Why is brainstorming good

Since brainstorming is a collaborative experience, no one person walks out of the meeting taking ownership of the results, thus it an absolute team effort. Second, a large amount of the brain is devoted to visual processing, so sketching and interpreting drawings increases the involvement of those brain regions in idea generation. Some brainstorming sessions end with strong results, while others may need more time.

Next time your team is struggling to find a solution to a problem, suggest a brainstorming session — you just might be surprised with the creative results. 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. 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 discuss how that person would approach the problem or think about this idea.

For example, you might ask: How would Oprah Winfrey approach this problem? Also, this brainstorming method removes some barriers that usually restrict creative thinking, like budget and time. 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. 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 at their individual ideal size. Ask them to add features they wish the current design had originally included. 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. 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. While the group should not focus on costs, their ideas should remain in the realm of possibility.

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.

This technique encourages remote employees to participate and puts everyone on the same playing field. 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 concept of idea building is sharing ideas, which triggers new ideas, which creates a chain of new thoughts. The only way idea building can thrive in a brainstorming session is if no ideas are immediately shut down. This will discourage people from sharing and in turn will limit the success of the session.

Breaks Routine Another benefit of having a brainstorming session is to get out of a normal routine. Maybe there are no apparent issues to be solved with how things are operating. As a team, you can throw as many ideas and slogans together as you can, and then refine them together to get a clear picture of the direction going forward.

Gathering the key stakeholders in your department and across the organization for a brainstorming session will help you quickly gather a list of growth opportunities. Each team member will have their own ideas for growth within their role which can be added to a longer list of strategic possibilities. Your product development team has been repeatedly running into an issue with a new version of your software.

Calling your product team together for a brainstorming session will help you gather opinions on what the issue might be. From there, you can brainstorm ways to fix the problem. These are just three high level examples of brainstorming. This technique is incredibly versatile, and can be applied to virtually any problem or goal that your business needs to address.

The advantages of brainstorming are many, and we highly recommend that you start to incorporate it more throughout your business operations. Download this free eBook to get a primer on the concept of visual project planning, an exclusive Project Planning Visualization Toolkit, and 13 downloadable visual project planning templates to get you started right away!

What is brainstorming? And why is it important? Brendan McConnell November 28, Brainstorming is a group creativity technique used to find a solution to a specific problem. These principles include: Quantity over quality. The idea is that quantity will eventually breed quality as ideas are refined, merged, and developed further.