Creating a mood board or idea board is a great way to help boost thoughts about a central idea. You may see an increase in the number of ideas because of the visual aspect and an assortment of images in a blank space. 

Learn More: Become A Writer Today