brainstorming problem solving techniques

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Blog Beginner Guides Brainstorming Examples + Techniques For Problem Solving

Brainstorming Examples + Techniques For Problem Solving

Written by: Krystle Wong Sep 08, 2023

So — you’re faced with a complex problem that seems as daunting as a mountain. You’ve tried all the usual approaches, but the solution remains elusive. What do you do? That’s where a good brainstorming mind map maker comes into play. 

This article is your backstage pass to the world of brainstorming. I’m not just going to give you the playbook; I’m going to show you how it’s done with brainstorming examples that will have you saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” 

So, no more beating around the brainstorming bush. Let’s roll up our sleeves and dive into the many effective techniques and examples that will turbocharge your problem-solving game. It’s time to unleash your inner brainstorming genius!

Click to jump ahead:

What are the 4 rules of brainstorming

12+ brainstorming mind map examples for problem solving, 10 effective brainstorming techniques that work, 5 common mistakes to avoid during brainstorming, brainstorming examples faq.

• 5 steps to create a brainstorming mind map with Venngage

The concept of brainstorming was introduced by Alex Osborn, an advertising executive and he outlined four key rules to facilitate effective brainstorming sessions. 

These rules are often referred to as the “Four Rules of Brainstorming” and are designed to encourage creativity and a free flow of ideas within a group. Here are the four rules:

No judgment: All ideas are welcomed and accepted without criticism or evaluation during a brainstorming session. This rule encourages participants to feel free to express even unconventional or seemingly impractical ideas.

Quantity over quality: Forget about perfection for now. In brainstorming, it’s like a numbers game – the more ideas, the merrier. Don’t get bogged down in refining each idea to perfection; just get them out there.

Build on the ideas of others: Teamwork makes the dream work. When someone throws out an idea, don’t just nod and move on. Add your spin, build on it or take it in a different direction. It’s all about collaboration and bouncing off each other’s creativity.

Encourage wild and creative ideas: Embrace the weird, the wild and the wacky. Sometimes the most outlandish ideas can be the seeds of genius solutions. So, don’t be shy – let your imagination run wild. 

So, the next time you’re in a brainstorming session, remember these rules. They’re not just guidelines; they’re the keys to unlocking your team’s creative potential. With these principles in play, you’ll find yourself reaching new heights of innovation and problem-solving.

Mind maps are a powerful tool for brainstorming, helping individuals and teams visualize ideas, make connections and unleash their creative potential. 

Whether you’re conducting a team retrospective or embarking on a corporate brainstorm, you can significantly enhance idea generation, boost efficient learning and note taking with mind maps . Get started with one of the brainstorming mind map examples below. 

1. Team retrospective board

When creating a mind map for a team retrospective, it’s essential to strike a balance between structure and flexibility. 

To achieve this, consider color-coding categories such as “What went well,” “What needs improvement,” and “Action items.” This visual differentiation helps participants quickly identify and prioritize discussion areas. 

Additionally, incorporating a timeline element within the mind map can provide a visual representation of the project’s progression, enabling the team to recall specific events and experiences. 

You can further enhance the visual appeal and emotional context by using icons or symbols to represent sentiments, such as happy faces for positive experiences and sad faces for challenges.

2. Business model brainstorm

Designing a mind map for brainstorming a business model necessitates a structured approach to represent various model elements coherently. 

Incorporate color to cover essential components like value proposition, customer segments, revenue streams and distribution channels. Color coding can help visually organize your ideas and make the map more visually appealing.

To make each component stand out and aid comprehension, incorporate icons or relevant images. For instance, use a dollar sign icon to represent revenue streams. Consistency in color schemes helps differentiate sections and highlights essential elements.

3. Collaborative brainstorm

Collaborative brainstorming often involves multiple participants contributing ideas simultaneously. 

To ensure efficient organization and clarity, assign specific branches within the mind map to individual participants. This approach helps maintain ownership of ideas and prevents overlap. 

Encourage participants to contribute further context by adding comments or annotations to each branch. Utilize mind mapping software that supports real-time collaboration if the brainstorming session involves remote teams, enabling seamless teamwork and idea exchange.

These collaborative brainstorming examples can be helpful in generating ideas during your next brainstorming process:

4. Product improvement brainstorm

Brainstorming product improvements requires an effective categorization and prioritization of ideas. Organize your mind map by creating branches for different areas of improvement, such as usability enhancements, additional features or performance optimization. 

Begin by sharing user feedback, reviews or customer pain points related to the product. This provides context and helps participants understand the existing challenges.

Then, organize your mind map into categories based on different aspects of the product, such as features, user experience, performance or customer support.

Product improvement is an ongoing process so make sure to not limit your brainstorming to a one-time event. Schedule regular sessions to continually enhance the product.

5. Corporate brainstorm

In a corporate brainstorming session, where diverse topics and ideas are on the agenda, systematic organization is crucial. 

Divide your mind map into sections and subsections to address various corporate aspects, such as HR, marketing, finance and operations. For example, this mind map on corporate initiative ideas divides the sections into different CSR programs and initiatives that the company can do to enhance public image:

To highlight potential synergies between related ideas from different sections, connect them with clear cross-references. Additionally, for practicality, include action items or tasks linked to specific ideas to facilitate a smooth implementation process within the corporate framework.

6. Creative brainstorm

Creative brainstorms thrive on spontaneity and inspiration — which is why your mind map design should encourage free-flowing ideas and unconventional thinking. 

Opt for a non-linear, organic structure within the mind map, avoiding rigid hierarchies that can stifle creativity. Embrace the use of visuals, such as images, sketches or mood boards, to stimulate creativity and inspiration. 

Here’s a brainstorming mind map example that teachers can use to generate exciting classroom activities and keep students engaged:

Allow branches to extend in unexpected directions, reflecting the dynamic and imaginative nature of creative brainstorming. This approach encourages participants to explore unconventional ideas and perspectives, fostering a truly creative atmosphere during the session.

Brainstorming aside, mind maps are versatile tools useful for organizing complex information, creating study aids, structuring project plans and facilitating communication and knowledge sharing in collaborative settings.

Browse our selection of mind map templates or learn about the best mind mapping software to help enhance creativity, solve problems and organize ideas.

Unleashing your team’s creativity through effective brainstorming techniques is a game-changer when it comes to generating new ideas and innovative solutions. Let’s delve into ten creative brainstorming techniques that can breathe life into your brainstorming sessions:

1. Mind mapping

Like concept maps , mind mapping is great for emphasizing the connections and relationships between ideas. You start with a central idea and then let your thoughts branch out like tree branches. Mind mapping is a great way to spot connections you might have missed.

2. Brainwriting

Forget talking — this one’s all about writing your ideas down. Brainwriting lets you pass your ideas around and let your team add their two cents. It’s a great brainstorming strategy for getting everyone involved especially if you’re brainstorming with a large group.

3. SCAMPER Method

SCAMPER stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate and Reverse. This technique encourages participants to explore these strategies for idea generation.

4. Storyboarding

Create a visual narrative or storyboard to explore ideas sequentially. This can help enhance understanding the flow and practicality of concepts, especially in product development or process improvement. Check out our gallery of storyboard templates you could use to generate new ideas.

5. Role storming

Ever tried brainstorming as someone else? In this technique, you put on different thinking caps, like playing pretend. It’s awesome for seeing things from fresh angles.

6. Worst possible idea

This one’s my favorite! Deliberately come up with the crummiest, silliest ideas you can think of. Oddly enough, they can spark some brilliant ones!

7. Round-robin brainstorming

One of my favorite group brainstorming techniques, everyone gets a turn to share their ideas with round-robin brainstorming — no interrupting or dominating the conversation. This technique ensures that everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute.

8. SWOT Analysis

Analyze the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats related to the problem or idea. This structured approach helps identify potential areas for improvement or innovation. Browse our SWOT analysis templates for more inspiration.

9. Random word or image association

Start with something random, like “banana” or “dolphin,” and brainstorm from there. It’s like mental gymnastics and it can lead to some seriously cool ideas.

10. Nominal group technique

For this brainstorming technique, Participants individually generate ideas, which are then anonymously shared and discussed as a group, ensuring balanced participation and minimizing the influence of dominant voices.

To further fuel your brainstorming sessions, you could always consider using a brainstorming tool to facilitate collaboration, structure ideas and provide visual frameworks. From virtual whiteboards to mind maps, here’s a list of brainstorming tools that can cater to various needs and preferences in brainstorming sessions.

Brainstorming sessions can be exhilarating bursts of creativity, but they can also veer off course if not handled with care. Here, we’ll explore five common missteps to steer clear of and conduct a successful brainstorming session.

1. Criticizing ideas too early

When participants criticize or judge ideas too soon in the brainstorming process, it can discourage creativity and stifle the generation of innovative solutions. To avoid this, it’s essential to foster an environment where all ideas are welcomed without immediate criticism.

Solution: Embrace the “No Judgment” rule we mentioned earlier. Encourage a judgment-free zone where all ideas are welcome to generate as many ideas, no matter how unusual or impractical they might seem initially. 

2. Groupthink

Ah, groupthink – the silent brainstorming killer. It’s when the desire for harmony within the group overrides critical thinking. Everyone nods along to ideas, not because they believe in them, but to avoid conflict.

Solution: Foster an atmosphere where dissenting opinions are not only tolerated but encouraged. Encourage team members to play devil’s advocate and don’t let conformity hold your brainstorming sessions hostage.

3. Ignoring introverted participants

In the whirlwind of brainstorming, extroverted voices can dominate the conversation, leaving introverts feeling like they’re stranded on the sidelines. Their valuable ideas may get lost in the noise.

Solution: Implement techniques like brainwriting or round-robin brainstorming, which give everyone an equal chance to contribute without the pressure of immediate verbal expression. 

4. Prioritizing quantity over quality

Yes, quantity matters in brainstorming, but swinging the pendulum too far toward generating sheer volume can leave you drowning in a sea of mediocre ideas.

Solution: Balance is key. Encourage the generation of many ideas, but once you’ve amassed a list, focus on quality. Sort through them, identify the most promising ones and build upon them collectively.

5. Neglecting follow-up and implementation

Brainstorming is exhilarating, but it’s just the first lap in the race. Failing to follow up on the ideas generated and implementing the best ones is like baking a cake and never eating it.

Solution: Assign responsibility for each idea’s follow-up and implementation. Establish clear timelines and action plans. Make sure the fruits of your brainstorming labor don’t gather dust on the shelf.

By sidestepping these brainstorming bloopers, you’ll be on your way to brilliant solutions and groundbreaking ideas, all while avoiding the pitfalls of the brainstorming jungle. 

Ready to kickstart your brainstorming session? These brainstorm presentation templates might come in handy to help spark creativity, ideation and foster collaborative problem-solving within a team. 

How does brainstorming help with the writing process

Brainstorming helps the writing process by generating a pool of diverse ideas, facilitating idea organization and overcoming writer’s block. It allows writers to explore different angles and perspectives for their content.

Are there any online tools or software for collaborative brainstorming?

Yes, there are several online tools and software for collaborative brainstorming, such as Miro, Stormboard and Google Jamboard. These platforms enable teams to brainstorm ideas in real-time, regardless of physical location.

What are some brainstorming activities for team building and creativity?

Brainstorming activities for team building and creativity include “Two Truths and a Lie,” “Role Reversal” and “The Six Thinking Hats.” These creative exercises promote trust, collaboration and out-of-the-box thinking among team members to generate creative ideas.

How do I encourage creative thinking during a brainstorming session?

To encourage creative thinking during a brainstorming session, create a non-judgmental environment, encourage wild ideas, use creative prompts and mix up the group dynamics. To facilitate productive brainstorming sessions, reward creativity and emphasize the importance of novelty and innovation.

What role does creativity play in effective brainstorming?

Creativity plays a central role in effective brainstorming as it drives the generation of innovative ideas and solutions. Without creativity, brainstorming sessions can become routine and fail to produce breakthrough concepts.

What are the benefits of using brainstorming examples in a business or creative context?

Using brainstorming examples in a business or creative context can provide tangible illustrations of successful brainstorming outcomes. They can inspire participants, provide a framework for idea generation and demonstrate the practical application of brainstorming techniques. Additionally, they can serve as a reference point for future brainstorming sessions.

5 steps to create a brainstorming mind map with Venngage 

In conclusion, mastering the art of brainstorming is like unlocking a treasure chest of solutions to your most challenging problems. By exploring a variety of brainstorming techniques and with the help of the above examples of brainstorming, you’ve gained valuable tools to tackle issues with confidence and creativity.

Now, to bring it all together, consider harnessing the power of visual thinking through a brainstorming mind map. Venngage offers a seamless solution that can transform your brainstorming ideas into organized, inspiring journeys using mind maps . To create a brainstorming mind map with Venngage:

• Sign in or create a free Venngage account.
• Pick a brainstorm mind map template to get started. 
• Add your central idea in the central node.
• Create branches and subtopics by clicking, dragging and labeling.
• Customize your mind map with colors, fonts, icons and connectors to make it visually appealing.

Remember, the beauty of brainstorming lies in its boundless potential, always ready to surprise you with fresh perspectives and creative solutions.

So, whether you’re tackling complex business dilemmas or personal puzzles, put your thinking hat on for a productive brainstorming session and let all the ideas roam free. 

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Better Brainstorming

• Hal Gregersen

Great innovators have long known that the secret to unlocking a better answer is to ask a better question. Applying that insight to brainstorming exercises can vastly improve the search for new ideas—especially when a team is feeling stuck. Brainstorming for questions, rather than answers, helps you avoid group dynamics that often stifle voices, and it lets you reframe problems in ways that spur breakthrough thinking.

After testing this approach with hundreds of organizations, MIT’s Hal Gregersen has developed it into a methodology: Start by selecting a problem that matters. Invite a small group to help you consider it, and in just two minutes describe it at a high level so that you don’t constrain the group’s thinking. Make it clear that people can contribute only questions and that no preambles or justifications are allowed. Then, set the clock for four minutes, and generate as many questions as you can in that time, aiming to produce at least 15. Afterward, study the questions generated, looking for those that challenge your assumptions and provide new angles on your problem. If you commit to actively pursuing at least one of these, chances are, you’ll break open a new pathway to unexpected solutions.

Focus on questions, not answers, for breakthrough insights.

The Problem

Great innovators have always known that the key to unlocking a better answer is to ask a better question—one that challenges deeply held assumptions. Yet most people don’t do that, even when brainstorming, because it doesn’t come naturally. As a result, they tend to feel stuck in their search for fresh ideas.

The Solution

By brainstorming for questions instead of answers, you can create a safe space for deeper exploration and more-powerful problem solving. This brief exercise in reframing—which helps you avoid destructive group dynamics and biases that can thwart breakthrough thinking—often reveals promising new angles and unexpected insights.

About 20 years ago I was leading a brainstorming session in one of my MBA classes, and it was like wading through oatmeal. We were talking about something that many organizations struggle with: how to build a culture of equality in a male-dominated environment. Though it was an issue the students cared about, they clearly felt uninspired by the ideas they were generating. After a lot of discussion, the energy level in the room was approaching nil. Glancing at the clock, I resolved to at least give us a starting point for the next session.

• Hal Gregersen is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management , a globally recognized expert in navigating rapid change, and a Thinkers50 ranked management thinker. He is the author of Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life and the coauthor of The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators .

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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.

You earn a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you complete the course. You can highlight them on your resume, CV, LinkedIn profile or your website .

All open-source articles on Brainstorming

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What is brainstorming?

Table of contents

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

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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. 

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Brainstorming

Generating many radical, creative ideas.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

How often have you used brainstorming to solve a problem? Chances are, you've used it at least once, even if you didn't realize it.

For decades, people have used brainstorming to generate ideas, and to come up with creative solutions to problems. However, you need to use brainstorming correctly for it to be fully effective.

In this article, we'll look at what brainstorming is, why it's useful, and how to get the best from it.

Click here to view a transcript of this video.

What Is Brainstorming?

Madison Avenue advertising executive Alex Osborn developed the original approach and published it in his 1953 book, "Applied Imagination." [1]

Since then, researchers have made many improvements to his original technique. The approach described here takes this research into account, so it's subtly different from Osborn's approach. [2]

Brainstorming combines a relaxd, informal approach to problem solving with lateral thinking. It encourages people to come up with thoughts and ideas that can, at first, seem a bit crazy. Some of these ideas can be crafted into original, creative solutions to a problem, while others can spark even more ideas. This helps to get people unstuck by "jolting" them out of their normal ways of thinking.

Therefore, during brainstorming sessions, people should avoid criticizing or rewarding ideas. You're trying to open up possibilities and break down incorrect assumptions about the problem's limits. Judgment and analysis at this stage stunts idea generation and limit creativity.

Evaluate ideas at the end of the session – this is the time to explore solutions further, using conventional approaches.

Why Use Brainstorming?

Conventional group problem solving can often be undermined by unhelpful group behavior . And while it's important to start with a structured, analytical process when solving problems, this can lead a group to develop limited and unimaginative ideas.

By contrast, brainstorming provides a free and open environment that encourages everyone to participate. Quirky ideas are welcomed and built upon, and all participants are encouraged to contribute fully, helping them develop a rich array of creative solutions.

When used during problem solving, brainstorming brings team members' diverse experience into play. It increases the richness of ideas explored, which means that you can often find better solutions to the problems that you face.

It can also help you get buy-in from team members for the solution chosen – after all, they're likely to be more committed to an approach if they were involved in developing it. What's more, because brainstorming is fun, it helps team members bond, as they solve problems in a positive, rewarding environment.

While brainstorming can be effective, it's important to approach it with an open mind and a spirit of non-judgment. If you don't do this, people "clam up," the number and quality of ideas plummets, and morale can suffer.

How to Use the Tool

You often get the best results by combining individual and group brainstorming, which we explain below, and by managing the process according to the "rules" below. By doing this, you can get people to focus on the issue without interruption, you maximize the number of ideas that you can generate, and you get that great feeling of team bonding that comes with a well-run brainstorming session!

To run a group brainstorming session effectively, follow these steps.

Step 1: Prepare the Group

How much information or preparation does your team need in order to brainstorm solutions to your problem? Remember that prep is important, but too much can limit – or even destroy – the freewheeling nature of a brainstorming session.

First, choose an appropriate and comfortable meeting space. This can be in the office, or virtual. Consider what would work best for your team. Make sure you have the right resources beforehand; you can use virtual brainstorming tools like Miro or LucidSpark, and you'll need pens and Post-Its for an in-person session.

Now consider who will attend the meeting. A brainstorming session full of like-minded people won't generate as many creative ideas as a diverse group , so try to include people from a wide range of disciplines, and include people who have a variety of different thinking styles.

When everyone is gathered, appoint one person to record the ideas that come from the session. This person shouldn't necessarily be the team manager – it's hard to record and contribute at the same time. Post notes where everyone can see them, such as on flip charts or whiteboards; or use a computer with a data projector.

If people aren't used to working together, consider using an appropriate warm-up exercise, or an icebreaker .

Step 2: Present the Problem

Clearly define the problem that you want to solve, and lay out any criteria that you must meet. Make it clear that that the meeting's objective is to generate as many ideas as possible.

Give people plenty of quiet time at the start of the session to generate as many of their own ideas as they can. Then, ask them to share or present their ideas, while giving everyone a fair opportunity to contribute.

Step 3: Guide the Discussion

Once everyone has shared their ideas, start a group discussion to develop other people's ideas, and use them to create new ideas. Building on others' ideas is one of the most valuable aspects of group brainstorming.

Encourage everyone to contribute and to develop ideas, including the quietest people, and discourage anyone from criticizing ideas.

As the group facilitator, you should share ideas if you have them, but spend your time and energy supporting your team and guiding the discussion. Stick to one conversation at a time, and refocus the group if people become sidetracked.

Although you're guiding the discussion, remember to let everyone have fun while brainstorming. Welcome creativity, and encourage your team to come up with as many ideas as possible, regardless of whether they're practical or impractical. Use thought experiments such as Provocation to generate some unexpected ideas.

Don't follow one train of thought for too long. Make sure that you generate a good number of different ideas, and explore individual ideas in detail. If a team member needs to "tune out" to explore an idea alone, allow them the freedom to do this.

Also, if the brainstorming session is lengthy, take plenty of breaks so that people can continue to concentrate.

Individual Brainstorming

While group brainstorming is often more effective at generating ideas than normal group problem solving, several studies have shown that individual brainstorming produces more – and often better – ideas than group brainstorming. [3]

This can occur because groups aren't always strict in following the rules of brainstorming, and bad behaviors creep in. Mostly, though, this happens because people pay so much attention to other people that they don't generate ideas of their own – or they forget these ideas while they wait for their turn to speak. This is called "blocking."

When you brainstorm on your own, you don't have to worry about other people's egos or opinions, and you can be freer and more creative. For example, you might find that an idea you'd hesitate to bring up in a group develops into something special when you explore it on your own.

However, you may not develop ideas as fully when you're on your own, because you don't have the wider experience of other group members to draw on.

To get the most out of your individual brainstorming session, choose a comfortable place to sit and think. Minimize distractions so that you can focus on the problem at hand, and consider using Mind Maps to arrange and develop ideas.

Individual brainstorming is most effective when you need to solve a simple problem, generate a list of ideas, or focus on a broad issue. Group brainstorming is often more effective for solving complex problems.

Group Brainstorming

Here, you can take advantage of the full experience and creativity of all team members. When one member gets stuck with an idea, another member's creativity and experience can take the idea to the next stage. You can develop ideas in greater depth with group brainstorming than you can with individual brainstorming.

Another advantage of group brainstorming is that it helps everyone feel that they've contributed to the solution, and it reminds people that others have creative ideas to offer. It's also fun, so it can be great for team building!

Group brainstorming can be risky for individuals. Unusual suggestions may appear to lack value at first sight – this is where you need to chair sessions tightly, so that the group doesn't crush these ideas and stifle creativity.

Where possible, participants should come from a wide range of disciplines. This cross-section of experience can make the session more creative. However, don't make the group too big: as with other types of teamwork, groups of five to seven people are usually most effective.

Other Brainstorming Techniques

If you're not getting enough good quality ideas, try using the approaches below to increase the number of ideas that you generate:

• The Stepladder Technique – This improves the contribution of quieter group members by introducing one person at a time.
• Brainwriting – This is a written approach that you can use to encourage all individuals to generate and develop ideas.
• Online Brainstorming (also known as Brain-netting) – An electronic method of brainstorming, this uses a document stored on a central server, or on a Cloud-based system.
• Crawford's Slip Writing Approach – You can use this approach to get plenty of ideas from all participants, and to get a view of each idea's popularity.

These techniques help you in specific situations:

• Reverse Brainstorming – This is used to improve a product or service.
• Starbursting – Starbursting helps you develop questions that you need to ask to evaluate a proposal.
• Charette Procedure – This helps you brainstorm with large groups of people. (Conventional brainstorming becomes increasingly ineffective when more than 10 or 12 people are involved.)
• Round-Robin Brainstorming – You can use this approach to get people to contribute ideas without being influenced by others.
• Rolestorming – This technique encourages group members to take on other people's identities while brainstorming, thereby reducing their inhibitions.

The Next Step – Taking Action

After your individual or group brainstorming session, you'll have a lot of ideas. Although it might seem hard to sort through these ideas to find the best ones, analyzing these ideas is an important next step, and you can use several tools to do this.

Use Affinity Diagrams to organize ideas and find common themes.

Decision Matrix Analysis and Paired Comparison Analysis will help you choose between different options. You can also use the Six Thinking Hats technique to look at ideas from different perspectives; and the Modified Borda Count and Multi-Voting can help you choose between options as a team, particularly where the differences between options are quite subjective.

When managed well, brainstorming can help you generate radical solutions to problems. It can also encourage people to commit to solutions, because they have provided input and played a role in developing them.

The best approach combines individual and group brainstorming. During the process, there should be no criticism of ideas, and creativity should be encouraged.

[1] Osborn, A. (1953) 'Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem-Solving,' New York: Creative Education Foundation Press.

[2] Diehl, M. and Stroebe, W. (1987) 'Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: Toward the Solution of a Riddle,'  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Vol. 53, No. 3. 1987. (Available here .)

[3] Lamm, H. and Trommsdorff, G. (1973) 'Group Versus Individual Performance on Tasks Requiring Ideational Proficiency (Brainstorming): A Review,'  European Journal of Social Psychology.  Vol. 3, Issue 4. October/December 1973. (Available  here .)

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When inspiration strikes: 12 effective brainstorming techniques

Reading time: about 9 min

Are you an effective brainstormer? Does the process of brainstorming feel like an opportunity or more like a chore? Chances are if you don’t enjoy the process of brainstorming, you’ve probably been using the wrong brainstorming technique. 

That’s right—there are distinct brainstorming methods. 

Just as there are different learning styles and different workflow preferences, each of us has a method of brainstorming that works best for us. Whether or not you’re a veteran brainstormer, this article will help you unpack different brainstorming tools, learn the advantages and shortcomings of each, and select a technique for yourself and your team.

12 popular brainstorming methods

Need to take a step back? Learn how to set up a brainstorming session with your team.

Brainwriting

When brainwriting, each group member is told to anonymously write down several ideas on post-it notes or index cards. Keeping ideas anonymous serves two important purposes: First, it prevents idea anchoring and any personality bias that may arise. Second, it provides a way for more introverted teammates to still contribute to ideation. 

The result is a broader range of ideas that may not have surfaced if teammates were to brainstorm collectively. Ideas are then shared at random with the rest of the group, who offer feedback and critique each idea. As an alternative, ideas can also be collected and sorted by a team leader or management team. The overlying goal of brainwriting is to separate idea generation from discussion. 

5 Whys analysis

If you’ve ever been interrogated by a toddler, you know what the 5 Whys might sound like. You give an answer to a question, only for it to be followed by an increasingly urgent series of “Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?”

Truth be told, that toddler is onto something. Created by Taiichi Ohno, the 5 Whys analysis was made popular at Toyota as a standard process for root cause analysis—getting to the heart of a problem.

Less structured than other more traditional problem-solving methods, the 5 Whys is simply what it sounds like: asking why over and over to get to the root of an obstacle or setback. This technique encourages an open dialogue that can trigger new ideas about a problem, whether done individually or with a group. Each why piggybacks off the answer to the previous why.

Both flowcharts and  fishbone diagrams  can help you track your answers to the 5 Whys. 

Starbursting

Like a reporter trying to discover the pivotal information to a story, the starbursting method of brainstorming requires you to think about the who, what, where, when, why, and how for any new idea.

Place your main idea at the center of a star diagram, labeling each point of the star with those 5WH questions.

Next, develop a series of questions about your idea for each point. Starbursting is popular among brainstorming methods because of its exploratory nature: One question triggers another question, and before you know it, you have the beginnings of a solid strategy within the answers to those questions.

Mind mapping

Part of the challenge of brainstorming is trying to catch every idea swirling through the air. Mind maps are a creative, non-linear diagram used to capture that influx of ideas so you don’t miss anything. Start with a topic or question in the center of the mind map, and branch off to include every participant’s thoughts. Then use Collaborative AI to generate more in seconds for expanded ideas and an expanded mind.

To create your own mind map online, open the template below or browse through our gallery of additional mind map templates .

Rolestorming/figure storming

Sometimes it’s best to consider someone else’s point of view. Considering how someone else might approach a challenge is the central concept behind rolestorming. A related practice, figure storming asks you to put yourself in the shoes of a famous historical figure.

For example, a legal advocacy group might have teammates ask “How would Mahatma Gandhi solve this problem?” Rolestorming has even made its way into pop culture: Anyone who has ever purchased or even seen the popular rubber WWJD (what would Jesus do?) bracelets has witnessed rolestorming in daily life. Rolestorming or figure storming works best for teams who find themselves coming up with the same ideas for repeating projects. 

Gap filling

Gap filling, also known as gap analysis , requires you to identify your current state and your end goal and then find gaps between the two states. It asks the question, “How do we get from here to there?” Gap analysis is especially helpful when it comes to problem solving because it requires you to find workable solutions.

Flowcharts or mind maps can help you grid out your gap analysis. Mark the current state on one end and the ideal state on the other. Then team members will understand what they're working toward and start contributing ideas in the middle to fill the gap.

Brain-netting

Brain-netting has become a popular brainstorming technique in the modern workspace, where virtual collaboration and remote teams are much more common. Email communication can be effective but can take too much time and can be more formal than needed. 

With brain-netting, participants use virtual collaboration software to share ideas in real time and can save ideas to a cloud-based storage platform or within the collaboration software itself. The way teams go about virtual collaboration can vary—team leaders may ask a general question like “What do we want our customers to experience?” and have teammates contribute their responses, or teams may engage in other techniques mentioned in this piece including rolestorming, reverse brainstorming, and rapid ideation. 

Round robin brainstorming

To engage in this brainstorming technique, begin with having everyone sit in a circle. A team leader or facilitator will then pose a question or offer a request for ideas and have everyone in the circle contribute one by one. 

This strategy is great for middle- to large-sized teams who may have quieter team members or for any team with noticeable imbalance in creative contribution. The most important rule for this technique is to treat all ideas with equal weight—give each teammate the same time and attention as they share, and avoid developing any ideas until everyone has had a chance to contribute. If and when a team member says that “Person X already said my idea,” offer them time to come up with a new idea while completing the round robin. 

Rapid ideation

Operating within a time limitation can often produce higher quality work. Indeed, Parkinson’s Law teaches us that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Rapid ideation uses this phenomenon to its advantage: By setting a time limit on team members to contribute as many ideas or solutions as possible, team managers can maximize productivity and results. 

Rapid ideation works well for a few different types of workers—for teams who dislike meetings, or who tend to get sidetracked, rapid ideation is a great way to approach the brainstorming stage of project execution. 

A helpful tip to remember: Get silly! Research shows that teams who share funny or embarrassing stories about themselves reported 26% more ideas shared across 15% more categories over teams who kept meetings more formal. Having the space to let down certain social barriers reduces overthinking and produces a greater flow of ideas.

Reverse brainstorming

Most brainstorming techniques ask participants to solve a problem. Reverse brainstorming has participants cause a problem. Rather than forming solutions to a problem, reverse brainstorming has a facilitator ask a question like “How can we cause this problem?” Responses are then recorded and used as springboards to ideate a solution by working through the responses backwards. 

Reverse brainstorming is a powerful way to open up new solutions to recurring problems: By challenging participants to work backwards, certain insights that may have been hard to imagine normally become crystal clear from a new perspective. 

Stepladder brainstorming

This interesting style of brainstorming was developed in 1992 and involves teammates sharing their ideas individually before being influenced by the group. 

The process starts with a facilitator posing a question or problem to the entire group and then having almost every group member exit the room, leaving two members present. These remaining two members share their ideas together while the rest of the team waits outside, until the facilitator directs an outside teammate to join the two inside. 

The third and new teammate then shares their idea first, followed by the other two teammates. A fourth group member then enters the room and shares his or her idea first, followed by the other teammates present. The process continues this way until all group members have joined the room and shared their ideas. 

Stepladder brainstorming is noted for solving the problem of groupthink by having participants share ideas individually and without influence from the group. It also allows the more shy group members to contribute without being intimidated by a room full of people.

SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis isn't exclusively a brainstorming technique: It's a strategic planning exercise that you can use to evaluate a product, project, person, or business. However, it may be valuable to focus your brainstorm with this mindset. SWOT stands for:

• Strengths:  How does the product, project, or business dominate and stand out from its competitors?
• Weaknesses:  What are the flaws that can hurt or put the product, project, or business in jeopardy?
• Opportunities:  What opportunities could the business capitalize on?
• Threats:  What are the possible downfalls lurking for the product, project, or business?

Spend some time in each category and add your teammates' thoughts onto a SWOT matrix.

Choose a brainstorm method and get started

Once you’ve selected your brainstorming technique or techniques, it’s time to get to work. Remember: The first rule of brainstorming is quantity over quality. Encouraging teammates to have the bravery to risk imperfection and contribute ideas is the best way to guide your team toward new ways to approach problems—and often leads to powerful insights. 

All these methods can be combined with others, giving you an endless arsenal of brainstorming techniques to continue ideating efficiently. 

See our 7 tips for starting a brainstorming meeting with your team.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. 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 lucidchart.com.

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10 Brainstorming Techniques for Developing New Ideas

Brainstorming is an essential practice for creative thinking and problem-solving. At its most basic, brainstorming simply means identifying a problem, and then coming up with as many fresh ideas as possible that may help solve that problem. In practice, however, brainstorming needs to be structured to be successful.

No matter which brainstorming method you try, be sure to keep these tips in mind:

• Outline a problem or topic that needs further examination and group feedback for your brainstorming session.
• Use a shared digital space to conduct your brainstorming . This not only makes brainstorming easier, but also ensures you don’t lose any ideas and have a document to refer to in the future.
• Encourage quantity over quality . Participants can often get hung up on having the “best idea” but this often leads to creative blocks. Instead, focus on generating a high number of ideas first. Once you have a lot of ideas, you can start refining the best ones. However, if you have fewer ideas, you’ll have fewer options to choose from.
• You don’t always need a facilitator, but having one can help to have somebody guide a group of people through the ideation process . If needed, assign a team leader or facilitator before the idea generation begins to keep track of time limits and record the most creative ideas.

10 brainstorming techniques for better idea generation

Question brainstorming.

Question brainstorming is a method where participants come up with as many questions about the problem as possible. In this activity, participants should only come up with questions, not answers. This method is great because it helps the group try to understand the problem completely without the pressure to have the single best solution.

How to try this technique:

• Decide on the central topic or problem you want to brainstorm for.
• Each group or individual then takes 10-15 minutes to write as many questions about the topic or problem they have without trying to come up with an answer to any of them.
• After 10-15 minutes, the group gets back together to share, group, and prioritize the questions.
• Go through the full list of questions and start answering each one to better understand the core topic or problem.

Need inspiration? Check out these 25 brainstorming questions for effective brainstorms .

Hybrid brainstorming

The best way to get the most out of your brainstorming efforts is to combine the best of async and real-time idea generation. This technique starts off with individual brainstorming and ends with a collaborative, group brainstorming session.

How to do it:

• Chose the top 5 questions you want the brainstorming session to be based around.
• Have each participant begin brainstorming in their own dedicated space.
• Next, have everyone share their ideas so you have one central repository of all the ideas.
• Go through each question and discuss any questions that arise.
• Vote on the top ideas to focus on.
• Turn the top ideas into action items and celebrate your successful ideation session.

Mind map brainstorming

Using the mind mapping brainstorming technique helps your team use the central focus of your project as a starting point, explore all the potential variables tied to that project, and build an understanding of how those variables relate to the main topic, as well as to one another.

• Add a central topic or question to the center of the mind map.
• Add branches and nodes based on secondary thoughts to the primary topic. 
• Keep adding branches and nodes based on additional ideas until you have a satisfactory number of related ideas.

Starbursting

The starbursting method involves asking a series of questions, typically using the 5 W's and 1 H (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How) to explore the different aspects of the problem or topic. Starbursting is a divergent thinking approach focused on asking questions about the topic in order to generate a wide range of ideas.

How to run a starbursting exercise:

In Mural , Add six sticky notes around a central idea or problem and label them “Who,” “What,” “Where,” “When,” “Why,” and “How.” For each question, encourage participants to generate as many ideas as possible. Alternatively, you can conduct starbursting in Mural by creating a mind map.

Once the ideas have been generated, the facilitator can use other ideation techniques to further refine the ideas and identify potential solutions to the problem. Try clustering similar ideas together, categorizing the ideas into different groups with tags, or prioritizing the ideas based on their potential impact or feasibility.

The 'crazy eights' brainstorming technique is a great way to explore a wide range of ideas by encouraging quantity and time-boxing every exercise for efficiency. Brainstorm 8 different solutions in just 8 minutes. Once you’re ready, you can review the ideas and agree on the most effective solution.

How to do a crazy 8s brainstorm:

• Have each participant take a piece of paper (or use an online whiteboard ) and divide it into eight parts.
• Sketch or detail eight ideas, spending one minute for each panel.
• Have each participant share their own ideas.
• Vote on the top ideas and turn them into actionable next steps.

Round robin brainstorming

A round robin is a great way to encourage your team members to think critically about a problem or challenge, as well as build on one another's ideas. The format calls for dividing your team into small groups, and having each person pass their ideas along to the following teammate, who then offers counterpoints or further suggestions, helping identify potential weaknesses or spurring innovation within the session.

How to run a round robin:

• Set the brainstorming topic or problem you’re looking to solve.
• Divide your group or participants into four teams, or add more panels to accommodate more participants.
• Have each group or participant write down a proposal and move to the next panel
• Looking at what the other group or participant suggested, write down reasons why their proposal might fail then move to the next panel.
• Based on the proposal and weaknesses, have each participant or group craft a final concept using the weaknesses as feedback.

Looking for more instruction? Check out our complete guide on round robin brainstorming with a walkthrough, tips, and variations of the round robin method.

6-3-5 brainwriting

6-3-5 brainwriting is a group brainstorming method that involves creating a lot of ideas and building on the ideas of the other participants to give a total of 108 ideas in a short amount of time.

To run this exercise, you'll need 6 participants to create 3 ideas each within 5 minutes. Run this exercise for 6 rounds for a quick, half-hour brainstorming exercise.

• Have each participant select one panel and begin writing ideas related to the topic or problem statement on the first row of sticky notes.
• After five minutes, participants move to a different panel and do another round of ideation, using the previous row of ideas for inspiration.
• Run four more rounds of this exercise, or stop when you have enough ideas.
• Cluster and vote on the winning ideas with your team.

Brainwriting can be a marked improvment over more conventional brainstorming methods. In addition to reducing the pressure to openly share ideas that might be a bit "out there," brainwriting can help reduce participation inequity and prevent groupthink. Learn more in Mural's guide to brainwriting .

Reverse brainstorming

Reverse brainstorming involves looking at a problem from a different angle for generating ideas. Instead of asking, "What can we do to solve this problem?" the goal becomes, "How can we create this problem or make it worse?"

By focusing on the opposite of the problem or goal, team members can uncover new insights and approaches that they may not have considered otherwise. Once the "reverse" ideas have been generated, participants can then work to flip them around and find ways to turn them into positive solutions.

How to run a reverse brainstorm

• Draft a problem statement or starting topic for your team to brainstorm on
• Instead of posing the question: “How can we fix this?” ask “How can we make this problem worse?
• Participants will instead find more root causes driving the problem that you can start to address and dig deeper into
• Review and prioritize the ideas by severity or impact

Silent circuit

The silent circuit is a quiet brainstorming activity helps groups ideate across multiple topics while still being inclusive for quieter participants. This method is great for large groups, hybrid teams, and teams with introverts. This method is also great for getting different points of view.

How to run a silent circuit:

• Write "how might we" questions or a different prompt at the top of each brainstorming section.
• Set a timer and encourage participants to pan around the canvas and silently add as many ideas on sticky notes as they can under each prompt.
• When time is up, participants return to their original question and share all the ideas for each category.
• Review the questions and create action items for the best ideas.

Brain-netting

Brain-netting is a traditional brainstorming session conducted online. Online brainstorming isn’t a new concept, but recent shifts in remote work and collaboration tools have made this a much more common exercise. The main benefit of a brain-net is that it can be done asynchronously, meaning collaborators don’t have to. 

Brain-netting is more common among remote teams, where asynchronous communication and video calls are the norm. However, any team can leverage brain-netting to take a brainstorming activity online, generate innovative ideas, and get the creative juices flowing.

How to run a brain-netting exercise:

• Kickoff the session and warm-up your team with a virtual icebreaker that can be done asynchronously
• Add a problem statement or define a topic to ideate over
• Brainstorm together or set a deadline for when team members should have added their ideas to the brainstorming platform 
• Synthesize the ideas together, or summarize them and share the common themes
• Prioritize the ideas, pick a winner, and/or define next steps

Related: How to Facilitate a Brainstorming Session

Why brainstorming is essential for innovation

Brainstorming fosters creative thinking.

If you’re facing a difficult problem, brainstorming can help you to generate potential solutions that you might not have thought of otherwise. The free-flowing nature of brainstorming is meant to encourage exploration and a diversity of ideas — even those suggestions that seem tangential or unrelated at first may wind up forming the basis for effective solutions later on, or as inspiration for new products or features.

Brainstorming puts your best ideas in one place

Brainstorming helps you to organize your team's thoughts and feedback on any project. By structuring your brainstorming sessions so that everyone is engaged and all ideas are recorded, you can later organize your feedback by theme , using tools like tags for sticky notes and filtering. This can help you to better assess which ideas are worth pursuing and which ones are not, and begin to quickly and easily outline actionable next steps.

Types of brainstorming

There are three main types of brainstorming. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages, though hybrid brainstorming (enabled by platforms like Mural) mitigates the issues of by synchronous and async brainstorming.

Asynchronous brainstorming

Individuals are presented with a question or topic to consider on their own. Later, team members contribute their ideas to a shared document for further discussion and organization. The main advantage with asynchronous brainstorming is that it inherently avoids issues like groupthink since each individual completes the exercise independently.

Synchronous brainstorming

A team gathers together to brainstorm in a meeting, with everyone sharing ideas and grouping suggestions by theme. The main advantage of synchronous brainstorming is that it allows your team to build on one another's ideas in real time, making your session potentially more productive and speeding up innovation.

A hybrid approach to brainstorming combines elements of both asynchronous and synchronous ideation. By establishing a basis of psychological safety, as well as taking advantage of modern, cloud-based collaboration tools and features built to avoid groupthink, it's really possible to get the best of both worlds.

Tips for productive brainstorming

Establish an environment of psychological safety.

One of the most important elements in unlocking effective brainstorming is establishing a culture and environment of psychological safety . A brainstorming session should be one where everyone feels comfortable contributing without self-editing — in this phase, ideation shouldn't be interrupted by critiques or pushback. It's simply about collecting as many ideas and different perspectives as possible.

Psychological safety also means you are less likely to be impeded by groupthink — if the brainstorming session is characterized by a wide array of ideas and even constructive disagreement, you will have a much better basis upon which to formulate potential solutions than if everyone agrees or one line of thinking dominates your discussion.

Use private brainstorming within the context of a group meeting

To achieve this, you'll need to make people feel safe to share what they may think are outlandish or controversial ideas, which can be difficult to achieve. If you're not sure how best to begin, tools like Private Mode when using Mural can help you avoid groupthink by hiding the feedback that others are providing. Alternatively, when using a shared digital space like Mural, asynchronous brainstorming is also a viable solution — this allows people to reflect on their own, and bring their unique perspectives without outside influence into the meeting at a later date for discussion and organization.

Related: 7 Key Rules for Brainstorming

Follow-up after the brainstorming session

Brainstorming ideas is only the first step. After the brainstorming session is over, the team moves into the implementation phase. Be sure to define next steps and the roles of each team member so everyone understands the workflow and what’s expected of them. By following up, you ensure that the ideas you captured don’t get forgotten and a solution can be implemented.

Define a strategic goal for your brainstorming meeting

Once you've established the approach for your brainstorm, it helps to give greater context to your ideation by defining an overarching, strategic goal. Are you at the very outset of a problem with a lot of variables, and trying to better understand how they relate to one another? Is the purpose of your meeting to discover new ways to improve user experience for a given product or feature? Each use case requires a different basic framework for your brainstorming meeting.

Use these techniques to run better brainstorming sessions

Brainstorming is an essential part of the innovation process, but it can be difficult to come up with new ideas if you’re not sure where to start. The techniques we’ve outlined in this post should help you structure your brainstorming sessions in a way that makes them more effective and helps you produce actionable insights and takeaways.

If you want to make your brainstorming sessions even more productive, using a shared digital space like Mural not only unlocks visual thinking and online collaboration, but also builds in strategies to combat issues with groupthink and allows for hybrid brainstorming sessions that combine the best of asynchronous and real-time meetings.

Mural offers a host of brainstorming templates to kickstart more effective and meaningful (not to mention fun) sessions. Get started today with a Free Forever plan , and invite unlimited guests so you can build the next great idea together with your whole team.

About the authors

Bryan Kitch

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8 brainstorming techniques to harness the power of teamwork

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What is brainstorming?

4 benefits of brainstorming, what are the best brainstorming techniques, 5 steps for brainstorming, what could go wrong, brainstorm your way to team success, empower your team with brainstorming techniques.

Coming up with a   solution to a problem   always feels like a win. Especially when it’s   productive teamwork   that has helped you achieve your   team goals .

But sometimes, you hit a wall in the problem-solving process. It feels like your team is going around in circles, discussing the same thing. 

This kind of mental block isn’t uncommon. And it’s the kind of situation that calls for a group brainstorming session. 

Although simple, brainstorming can be a powerful tool for the   creation of new ideas . This is especially true when you and your team need to get your   creative juices flowing .

Ready to learn about some new and creative brainstorming techniques? Read on to discover how the right brainstorming session can boost your team’s   productivity .

Brainstorming is a model for extracting fresh ideas from a group of people. 

It’s a method used by everyone from school children to executives. It generates inspiration and   imagination   in the problem-solving process. 

During a brainstorming session, a group of team members comes together, either as equal co-contributors or under the supervision of a facilitator.

The fundamental principle behind different types of brainstorming techniques is that no idea is too wild or too unrealistic. This allows the team to think beyond the structured boundaries of the workplace and truly tap into   unique creative potential . 

Instead of coming up with a ready-made, perfectly thought-out plan from the get-go, team members are encouraged to think big and then tailor to fit. 

Removing conceptual boundaries opens up the potential for the team to be bold and innovative during their collaboration.

Brainstorming has numerous benefits for both individuals and the team. 

Let’s take a look at some of the many advantages you can expect from using brainstorming techniques.

1. Promotes teamwork

When left to their own devices, team members tend to become individualistic and wrapped up in their own preferred methods and ideas. They might also be   driven by ego . As any   effective leader   will know, this approach is not conducive to innovation.

It takes a team of dedicated minds to come up with truly unique solutions to problems. All of whom can contribute something slightly different to the process. 

The best brainstorming techniques get everyone together in a room with the sole purpose of collaborating.

2. Encourages creative ideas

When conceptualizing solutions to a specific problem, it is easy to get stuck in a mental rut that bears no creative fruit. 

The process of brainstorming seeks to actively remove the limitations and boundaries we set in our own minds.

This encourages team members to think outside the lines and put their creative thinking hats on. While not every idea conceived in this spirit will be feasible, there will undoubtedly be at least one or two that show promise. 

3. Provides different perspectives

No matter how diligent or accomplished you might be in your field, you need to draw on the experiences and viewpoints of those around you. This helps to get a holistic picture of the needs you are trying to meet. 

Bringing people together in the spirit of problem-solving   invites input from different walks of life . This ensures that your ideas hold strong from all angles. 

4. Generates many ideas in a short amount of time

Throwing creatives in a room together and removing conceptual boundaries might sound like a chaotic way to spend an afternoon. But by the end of it, you are guaranteed to have a whiteboard full of new ideas or directions to pursue.

Again, not all of them will be pure gold, but at least a few of them are bound to show promise. 

The number of brainstorming methods to choose from can seem overwhelming. Let’s look at some of the most effective brainstorming techniques for rapid ideation and creative solutions.

1. Mind mapping

Mind mapping is probably one of the most well-known brainstorming techniques. It helps teams visually represent a hierarchy of ideas and how they are interconnected. Generally, you start with a central ‘umbrella’ term and break it down into smaller components. 

If you’re unsure where to begin, use a mind map template to help your team visualize the process.

Drawing a mind map helps all team members keep track of the problem’s structure. It also helps them think coherently around a common thread and see theoretical connections in a concrete way. 

Studies have shown that   mind mapping helps people retain and work with information   more effectively.

2. Gap filling

Gap filling is a useful tool in product development. It involves using a timeline to plot past and future actions or realities in order to identify the best course of action for the present. Starting with the past refreshes the mind on how you got where you are and what needs you are trying to meet. 

Filling in the future helps you and your team decide on a common goal — what you want reality to look like after your intervention. This way, you can make logical and creative connections between the needs of the past and   the goals of the future . 

3. Brainwriting 

Brainwriting is an effective method for getting ideas out of all members of the group. 

Instead of everyone trying to shout over each other, team members have a few minutes to privately write down their ideas on a piece of paper or post-it.

When everyone is done, the group can discuss the raw ideas one by one. This   harnesses the potential of each individual   and encourages introverts to   speak up and contribute . 

4. SWOT analysis

‘SWOT’ stands for ‘strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.’ 

Each category is allocated one quadrant of a page. The team can then break down the elements of an idea into these categories and weigh the pros against the cons to see if it is worthwhile. 

5. Rolestorming

Rolestorming is a relatively unusual type of brainstorming technique. It combines role-playing and creative collaboration. 

The idea is to help team members overcome the shyness and sensitivity behind their contributions. This is done by presenting ideas from another’s perspective. It also forces the team to consider how important figures might respond to their ideas.

For instance, somebody could role-play a customer or client. This will help them understand their clients’ needs better by adopting their point of view.

6. Starbursting  

The structure of the starbursting technique is simple. It focuses on identifying the right questions before trying to come up with solutions. 

In this technique, a six-pointed star represents six root questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how? From there, more detailed questions are developed that guide the team in unique directions. 

7. The five whys  

Although it seems simple, this technique is surprisingly effective at locating the root of a problem. It draws on the power of   intellectual curiosity . The idea is to start with the most obvious, surface-level problem and ask why it is a problem. 

Establish a factual, robust answer to this, and then repeat the process with the secondary problem. This method helps burrow through the various layers of an issue and eventually reach the underlying root cause.

8. Stop-and-go-brainstorming

This method involves rapid switching between modes of thinking. For a select period of time (usually no longer than ten minutes), the team will focus on idea generation. 

After, they will evaluate those ideas and   give feedback   to determine their potential. Some teams find that this method helps avoid creative fatigue. It gives the brain a chance to exercise different cognitive skills instead of overusing one. 

Ready to come up with some great new ideas? Here are the steps to follow for a productive brainstorming session.

1. Prepare the group

The loose structure of most creative brainstorming techniques is essential to their success. However, it can lead to chaos   if the group isn’t managed properly . 

Take a few minutes to explain the workflow and purpose of the gathering. Outline exactly what you expect from the group for the duration of the exercise.

2. Present the problem or goal

The next step is to familiarize the team with the problem you’re trying to address or the   goal you’re trying to achieve . 

Give them a foundational understanding of the issue. Inform them of any past attempts to grapple with it and tell them why it’s important.

3. Capture all ideas

Depending on the technique you’ve chosen, make sure all necessary resources are provided for the team to record ideas.

The best brainstorming techniques are the ones that get ideas on paper, no matter how broad they are. Other tools to capture ideas are whiteboards, notepads, pens, markers, and sticky notes. 

Empower your team   by giving them the tools they need to get their thoughts down in print. 

4. Share and discuss ideas

All ideas should be given their time in the spotlight. Work through each one methodically. Give everyone a chance to speak and contribute.   Listen to everyone’s ideas   and record changes or revisions as they come up. Just like there are different ways to learn, there are also   different ways to listen .

Encourage   constructive criticism . Remind the team that 90% of raw ideas will be discarded or revised before they can be implemented. There is no need to feel defensive or spiteful if their ideas are dismissed or criticized. 

5. Make an action plan  

This is the final step. Once all your ideas have been explored and fleshed out, identify the strongest ones. Take all suggestions into account, and convert them into actionable tasks to be delegated to the right person.

The agile methodology is a great method to help teams stay on task and measure progress. Have a look at our agile methodology guide for more on this popular type of project management.

As with any collaborative effort, brainstorming sometimes doesn’t go according to plan. 

Here are some possible hiccups you could experience during the process and how to address them effectively.

1. Brainstorming session is dominated by one person

Sometimes, one or two people at work seem to always want to be the center of attention. Whenever the opportunity arises for them to take center stage, they do so, regardless of whether they are casting a shadow on someone else. This kind of   toxic trait   could be counterproductive for the brainstorming session.

This is where a skilled facilitator comes in handy. They know how to hold space gently and respectfully for everyone to contribute equally. This may involve asking someone to step back and stop talking over less   assertive members of the team . 

2. Ideas are criticized by others

Another common problem in brainstorming groups is the tendency of some people to be overly critical without suggesting alternative solutions. In some cases,   gaslighting at work   is used to belittle others and give them a constant negative narrative about their ideas.

It is important to clarify that constructive criticism and   feedback   need to be   communicated with respect . Encourage team members to come up with suggestions for improving the idea that’s being criticized.

3. Lots of ideas are generated, but no action comes of it

Without eventual action, no number of brilliant ideas is helpful. Including a senior supervisor in the brainstorming session is a good way to combat a lack of action.

Once all the raw ideas have been broken down into actionable tasks, they can   delegate responsibilities .

Here are six tips to help you facilitate a better brainstorming session with your team.

1. Encourage out-of-the-box thinking

This is the golden rule of all brainstorming techniques. Don’t limit the creativity of your team. In fact, encourage them to put concerns of practicality out of mind for the duration of the session. 

It only takes one idea to revolutionize the way we think about certain problems. 

2. Put a time limit on your session

Brainstorming involves dealing with loads of information on a surface level. This means it’s easy to get distracted by rabbit holes of conversation. 

Giving your team a set window will prevent time wastage and   keep them focused . If necessary, you can schedule a follow-up session to discuss important points that were missed. 

Time blocking   is an effective method to keep track of time during your brainstorming session. With this   time management technique , the team focuses on a single task or a group of similar tasks within a set time block.

3. Guide the discussion

A skilled facilitator knows when to let the   conversation flow and when to step in . If the discussion is drifting too far away from the task at hand, the facilitator must be able to bring the focus back gently but assertively. 

Experienced facilitators should use the right   management styles   to guide the brainstorming session. For example, a   democratic leadership style   will ensure the facilitator is working closely with all team members and building rapport.

4. Focus on quality over quantity

While brainstorming will inevitably give rise to many ideas, not all of them will show merit or warrant further discussion. The facilitator should be able to guide team members into discussions that focus on developing the ideas with more potential and fewer obstacles. 

5. Set ground rules

Even the best brainstorming techniques lead to sessions that get out of hand quickly without some basic guidelines.

The discussion should always be kept respectful and professional. Furthermore, irrelevant tangents and anecdotes should be avoided. 

6. Recognize and reward input

Putting yourself out there   by sharing an idea isn’t always easy, especially for more introverted members of the team. Basic psychology tells us that   people will be more willing to contribute   when their input is   recognized and rewarded . 

Acknowledge team members’ contributions   and thank them for their participation. This will   build confidence   quickly and get the conversational momentum going. 

Fostering effective collaboration and creativity in the workplace is no easy feat. But it's crucial for your business' success.

With more employees   working from home , the brainstorming process can seem even more daunting. But with the right technology and   remote working support , online brainstorming (or brain-netting) lets   virtual teams   brainstorm ideas in real-time.

There are plenty of group brainstorming techniques you and your team could try for your next session. It's just a matter of learning what works for you.

Get access to the most effective techniques by   getting in touch with a BetterUp coach . Our robust coaching experience guides teams down the path to a more productive tomorrow.

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Maggie Wooll, MBA

Maggie Wooll is a researcher, author, and speaker focused on the evolving future of work. Formerly the lead researcher at the Deloitte Center for the Edge, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Education from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Maggie is passionate about creating better work and greater opportunities for all.

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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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The Brainstorming Guide

Introduction to Brainstorming

Have you ever encountered a challenge that felt impossible to overcome, dreamt of starting a business from the ground up, wanted to create a solid plan, launch a product, or hoped to write a memorable story? And the good news is that within you, right now, lies the key to unlocking solutions, innovations, and narratives that can transcend boundaries.

Your secret weapon? Brainstorming.

Brainstorming can help you solve problems, start businesses, make plans, or create stories successfully. But here’s the issue: many people don’t know how to brainstorm effectively, whether they’re doing it alone or with others.

Sometimes, people waste a lot of time thinking of repeated and uninteresting ideas that won’t actually work. They believe they’re brainstorming, but they’re not doing it effectively.

What if you could learn the best way to brainstorm and start coming up with really powerful and profitable ideas quickly?

Keep reading to find out how to make the most of brainstorming.

Definition of Brainstorming

We’ll start off with the basics.

Brainstorming is a creative problem-solving technique that involves generating a large number of ideas or solutions to a particular issue or challenge.

It typically takes place in a group setting, although it can also be done individually. The primary goal of brainstorming is to encourage free thinking and idea generation without immediate criticism or evaluation.

Brainstorming is a valuable tool for generating creative solutions, fostering teamwork, and encouraging innovative thinking. It can be applied to a wide range of contexts, from business strategy and product development to creative writing and problem-solving in everyday life.

Brief History of Brainstorming

If you are interested in learning how brainstorming came to be, here’s a brief history of brainstorming.

Brainstorming was first developed by advertising executive Alex Osborn in the late 1930s. Osborn was seeking ways to improve the creative thinking and idea generation process within his advertising agency, and he formalized the brainstorming method in his book titled “Applied Imagination” in 1953.

Origins in Advertising

Alex Osborn coined the term “brainstorming” to describe a structured approach to idea generation. He believed that traditional meetings often stifled creativity, so he introduced brainstorming as a way to encourage free thinking and open collaboration.

Modern Approaches

In response to some of the limitations of traditional brainstorming, modern variations and techniques have emerged. These include techniques such as mind mapping , brainwriting , and online brainstorming tools , which aim to boost creativity and idea generation in different ways.

Four Rules of Brainstorming

Osborn also established four fundamental rules to guide effective brainstorming sessions. These rules are designed to pave the way for a creative and open-minded atmosphere favorable for idea generation. The four rules of brainstorming are:

• No criticism: During a brainstorming session, participants are explicitly instructed to withhold criticism, judgment, or negative feedback of any kind. The aim is to create a safe and non-threatening environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas, no matter how unconventional or seemingly impractical they may be.
• Quantity over quality: Participants are encouraged to generate as many ideas as possible within the allotted time frame. The emphasis is on quantity rather than quality in the initial stages of brainstorming. This rule encourages participants to think freely and prevents them from censoring themselves or holding back potentially valuable ideas.
• Build on ideas: Brainstorming sessions thrive on collaboration and the interplay of ideas. Participants are encouraged to build on one another’s suggestions. This means that when someone presents an idea, others should try to expand, modify, or combine it with their own contributions to create new and improved concepts.
• Encourage wild ideas: “Wild” or unconventional ideas are actively welcomed and encouraged in brainstorming. These unusual or seemingly far-fetched ideas can often serve as catalysts for innovative thinking. They may inspire more practical solutions or lead to unique insights.

What are the Benefits of Brainstorming?

Brainstorming offers a range of benefits in various personal, professional, and creative contexts. Some of the key advantages of brainstorming include:

• Idea generation : Brainstorming is a structured approach to generating a large number of ideas in a relatively short time. This is especially valuable when you need creative solutions, innovative concepts, or fresh perspectives.
• Promote creativity : It promotes creative thinking by encouraging participants to think outside the box, explore unconventional ideas, and break free from mental constraints and self-censorship.
• Explore multiple perspectives : Brainstorming sessions often involve multiple participants with different backgrounds, expertise, and viewpoints. This diversity can lead to a broader range of ideas and solutions.
• Foster collaboration : Brainstorming sessions often involve group participation, fostering collaboration and teamwork. Participants can build on each other’s ideas, leading to the development of more refined concepts.
• Identify effective solutions: It is an effective tool for problem-solving. Brainstorming can help identify potential solutions to challenges, enabling better decision-making.
• Inspire innovation : Brainstorming often leads to the generation of innovative and novel ideas, which can be valuable in fields such as product development, marketing, and research.
• Effective meetings : When conducted efficiently, brainstorming can lead to more productive and focused meetings, reducing the likelihood of unproductive discussions and tangents.
• Time efficiency : Brainstorming can lead to quicker problem-solving and idea generation compared to individual or unstructured approaches.
• Adaptability : It can be applied to a wide range of situations, from brainstorming in business to personal decision-making.

Important Brainstorming Factors to Keep in Mind

Despite its benefits, it’s important to note that brainstorming may not always be the most effective method in every scenario. It works best when guided by established principles and adapted to suit the specific needs and goals of a particular project or challenge.

• Group dynamics : Brainstorming may not work well in groups where there is a lack of trust, or where dominant personalities overshadow others. In such cases, alternative methods like individual ideation followed by group evaluation might be more effective.
• Time constraints : If time is limited, traditional brainstorming sessions can be lengthy. In such cases, rapid brainstorming techniques like “brainwriting” may be more time-efficient.
• Complex problems : For highly complex issues, brainstorming alone may not be enough. It might need to be supplemented with other problem-solving techniques, research, or expert consultation.
• Sensitive topics : Some topics may be too sensitive or controversial for traditional brainstorming, as the “no criticism” rule can hinder necessary discussions. In such cases, a more structured and moderated approach may be better.
• Overused technique : If a group frequently relies on brainstorming without variation, it can become less effective due to repetitive thinking. Mixing in different creative techniques can help maintain its effectiveness.
• Large groups : With too many participants, managing a brainstorming session can become unwieldy. Smaller breakout groups or online collaboration tools may be needed to facilitate effective idea generation.
• Clear goals : Brainstorming should always have a clear objective. If the purpose is ill-defined or ambiguous, it can lead to unfocused sessions and ineffective outcomes.

Different Types of Brainstorming

Based on the participants' involvement and the approach used to generate ideas, brainstorming can be divided into different types.

Individual Brainstorming

This involves a single person generating ideas on their own, often in a quiet and reflective setting. It’s suitable for personal projects, introspective thinking, or when group collaboration is impractical.

Group Brainstorming

Group brainstorming involves a team of people coming together to collectively generate ideas. It’s a collaborative approach that benefits from diverse perspectives and is often used in professional settings. Learn more about group brainstorming with our guide to effective group brainstorming strategies .

Analytical Brainstorming

In analytical brainstorming, participants focus on critically evaluating and analyzing existing ideas or problems. The aim is to break down complex issues and generate solutions through systematic analysis.

Quiet Brainstorming

Quiet brainstorming emphasizes a calm and focused environment, ideal for introverted individuals or those who work best in solitude. It allows for deep thinking without the pressure of vocalizing ideas.

Role Play Brainstorming

Participants take on different roles or personas to approach a problem from various perspectives. This technique encourages empathy and creative thinking by viewing the issue through different lenses.

What to Do Before a Brainstorming Session

Preparing for a successful brainstorming session is the first crucial step toward unlocking creativity and innovative solutions. Whether you’re tackling a complex problem, generating fresh ideas, or planning your next project, careful preparation will set the stage for productive collaboration and meaningful outcomes.

Select the right participants

Choose participants carefully based on their expertise, knowledge, and relevance to the topic. Ensure diversity in perspectives if possible, as different viewpoints can lead to richer discussions.

Schedule and communicate

Set a date, time, and location for the session, and communicate this information to all participants well in advance. If it’s conducted online, make sure to send an email invitation with the meeting link prior to the session. Ensure that everyone knows the session’s purpose and what is expected of them.

Provide background information

Share relevant information, data, or research materials with participants ahead of time. This allows participants to come prepared and have a better understanding of the topic or problem.

Prepare materials

Make sure that you have all the necessary materials ready, such as whiteboards, flip charts, markers, sticky notes, or digital tools. This makes it easier to capture and organize ideas during the session.

Assign a facilitator or moderator

If possible, appoint a facilitator or moderator who can guide the session, keep it on track, and enforce the ground rules. This person can also help manage time and encourage participation.

Refreshments and comfort

Depending on the duration of the session, provide refreshments and ensure a comfortable environment. Hungry or uncomfortable participants may not be as engaged or creative.

Backup plan

Have a backup plan in case technical issues arise or if the brainstorming session encounters unexpected challenges. Being prepared for contingencies can prevent disruptions.

Review previous sessions

If this is not the first brainstorming session on the topic, review the outcomes of previous sessions to build on existing ideas and avoid duplication.

How to Run a Productive Brainstorming Session

Define clear objectives.

Clearly articulate the purpose and goals of the brainstorming session. What specific problem are you trying to solve, or what ideas are you seeking to generate? Having a well-defined objective makes sure that the session remains focused.

Set the ground rules

Establish clear ground rules for the brainstorming session . Remind participants of the principles, such as no criticism during idea generation, encouraging wild ideas, and focusing on quantity over quality.

Set a time limit

Determine the duration of the brainstorming session and allocate specific time slots for each stage (ideation, discussion, evaluation, etc.). Adhering to a schedule helps maintain focus and productivity.

Warm-up activity

Consider starting the session with a warm-up activity or icebreaker to help participants get into a creative mindset and build rapport with each other.

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Decide on a brainstorming technique

If you prefer a more structured brainstorming approach, you can select a brainstorming technique such as mind mapping, 5 whys, reverse brainstorming, etc. to guide the idea generation process. You can also use sticky notes to write down ideas first and an affinity diagram to group them later based on themes.

Generate ideas

Encourage participants (whether individual or group) to generate a wide range of ideas without self-censorship. Emphasize that all ideas are welcome, no matter how unconventional they may seem.

Capture ideas

Record and document all ideas as they are generated. Use tools like whiteboards, sticky notes, or digital platforms to display and organize the ideas.

Build on ideas

After initial idea generation, invite participants to expand, refine, or combine each other’s ideas. This collaborative process can lead to innovative solutions.

Organize and prioritize

Categorize and group related ideas to identify common themes or patterns. Discuss and evaluate the ideas based on relevant criteria to prioritize the most promising ones.

You can use a prioritization grid to visually evaluate the ideas based on relevant criteria such as feasibility, impact, and relevance to prioritize the most promising ones.

Select the best ideas

Choose the ideas or solutions that align best with your objectives or criteria. Encourage participants to vote on ideas they prefer and you can select ones with the most votes. These are the concepts you will further develop or implement.

Action planning

Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities, and timelines for implementing or exploring the selected ideas.

Document everything

Keep a comprehensive record of all generated ideas, even those not immediately selected. These can serve as a valuable resource for future brainstorming or reference.

Feedback and iteration

Seek feedback from others if applicable, and be open to refining and iterating on your ideas based on input and new insights.

Brainstorming Methods and Templates

Brainstorming methods are valuable tools for individuals and groups seeking to tap into their collective creativity and explore new possibilities. From structured processes like mind mapping and SWOT analysis to more unconventional methods like the 5 Whys and negative brainstorming, these techniques provide a structured framework to inspire fresh thinking and uncover innovative solutions.

• Mind mapping : Creating a visual representation of ideas by branching out from a central concept with related sub-ideas, helping to uncover connections and associations.
• Brainwriting : Participants silently write down their ideas on paper or digital platforms, passing them to others for further development or evaluation.
• Round Robin Brainstorming : In a group, each member takes turns suggesting one idea until everyone has contributed, often fostering more equitable participation.
• Reverse Brainstorming : Identifying ways to create or exacerbate a problem, which can lead to innovative solutions when these negative scenarios are reversed.
• SCAMPER : An acronym for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to Another Use, Eliminate, and Reverse, used to prompt creative thinking by altering existing ideas.
• Storyboarding : Creating a visual narrative of a process, idea, or concept using drawings, images, or sketches to aid in brainstorming and idea development.

Roles Storming : Participants take on different roles or personas to explore a problem or idea from various perspectives.

SWOT Analysis : Evaluating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to a topic to generate ideas for improvement or growth.

• Random Word Association : Using randomly generated words or images as prompts to trigger creative thinking and idea generation.
• Card Sorting : Organizing ideas or concepts on physical or digital cards, then rearranging and categorizing them to identify patterns or solutions.

Stepladder Technique : Introducing new members to an ongoing brainstorming group one at a time, allowing fresh perspectives and ideas to emerge gradually.

Six Thinking Hats : Participants wear metaphorical “hats” representing different thinking styles (e.g., creative, critical, optimistic) to explore a topic from multiple angles.

• Lotus Blossom Technique : Expanding on a central idea by creating a diagram with multiple interconnected sub-ideas, allowing for in-depth exploration.
• Starbursting : Ask and answer questions (who, what, where, when, why, how) about a central idea to gain insights and generate new ideas.
• Rapid Ideation : Quickly generate a large quantity of ideas without overthinking, with the understanding that evaluation comes later.
• Plus-Delta Method (Delta+) : Assess past experiences by identifying positives (pluses) and areas for improvement (deltas) to learn and make future improvements.
• Fishbone Diagram (Ishikawa) : Visualize and analyze potential causes of a problem using a branching diagram.
• Affinity Diagram : Organize large amounts of data or ideas into related categories or themes to identify patterns and insights.

Common Brainstorming Mistakes to Avoid

Brainstorming is a valuable tool for generating creative ideas and solutions, but it can be less effective if certain common mistakes are not addressed. Here are some common brainstorming mistakes to avoid:

• Criticism and evaluation : One of the cardinal rules of brainstorming is to defer criticism and judgment during the idea generation phase. Critiquing ideas as they are presented can stifle creativity and make participants hesitant to share. Avoid evaluating or criticizing ideas until the brainstorming session is over.
• Dominance : Allowing one or a few individuals to dominate the discussion can lead to an imbalance of ideas. Ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute, and encourage quieter participants to speak up.
• Groupthink : Groupthink occurs when participants conform to a consensus or the opinions of a dominant person within the group. It can limit the diversity of ideas. Encourage participants to think independently and express dissenting viewpoints.
• Lack of structure : While brainstorming should be free-flowing, it still benefits from some structure. Without clear guidelines or a well-defined problem statement, brainstorming sessions can become disorganized and unfocused.
• No follow-up : Brainstorming without follow-up actions can result in a lack of accountability and implementation. Ensure that ideas generated in the session are documented, evaluated, and assigned to responsible parties for further action.
• Overthinking : Overthinking and overanalyzing ideas too early in the process can inhibit creativity. Encourage participants to let their thoughts flow freely without worrying about feasibility or practicality at the beginning.
• Staying in the comfort zone : Participants may stick with familiar or safe ideas instead of exploring new or unconventional ones. Encourage thinking outside the box and exploring diverse perspectives.
• Not mixing techniques : Relying solely on one brainstorming technique for all situations may not yield the best results. Experiment with different techniques and approaches depending on the goals and nature of the problem.
• Skipping warm-up activities : Jumping straight into brainstorming without warm-up activities or icebreakers can hinder creativity. Warm-up exercises can help participants get into a creative mindset.

Brainstorming Tips

Whether you’re working individually or in a group, here are some effective brainstorming tips to help you create a conducive environment for creativity, encourage diverse perspectives, and improve the quality of ideas generated.

• Set clear objectives : Clearly define the problem, challenge, or goal that the brainstorming session aims to address. A well-defined objective provides participants with a clear focus and purpose for generating ideas.
• Create a comfortable environment: Ensure the physical environment is comfortable, with ample seating, appropriate lighting, and minimal distractions. Additionally, create a psychologically safe space where participants feel comfortable sharing their ideas without fear of criticism.
• Defer judgment : Emphasize that during the initial idea generation phase, criticism and evaluation should be avoided. This encourages participants to freely express their thoughts without self-censorship.
• Build upon ideas : Encourage participants to listen actively and build on each other’s ideas. Collaboration and idea development can lead to more refined and creative concepts.
• Use visual aids : Utilize visual tools such as whiteboards, sticky notes, or digital collaboration platforms to help participants organize ideas visually and stimulate creative thinking.
• Silent brainstorming : Incorporate silent brainstorming sessions where participants write down their ideas individually before sharing them with the group. This approach can be particularly helpful for introverted participants.
• Change perspectives : Encourage participants to explore the problem or idea from different angles or viewpoints. This can trigger fresh insights and solutions.
• Mindful listening : Promote active and attentive listening during idea sharing. This means allowing others to express their ideas without interruption and acknowledging their contributions.
• Combine and modify ideas : Explore how combining or modifying ideas can lead to entirely new and innovative solutions. Encourage participants to think about how different concepts can complement each other.
• Rotate facilitators : If conducting multiple brainstorming sessions, consider rotating the role of the facilitator. Different facilitators can bring diverse leadership styles and approaches to each session, leading to varied outcomes.
• Celebrate successes : Recognize and celebrate the achievements resulting from successful brainstorming sessions. Acknowledging contributions and successes fosters a culture of innovation and encourages continued creative thinking.

Effective Tips and Tricks to Running Successful Brainstorming Workshops

You can use these tips to improve your brainstorming workshop’s creativity, engagement, and overall effectiveness.

• Have a diverse facilitation team : Assign a co-facilitator or subject matter expert to help the primary facilitator. This allows for different perspectives and expertise to guide the workshop effectively.
• Use idea generation techniques : Try different structured idea generation techniques beyond standard brainstorming, such as mind mapping, SWOT analysis, or the Six Thinking Hats method, to generate multiple ideas.
• Rotate facilitators : If the workshop is lengthy, consider rotating the facilitator role during different phases. This helps to maintain participants' engagement and provide fresh perspectives.
• Use breakout groups : Split participants into smaller breakout groups to work on specific aspects of the problem or to generate ideas independently. Afterward, bring these groups together to share and analyze what they brainstormed.
• Try cross-pollination : Encourage participants from different teams or departments to collaborate, fostering cross-functional thinking and innovation.
• Use silent brainstorming : Silent brainstorming is a technique where participants write down their ideas independently before sharing. This minimizes groupthink and helps generate a wide range of ideas.
• Try role play and simulation : Include role-playing or simulation exercises relevant to the workshop’s theme to encourage creativity and empathy in problem-solving.
• Use physical props : Introduce physical props, visual aids, or prototypes related to the topic to stimulate ideas and inspire innovative solutions.
• Form expert panels : Invite experts or guest speakers to share insights or provide different perspectives during the workshop, inspiring participants with fresh viewpoints.
• Have storytelling sessions : Hold storytelling sessions where participants share personal or relevant stories related to the topic. This can evoke emotions and lead to more creative thinking.
• Use gaming elements : Include gamification elements, such as team challenges or problem-solving games, to make the workshop more engaging and competitive. Here’s how to make virtual brainstorming fun and effective .
• Have feedback loops : Build in periodic feedback loops where participants can reflect on the workshop’s progress and suggest adjustments to the process.
• Use visual documentation : Use visual recording techniques (e.g. graphic facilitation or sketchnoting) to visually capture the workshop’s key points and ideas, creating a dynamic record.
• End with a creative exercise : Wrap up the workshop with a creative exercise or activity that helps participants to unwind and reflect on the day’s accomplishments, reinforcing the creative mindset.

In this guide, we have covered everything about brainstorming, from what it is to how to do it well. We explored methods, gave tips, and pointed out common mistakes to avoid. Whether you’re a business leader, team member, or just interested in brainstorming, this guide has given you the knowledge and tools to succeed.

Remember, brainstorming is not just a process; it’s a way of thinking that encourages open discussion and creative problem-solving. By using the principles and practices mentioned here, you can tap into the full potential of brainstorming to generate creative ideas and find innovative solutions for your personal and professional challenges.

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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.

Brainstorming: 24 Techniques for Effective Brainstorming [+ How-to]

Home » Brainstorming   | 🕑 

Gust de Backer

November 11, 2023.

Every company does brainstorming , but some companies are better at it than others….

So why is that?

I’m going to show you:

• What different brainstorming techniques there are.
• How to prioritize brainstorm ideas.
• And how to be creative during your brainstorming sessions.

Let’s start..

Table of Contents

What is brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a technique for working with a group to find creative ideas for a specific problem.

In short, brainstorming is a method to creatively solve a problem . In this, it is important that everyone has a good understanding of what the problem is in order for people to brainstorm accurate solutions.

Do’s and don’ts

Why is brainstorming important.

Creative thinking shows us that there are multiple solutions to a problem and multiple ways to look at a problem.

People are often stuck in their ways of thinking because of the patterns they see, which is extremely bad for innovation.

Creative thinking helps to challenge our assumptions, discover new things, see from new perspectives and keep us mentally sharp.

24 brainstorming techniques

Brainstorming is not about the quality, but about the quantity of ideas.

You’re going to come up with as many ideas for a problem as possible, possibly with a group of people, for a set amount of time.

There are 24 methods you can use to make brainstorming more effective:

1. Brainwriting / Purge

Each member of the group has a certain amount of time to write down all his/her ideas. This has two main advantages:

• Introverts get a chance to share their ideas.
• It ensures that no one or two ideas dominate the brainstorming.

The result is a wide range of ideas that would not have surfaced if a few ideas had been discussed from the beginning.

2. The 5 Why’s Analysis

The 5 why’s analysis has become popular because Toyota used it as a standard process for root-cause analysis.

By asking “why?” 5 times in response to an answer you will get to the root of the problem or solution which allows for a broader perspective and better dialogue.

3. Starbursting

The starbursting technique pushes you to think about the who, what, where, when, why and how of an idea. Place your idea or problem in the center of the star diagram and at the ends put the questions:

4. Mind mapping

You place your problem or idea in the center of the board and start adding to it with new parts:

This also directly ensures that there is structure and that everything is broken down into certain topics.

5. Rolestorming

Try to imagine yourself as another person, it may be someone familiar or someone you know from your immediate environment.

If you can imagine yourself to be another person, ask yourself again how that would solve your problem?

6. Gap filling

See what situation you are in now (ready state) and see where you want to go (target state). Then ask yourself the question, how do we go from the ready state to the target state? What is needed for that?

The gap filling way is a good brainstorming technique to get from A to B.

7. Brain-netting

Using online software, write down ideas that belong to a particular problem or issue.

This is especially useful in preparation for a brainstorm so that people have enough time in advance to think about possible solutions without a lot of email traffic.

8. Round robin brainstorming

In round robin brainstorming, there is one person responsible for bringing up a question or several questions…

In this process, everyone must answer one at a time. In doing so, no feedback may be given or a second idea shared until everyone has shared his or her idea.

This brainstorming technique is ideal for medium to large teams where there are introverted team members or where there is a poor balance of creative input.

Tip : If someone shares an idea that has already been, give that person time to come up with a new idea.

9. Rapid ideation

Parkinson’s law shows us that we spend as much time on our work as we have available

Putting a time limit on brainstorming can increase the quality of the brainstorm. This allows team managers to maximize productivity and results.

Especially for teams with little time, who have little desire for meetings, or who are easily distracted, Rapid Ideation can be a good brainstorming technique.

10. Reverse brainstorming

Brainstorming sessions are often aimed at solving a problem. Reverse brainstorming sessions are aimed at causing problems.

Instead of asking “how can we solve this problem?” you ask “how can we make [problem] happen? From the answers you get, you can start to find solutions to possible problems that a concept or idea might pose.

Thinking of problems first ensures that the team then has a better perspective in solving the problems.

11. Stepladder brainstorming

In stepladder brainstorming, a problem is presented to the group where all but one or two people must leave the room….

The one or two people must then share their ideas after which a third person may enter the room to share his or her ideas, then a fourth, then a fifth and that until everyone has been.

The advantage to this brainstorming technique is that it does not involve thinking as a group, but allows everyone to share their own individual unique ideas without being influenced by the group.

12. SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is not directly a brainstorming technique, but it can provide additional perspective during brainstorming.

SWOT stands for:

• Strengths : what are the strengths?
• Weaknesses : what are the weaknesses?
• Opportunities : where do the opportunities lie?
• Threats : what are the threats?

The SWOT analysis can also be the basis of brainstorming on how to assess a concept.

13. Eidetic image method

In the Eidetic image method, the group starts by closing their eyes to illustrate the current product in their minds…

Then they can start discussing what it looks like, close their eyes again and start visualizing what an improved version would look like, what features it would contain, what color it is, how big it is, etc.

This brainstorming technique works best when improving an existing product or solution.

14. Change of scenery

If you are constantly brainstorming with the same people in the same space, it can feel like repetition, which is obviously not good for inspiration.

By regularly changing the scenery or space and perhaps also the team composition, it is possible to tap into new sources of inspiration.

15. Drivers analysis

In the drivers analysis brainstorming technique, you focus on the causes of a problem.

Ask yourself or your team of brainstormers, “What causes [problem]?” and then “What causes [answer previous question]?

The deeper you can go the more likely you are to find the root of a problem.

16. Collaborative brainwriting

With this method of brainstorming, there is no need to dedicate a specific session to it….

For example, a facilitator hangs up a large sheet in an office with a problem-statement and possibly already some brainstorming ideas and everyone can contribute ideas in his or her own time.

This way everyone can contribute anonymously, just make sure it is clear to everyone when the deadline is to contribute.

17.  SCAMPER

The SCAMPER brainstorming technique helps brainstormers look at a problem from multiple perspectives, SCAMPER is an acronym that stands for:

• Substitute : evaluate what would happen if you swapped one facet or solution for another.
• Combine : evaluate what would happen if you combined one facet or solution with another.
• Adapt : assess what would happen if you placed one idea or solution in a different context.
• Modify : think about how you could change an idea or solution to make even more impact.
• Put to another use : think about how you could still use your idea in other ways.
• Eliminate : assess what can be removed from your idea or solution to make it simpler.
• Reverse effective : finally, you can look at how you can reorganize an idea to make it more effective.

During a brainstorm, it is helpful to use a SCAMPER template:

18. The idea napkin

The Idea Napkin brainstorming technique allows a broad topic to be broken down into tangible solutions.

Each brainstormer has an ‘Idea Napkin’, on which they write one idea and an elevator pitch of that idea. They also write down who they are trying to solve a problem for and what problem they are solving.

When everything is written down, the idea is for everyone to present their ‘Idea Napkin’ to the others, then all ideas are prioritized on an impact and effort matrix to determine which ideas are worthwhile:

19. 6 thinking hats

In the 6 thinking hats brainstorming technique, you need at least 6 people who are going to wear thinking hats. These different ‘thinking hats’ are going to allow them to look at a problem or idea from one specific angle.

There are 6 different thinking hats:

• Blue hat (Conductor’s hat) : manage the decision process, ask for summaries and come to conclusions.
• Green hat (Creative hat) : the green hat comes up with creative ideas and thinks in terms of possibilities.
• Red hat (Hat for the heart) : go out of your feeling and instinct, you don’t necessarily have to think logically.
• Yellow hat (Optimist’s hat) : with the yellow hat you look at problems with an optimistic view, you see advantages in everything.
• Black hat (Judge’s hat) : the black hat is very critical and sees problems in everything, it is important to see risks and dangers quickly.
• White hat (Fact hat) : neutral and objective, shares lots of statistics and facts.
• + Royal hat (Owner hat) : guides the brainstorm, is looking for the balance between subjectivity and objectivity.

This brainstorming technique is useful to get an overall picture of one or more ideas.

20. ‘What if’ brainstorming

The ‘What if’ brainstorming technique is a good technique to bring out all possible solutions to a problem.

By asking questions like “What if this problem occurred in the 1800s?” or “What if our president would have to solve this issue?”.

By approaching it this way you can look at the problem and the solutions from different angles.

21. Random word picker

You pick a random word or animal and start brainstorming about how the word or the characteristics of the animal can help you solve your problem.

This brainstorming technique is really about getting new ideas in a creative way.

22. Storyboarding

Storyboarding is a brainstorming technique where you start sketching the problem and possible solutions. In doing so, you are going to visualize different parts of the problem and the solution which works extremely well for physical challenges.

23. Wishing

You start by wishing for something ‘I wish our company would make 10 million euros in profit’ and then you start thinking about how you can achieve this.

Try to set really ambitious goals, this ensures that you start thinking bigger and you will encounter other problems and solutions.

24. Crazy eights

In the crazy eights brainstorming technique, each participant is given a template with 8 empty boxes. The timer is set for 8 minutes during which time each participant must fill the boxes with 8 sketches of possible ideas. Repeat this process so that they can build on each other’s ideas.

How do you prioritize ideas?

There are several ways to prioritize ideas:

1. Dotmocracy

To prioritize ideas, it is possible to give all participants X number of stickers that they can divide on the ideas they have.

You can be creative with this by handing out different colored stickers to also vote on ideas that absolutely should not be implemented or perhaps an order in the ideas based on the colors.

2. How Now Wow

The How Now Wow technique is more about categorizing ideas based on how unique they are and how easy they are to accomplish.

After a team has written down ideas, they can be prioritized in the How Now Wow matrix:

• How ideas : original but difficult to implement.
• Now ideas : unoriginal and easy to execute.
• Wow ideas : unique ideas that are easy to execute.

Obviously, you want to have as many “Wow” ideas as possible because they are unique from the competition.

3. Impact-Effort Matrix

The impact-effort matrix allows you to determine the ratio of effort to results and then prioritize the best ideas:

You can write down where an idea belongs on the matrix or you can give points to ideas and use those points to determine where an idea will be placed.

4. I.C.E. / P.I.E.

ICE and PIE are well-known prioritization frameworks; they are acronyms that stand for…

• Impact : what is the potential impact if the idea works?
• Confidence : how confident are we that the idea will work?
• Ease : how easy is it to set up this idea?
• Potential : how potential is this solution to our problem?
• Importance : how important do we think solving this problem is?
• Ease : how easy is it to implement this solution?

From these scores you can get an average, it is also possible to add a multiplier to certain parts of ICE or PIE that you think are important.

5. Feasibility, Desirability and Viability Scorecard

These 3 pillars are topics on which you can rank an idea:

• Feasibility : is it actually achievable?
• Desirability : how much would we like this solution?
• Viability : how confident are we that this will work?

This is very similar to the ICE / PIE framework, but the questioning changes a little bit.

MoSCoW is a very well known prioritization framework, it is widely used to set up requirements for a particular thing and prioritize them.

MoSCoW is an acronym that stands for:

• Must have : What really needs to be in it?
• Should have : what should actually be included?
• Could have : nice to have, is nice to add, but has no priority.
• Would have / Will not have : we’re not going to do anything with this for now.

7. Multi-criteria Decision Making

In multi-criteria decision making, you write down what you think is important about a solution and prioritize different ideas based on that:

8. The Value Matrix

Also called the Value and Effort matrix, this involves weighing the costs against the benefits:

How to brainstorm effectively?

How do you set up the brainstorm effectively?

The better the problem statement is the better the brainstorming will go. It is easier to focus ideas on a situation when that situation is enormously clear.

By just starting to do anything you will probably not find the desired solution. Make sure you have a clear agenda with times when you want to do something exactly. It is also important to make clear in advance what the desired end result of the brainstorm is.

Each brainstorming technique fits a different type of situation, evaluate which brainstorming techniques exist and choose some to come up with solutions from multiple angles.

By just talking and thinking about ideas a lot will be lost, document the ideas so they can be looked back at later.

Not every idea has the same potential to be used, therefore it is important to choose which ideas can be taken up, which ones will be interesting at a later date and which ones can be thrown in the garbage can.

Make sure you have time available in the coming period to start working on good ideas.

What is creativity in brainstorming?

Creativity is the ability to think outside of traditional ways and come up with new, original ideas, methods or objects.

It is often thought that the left part of the brain is for creativity and that the right part of the brain contains analytical ability:

In creativity, it is about the networks between the different parts in the brain. There are 3 types of networks that are important here:

• The executive attention network : allows you to maintain your attention and focus.
• The imagination network : allows you to daydream or imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes.
• The salience network : allows you to identify certain things based on old information stored in your brain.

A video that goes into some detail here:

What types of creative thinking are there?

At work, there are several types of creative thinking you may encounter:

• Divergent Thinking : a brainstorming session where you write down as many solutions as you can think of.
• Convergent Thinking : gathering facts and finding the most used and complete solution to the problem.
• Inspirational Thinking : focus on the best-case scenario to find a new solution to a problem.
• Lateral Thinking : reorganize information to come up with creative solutions to move from the ready state to the target state.
• Aesthetic Thinking : solutions that we actually like, with a focus on structure, knowledge, composition, color and shape.

What is critical thinking in brainstorming?

A critical thinker does not simply assume ideas and assumptions, but will always be looking for more ideas, arguments and insights to get the full picture.

Critical thinkers will identify, analyze and solve problems in a systematic way rather than thinking from intuition or instinct.

A critical thinker is able to:

• Make the connection between ideas and in them determine how important and relevant arguments and ideas are.
• Recognize, build and evaluate arguments.
• Find errors and inconsistencies in reasoning.
• To approach problems in a consistent and systematic way.
• Reflect on his own assumptions, beliefs and values.

Discover your creativity

You are now armed with knowledge to set up the best creative brainstorming sessions….

I’m curious, what do you think is the best brainstorming technique?

Let me know in a comment.

P.S. Want more help? Send an email to [email protected]

Frequently asked questions about brainstorming

A design sprint is a limited-time process that uses design thinking. The goal is to find an answer to a critical business question or a specific problem within that limited timeframe.

During a design sprint, design thinking is used.

To lead a brainstorm session it is important that you understand the problem, that you set a clear agenda, that you use the right brainstorm techniques and that you stimulate new ideas and don’t criticize ‘bad’ ideas.

First come up with a clear problem-statement, then choose matching brainstorm techniques, plan a clear agenda and at the end prioritize the outcomes of the brainstorm session.

There should be a purpose for the brainstorm, it should be with others, you should stimulate each other’s ideas, there should be no criticism of ideas, and make sure there is enough creativity.

Before brainstorming, the right questions should be asked, this can be done using Starbursting. Starbursting asks questions such as: how, what, where, when, who and why.

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Seven steps to better brainstorming

Companies run on good ideas. From R&D groups seeking pipelines of innovative new products to ops teams probing for time-saving process improvements to CEOs searching for that next growth opportunity—all senior managers want to generate better and more creative ideas consistently in the teams they form, participate in, and manage.

Yet all senior managers, at some point, experience the pain of pursuing new ideas by way of traditional brainstorming sessions—still the most common method of using groups to generate ideas at companies around the world. The scene is familiar: a group of people, often chosen largely for political reasons, begins by listening passively as a moderator (often an outsider who knows little about your business) urges you to “Get creative!” and “Think outside the box!” and cheerfully reminds you that “There are no bad ideas!”

The result? Some attendees remain stone-faced throughout the day, others contribute sporadically, and a few loudly dominate the session with their pet ideas. Ideas pop up randomly—some intriguing, many preposterous—but because the session has no structure, little momentum builds around any of them. At session’s end, the group trundles off with a hazy idea of what, if anything, will happen next. “Now we can get back to real work,” some whisper.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We’ve led or observed 200 projects over the past decade at more than 150 companies in industries ranging from retailing and education to banking and communications. That experience has helped us develop a practical approach that captures the energy typically wasted in a traditional brainstorming session and steers it in a more productive direction. The trick is to leverage the way people actually think and work in creative problem-solving situations.

We call our approach “brainsteering,” and while it requires more preparation than traditional brainstorming, the results are worthwhile: better ideas in business situations as diverse as inventing new products and services, attracting new customers, designing more efficient business processes, or reducing costs, among others. The next time you assign one of your people to lead an idea generation effort—or decide to lead one yourself—you can significantly improve the odds of success by following the seven steps below.

1. Know your organization’s decision-making criteria

One reason good ideas hatched in corporate brainstorming sessions  often go nowhere is that they are beyond the scope of what the organization would ever be willing to consider. “Think outside the box!” is an unhelpful exhortation if external circumstances or company policies create boxes that the organization truly must live within.

Managers hoping to spark creative thinking in their teams should therefore start by understanding (and in some cases shaping) the real criteria the company will use to make decisions about the resulting ideas. Are there any absolute restrictions or limitations, for example? A bank we know wasted a full day’s worth of brainstorming because the session’s best ideas all required changing IT systems. Yet senior management—unbeknownst to the workshop planners—had recently “locked down” the IT agenda for the next 18 months.

Likewise, what constitutes an acceptable idea? At a different, smarter bank, workshop planners collaborated with senior managers on a highly specific (and therefore highly valuable) definition tailored to meet immediate needs. Good ideas would require no more than $5,000 per branch in investment and would generate incremental profits quickly. Further, while three categories of ideas—new products, new sales approaches, and pricing changes—were welcome, senior management would balk at ideas that required new regulatory approvals. The result was a far more productive session delivering exactly what the company wanted: a fistful of ideas, in all three target categories, that were practical, affordable, and profitable within one fiscal year.

2. Ask the right questions

Decades of academic research shows that traditional, loosely structured brainstorming techniques (“Go for quantity—the greater the number of ideas, the greater the likelihood of winners!”) are inferior to approaches that provide more structure. 1 1. For two particularly useful academic studies on the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of traditional brainstorming, see Paul A. Mongeau, The Brainstorming Myth , Annual Meeting of the Western States Communication Association, Albuquerque, New Mexico, February 15, 1993; and Frederic M. Jablin and David R. Seibold, “Implications for problem solving groups of empirical research on ‘brainstorming’: A critical review of the literature,” Southern Speech Communication Journal , 1978, Volume 43, Number 4, pp. 327–56. The best way we’ve found to provide it is to use questions as the platform for idea generation.

In practice, this means building your workshop around a series of “right questions” that your team will explore in small groups during a series of idea generation sessions (more about these later). The trick is to identify questions with two characteristics. First, they should force your participants to take a new and unfamiliar perspective. Why? Because whenever you look for new ways to attack an old problem—whether it’s lowering your company’s operating costs or buying your spouse a birthday gift—you naturally gravitate toward thinking patterns and ideas that worked in the past. Research shows that, over time, you’ll come up with fewer good ideas, despite increased effort. Changing your participants’ perspective will shake up their thinking. (For more on how to do this, see “ Sparking creativity in teams: An executive’s guide .”) The second characteristic of a right question is that it limits the conceptual space your team will explore, without being so restrictive that it forces particular answers or outcomes.

It’s easier to show such questions in practice than to describe them in theory. A consumer electronics company looking to develop new products might start with questions such as “What’s the biggest avoidable hassle our customers endure?” and “Who uses our product in ways we never expected?” By contrast, a health insurance provider looking to cut costs might ask, “What complexity do we plan for daily that, if eliminated, would change the way we operate?” and “In which areas is the efficiency of a given department ‘trapped’ by outdated restrictions placed on it by company policies?” 2 2. For a full discussion about identifying and using a portfolio of such right questions in the generation of personal and institutional ideas, see Brainsteering , the book from which this article is adapted, as well as Patricia Gorman Clifford, Kevin P. Coyne, and Renée Dye, “Breakthrough thinking from inside the box,” Harvard Business Review , December 2007, Volume 85, Number 12, pp. 70–78.

In our experience, it’s best to come up with 15 to 20 such questions for a typical workshop attended by about 20 people. Choose the questions carefully, as they will form the heart of your workshop—your participants will be discussing them intensively in small subgroups during a series of sessions.

3. Choose the right people

The rule here is simple: pick people who can answer the questions you’re asking. As obvious as this sounds, it’s not what happens in many traditional brainstorming sessions, where participants are often chosen with less regard for their specific knowledge than for their prominence on the org chart.

Instead, choose participants with firsthand, “in the trenches” knowledge, as a catalog retailer client of ours did for a brainsteering workshop on improving bad-debt collections. (The company had extended credit directly to some customers). During the workshop, when participants were discussing the question “What’s changed in our operating environment since we last redesigned our processes?” a frontline collections manager remarked, “Well, death has become the new bankruptcy.”

A few people laughed knowingly, but the senior managers in the room were perplexed. On further discussion, the story became clear. In years past, some customers who fell behind on their payments would falsely claim bankruptcy when speaking with a collections rep, figuring that the company wouldn’t pursue the matter because of the legal headaches involved. More recently, a better gambit had emerged: unscrupulous borrowers instructed household members to tell the agent they had died—a tactic that halted collections efforts quickly, since reps were uncomfortable pressing the issue.

While this certainly wasn’t the largest problem the collectors faced, the line manager’s presence in the workshop had uncovered an opportunity. A different line manager in the workshop proposed what became the solution: instructing the reps to sensitively, but firmly, question the recipient of the call for more specific information if the rep suspected a ruse. Dishonest borrowers would invariably hang up if asked to identify themselves or to provide other basic information, and the collections efforts could continue.

4. Divide and conquer

To ensure fruitful discussions like the one the catalog retailer generated, don’t have your participants hold one continuous, rambling discussion among the entire group for several hours. Instead, have them conduct multiple, discrete, highly focused idea generation sessions among subgroups of three to five people—no fewer, no more. Each subgroup should focus on a single question for a full 30 minutes. Why three to five people? The social norm in groups of this size is to speak up, whereas the norm in a larger group is to stay quiet.

When you assign people to subgroups, it’s important to isolate “idea crushers” in their own subgroup. These people are otherwise suitable for the workshop but, intentionally or not, prevent others from suggesting good ideas. They come in three varieties: bosses, “big mouths,” and subject matter experts.

The boss’s presence, which often makes people hesitant to express unproven ideas, is particularly damaging if participants span multiple organizational levels. (“Speak up in front of my boss’s boss? No, thanks!”) Big mouths take up air time, intimidate the less confident, and give everyone else an excuse to be lazy. Subject matter experts can squelch new ideas because everyone defers to their presumed superior wisdom, even if they are biased or have incomplete knowledge of the issue at hand.

By quarantining the idea crushers—and violating the old brainstorming adage that a melting pot of personalities is ideal—you’ll free the other subgroups to think more creatively. Your idea crushers will still be productive; after all, they won’t stop each other from speaking up.

Finally, take the 15 to 20 questions you prepared earlier and divide them among the subgroups—about 5 questions each, since it’s unproductive and too time consuming to have all subgroups answer every question. Whenever possible, assign a specific question to the subgroup you consider best equipped to handle it.

5. On your mark, get set, go!

After your participants arrive, but before the division into subgroups, orient them so that your expectations about what they will—and won’t—accomplish are clear. Remember, your team is accustomed to traditional brainstorming, where the flow of ideas is fast, furious, and ultimately shallow.

Today, however, each subgroup will thoughtfully consider and discuss a single question for a half hour. No other idea from any source—no matter how good—should be mentioned during a subgroup’s individual session. Tell participants that if anyone thinks of a “silver bullet” solution that’s outside the scope of discussion, they should write it down and share it later.

Prepare your participants for the likelihood that when a subgroup attacks a question, it might generate only two or three worthy ideas. Knowing that probability in advance will prevent participants from becoming discouraged as they build up the creative muscles necessary to think in this new way. The going can feel slow at first, so reassure participants that by the end of the day, after all the subgroups have met several times, there will be no shortage of good ideas.

Also, whenever possible, share “signpost examples” before the start of each session—real questions previous groups used, along with success stories, to motivate participants and show them how a question-based approach can help.

One last warning: no matter how clever your participants, no matter how insightful your questions, the first five minutes of any subgroup’s brainsteering session may feel like typical brainstorming as people test their pet ideas or rattle off superficial new ones. But participants should persevere. Better thinking soon emerges as the subgroups try to improve shallow ideas while sticking to the assigned questions.

6. Wrap it up

By day’s end, a typical subgroup has produced perhaps 15 interesting ideas for further exploration. You’ve been running multiple subgroups simultaneously, so your 20-person team has collectively generated up to 60 ideas. What now?

One thing not to do is have the full group choose the best ideas from the pile, as is common in traditional brainstorming. In our experience, your attendees won’t always have an executive-level understanding of the criteria and considerations that must go into prioritizing ideas for actual investment. The experience of picking winners can also be demotivating, particularly if the real decision makers overrule the group’s favorite choices later.

Instead, have each subgroup privately narrow its own list of ideas to a top few and then share all the leading ideas with the full group to motivate and inspire participants. But the full group shouldn’t pick a winner. Rather, close the workshop on a high note that participants won’t expect if they’re veterans of traditional brainstorming: describe to them exactly what steps will be taken to choose the winning ideas and how they will learn about the final decisions.

7. Follow up quickly

Decisions and other follow-up activities should be quick and thorough. Of course, we’re not suggesting that uninformed or insufficiently researched conclusions should be reached about ideas dreamed up only hours earlier. But the odds that concrete action will result from an idea generation exercise tend to decline quickly as time passes and momentum fades.

The president, provost, and department heads of a US university, for example, announced before a brainsteering workshop that a full staff meeting would be held the morning after it to discuss the various cost-savings ideas it had generated. At the meeting, the senior leaders sorted ideas into four buckets: move immediately to implementation planning, decide today to implement at the closest appropriate time (say, the beginning of the next academic year), assign a group to research the idea further, or reject right away. This process went smoothly because the team that ran the idea generation workshop had done the work up front to understand the criteria senior leaders would use to judge its work. The university began moving ahead on more than a dozen ideas that would ultimately save millions of dollars.

To close the loop with participants, the university made sure to communicate the results of the decisions quickly to everyone involved, even when an idea was rejected. While it might seem demoralizing to share bad news with a team, we find that doing so actually has the opposite effect. Participants are often desperate for feedback and eager for indications that they have at least been heard. By respectfully explaining why certain ideas were rejected, you can help team members produce better ideas next time. In our experience, they will participate next time, often more eagerly than ever.

Traditional brainstorming is fast, furious, and ultimately shallow. By scrapping these traditional techniques for a more focused, question-based approach, senior managers can consistently coax better ideas from their teams.

Kevin Coyne and Shawn Coyne, both alumni of McKinsey’s Atlanta office, are cofounders and managing directors of the Coyne Partnership, a boutique strategy consulting firm. This article is adapted from their book, Brainsteering: A Better Approach to Breakthrough Ideas (HarperCollins, March 2011).

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All teams and organizations encounter challenges as they grow. There are problems that might occur for teams when it comes to miscommunication or resolving business-critical issues . You may face challenges around growth , design , user engagement, and even team culture and happiness. In short, problem-solving techniques should be part of every team’s skillset.

Problem-solving methods are primarily designed to help a group or team through a process of first identifying problems and challenges , ideating possible solutions , and then evaluating the most suitable .

Finding effective solutions to complex problems isn’t easy, but by using the right process and techniques, you can help your team be more efficient in the process.

So how do you develop strategies that are engaging, and empower your team to solve problems effectively?

In this blog post, we share a series of problem-solving tools you can use in your next workshop or team meeting. You’ll also find some tips for facilitating the process and how to enable others to solve complex problems.

Let’s get started! 

How do you identify problems?

How do you identify the right solution.

• Tips for more effective problem-solving

Complete problem-solving methods

• Problem-solving techniques to identify and analyze problems
• Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions

Problem-solving warm-up activities

Closing activities for a problem-solving process.

Before you can move towards finding the right solution for a given problem, you first need to identify and define the problem you wish to solve. 

Here, you want to clearly articulate what the problem is and allow your group to do the same. Remember that everyone in a group is likely to have differing perspectives and alignment is necessary in order to help the group move forward. 

Identifying a problem accurately also requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner. It can be scary for people to stand up and contribute, especially if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. Be sure to try and create a psychologically safe space for these kinds of discussions.

Remember that problem analysis and further discussion are also important. Not taking the time to fully analyze and discuss a challenge can result in the development of solutions that are not fit for purpose or do not address the underlying issue.

Successfully identifying and then analyzing a problem means facilitating a group through activities designed to help them clearly and honestly articulate their thoughts and produce usable insight.

With this data, you might then produce a problem statement that clearly describes the problem you wish to be addressed and also state the goal of any process you undertake to tackle this issue.  

Finding solutions is the end goal of any process. Complex organizational challenges can only be solved with an appropriate solution but discovering them requires using the right problem-solving tool.

After you’ve explored a problem and discussed ideas, you need to help a team discuss and choose the right solution. Consensus tools and methods such as those below help a group explore possible solutions before then voting for the best. They’re a great way to tap into the collective intelligence of the group for great results!

Remember that the process is often iterative. Great problem solvers often roadtest a viable solution in a measured way to see what works too. While you might not get the right solution on your first try, the methods below help teams land on the most likely to succeed solution while also holding space for improvement.

Every effective problem solving process begins with an agenda . A well-structured workshop is one of the best methods for successfully guiding a group from exploring a problem to implementing a solution.

In SessionLab, it’s easy to go from an idea to a complete agenda . Start by dragging and dropping your core problem solving activities into place . Add timings, breaks and necessary materials before sharing your agenda with your colleagues.

The resulting agenda will be your guide to an effective and productive problem solving session that will also help you stay organized on the day!

Tips for more effective problem solving

Problem-solving activities are only one part of the puzzle. While a great method can help unlock your team’s ability to solve problems, without a thoughtful approach and strong facilitation the solutions may not be fit for purpose.

Let’s take a look at some problem-solving tips you can apply to any process to help it be a success!

Clearly define the problem

Jumping straight to solutions can be tempting, though without first clearly articulating a problem, the solution might not be the right one. Many of the problem-solving activities below include sections where the problem is explored and clearly defined before moving on.

This is a vital part of the problem-solving process and taking the time to fully define an issue can save time and effort later. A clear definition helps identify irrelevant information and it also ensures that your team sets off on the right track.

Don’t jump to conclusions

It’s easy for groups to exhibit cognitive bias or have preconceived ideas about both problems and potential solutions. Be sure to back up any problem statements or potential solutions with facts, research, and adequate forethought.

The best techniques ask participants to be methodical and challenge preconceived notions. Make sure you give the group enough time and space to collect relevant information and consider the problem in a new way. By approaching the process with a clear, rational mindset, you’ll often find that better solutions are more forthcoming.  

Try different approaches  

Problems come in all shapes and sizes and so too should the methods you use to solve them. If you find that one approach isn’t yielding results and your team isn’t finding different solutions, try mixing it up. You’ll be surprised at how using a new creative activity can unblock your team and generate great solutions.

Don’t take it personally 

Depending on the nature of your team or organizational problems, it’s easy for conversations to get heated. While it’s good for participants to be engaged in the discussions, ensure that emotions don’t run too high and that blame isn’t thrown around while finding solutions.

You’re all in it together, and even if your team or area is seeing problems, that isn’t necessarily a disparagement of you personally. Using facilitation skills to manage group dynamics is one effective method of helping conversations be more constructive.

Get the right people in the room

Your problem-solving method is often only as effective as the group using it. Getting the right people on the job and managing the number of people present is important too!

If the group is too small, you may not get enough different perspectives to effectively solve a problem. If the group is too large, you can go round and round during the ideation stages.

Creating the right group makeup is also important in ensuring you have the necessary expertise and skillset to both identify and follow up on potential solutions. Carefully consider who to include at each stage to help ensure your problem-solving method is followed and positioned for success.

Document everything

The best solutions can take refinement, iteration, and reflection to come out. Get into a habit of documenting your process in order to keep all the learnings from the session and to allow ideas to mature and develop. Many of the methods below involve the creation of documents or shared resources. Be sure to keep and share these so everyone can benefit from the work done!

Bring a facilitator 

Facilitation is all about making group processes easier. With a subject as potentially emotive and important as problem-solving, having an impartial third party in the form of a facilitator can make all the difference in finding great solutions and keeping the process moving. Consider bringing a facilitator to your problem-solving session to get better results and generate meaningful solutions!

Develop your problem-solving skills

It takes time and practice to be an effective problem solver. While some roles or participants might more naturally gravitate towards problem-solving, it can take development and planning to help everyone create better solutions.

You might develop a training program, run a problem-solving workshop or simply ask your team to practice using the techniques below. Check out our post on problem-solving skills to see how you and your group can develop the right mental process and be more resilient to issues too!

Design a great agenda

Workshops are a great format for solving problems. With the right approach, you can focus a group and help them find the solutions to their own problems. But designing a process can be time-consuming and finding the right activities can be difficult.

Check out our workshop planning guide to level-up your agenda design and start running more effective workshops. Need inspiration? Check out templates designed by expert facilitators to help you kickstart your process!

In this section, we’ll look at in-depth problem-solving methods that provide a complete end-to-end process for developing effective solutions. These will help guide your team from the discovery and definition of a problem through to delivering the right solution.

If you’re looking for an all-encompassing method or problem-solving model, these processes are a great place to start. They’ll ask your team to challenge preconceived ideas and adopt a mindset for solving problems more effectively.

• Six Thinking Hats
• Lightning Decision Jam
• Problem Definition Process
• Discovery & Action Dialogue

Design Sprint 2.0

• Open Space Technology

1. Six Thinking Hats

Individual approaches to solving a problem can be very different based on what team or role an individual holds. It can be easy for existing biases or perspectives to find their way into the mix, or for internal politics to direct a conversation.

Six Thinking Hats is a classic method for identifying the problems that need to be solved and enables your team to consider them from different angles, whether that is by focusing on facts and data, creative solutions, or by considering why a particular solution might not work.

Like all problem-solving frameworks, Six Thinking Hats is effective at helping teams remove roadblocks from a conversation or discussion and come to terms with all the aspects necessary to solve complex problems.

2. Lightning Decision Jam

Featured courtesy of Jonathan Courtney of AJ&Smart Berlin, Lightning Decision Jam is one of those strategies that should be in every facilitation toolbox. Exploring problems and finding solutions is often creative in nature, though as with any creative process, there is the potential to lose focus and get lost.

Unstructured discussions might get you there in the end, but it’s much more effective to use a method that creates a clear process and team focus.

In Lightning Decision Jam, participants are invited to begin by writing challenges, concerns, or mistakes on post-its without discussing them before then being invited by the moderator to present them to the group.

From there, the team vote on which problems to solve and are guided through steps that will allow them to reframe those problems, create solutions and then decide what to execute on. 

By deciding the problems that need to be solved as a team before moving on, this group process is great for ensuring the whole team is aligned and can take ownership over the next stages. 

Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)   #action   #decision making   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #innovation   #design   #remote-friendly   The problem with anything that requires creative thinking is that it’s easy to get lost—lose focus and fall into the trap of having useless, open-ended, unstructured discussions. Here’s the most effective solution I’ve found: Replace all open, unstructured discussion with a clear process. What to use this exercise for: Anything which requires a group of people to make decisions, solve problems or discuss challenges. It’s always good to frame an LDJ session with a broad topic, here are some examples: The conversion flow of our checkout Our internal design process How we organise events Keeping up with our competition Improving sales flow

3. Problem Definition Process

While problems can be complex, the problem-solving methods you use to identify and solve those problems can often be simple in design. 

By taking the time to truly identify and define a problem before asking the group to reframe the challenge as an opportunity, this method is a great way to enable change.

Begin by identifying a focus question and exploring the ways in which it manifests before splitting into five teams who will each consider the problem using a different method: escape, reversal, exaggeration, distortion or wishful. Teams develop a problem objective and create ideas in line with their method before then feeding them back to the group.

This method is great for enabling in-depth discussions while also creating space for finding creative solutions too!

Problem Definition   #problem solving   #idea generation   #creativity   #online   #remote-friendly   A problem solving technique to define a problem, challenge or opportunity and to generate ideas.

4. The 5 Whys 

Sometimes, a group needs to go further with their strategies and analyze the root cause at the heart of organizational issues. An RCA or root cause analysis is the process of identifying what is at the heart of business problems or recurring challenges. 

The 5 Whys is a simple and effective method of helping a group go find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct analysis that will deliver results. 

By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to truly discover the cause of an issue.

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.

5. World Cafe

World Cafe is a simple but powerful facilitation technique to help bigger groups to focus their energy and attention on solving complex problems.

World Cafe enables this approach by creating a relaxed atmosphere where participants are able to self-organize and explore topics relevant and important to them which are themed around a central problem-solving purpose. Create the right atmosphere by modeling your space after a cafe and after guiding the group through the method, let them take the lead!

Making problem-solving a part of your organization’s culture in the long term can be a difficult undertaking. More approachable formats like World Cafe can be especially effective in bringing people unfamiliar with workshops into the fold. 

World Cafe   #hyperisland   #innovation   #issue analysis   World Café is a simple yet powerful method, originated by Juanita Brown, for enabling meaningful conversations driven completely by participants and the topics that are relevant and important to them. Facilitators create a cafe-style space and provide simple guidelines. Participants then self-organize and explore a set of relevant topics or questions for conversation.

6. Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

One of the best approaches is to create a safe space for a group to share and discover practices and behaviors that can help them find their own solutions.

With DAD, you can help a group choose which problems they wish to solve and which approaches they will take to do so. It’s great at helping remove resistance to change and can help get buy-in at every level too!

This process of enabling frontline ownership is great in ensuring follow-through and is one of the methods you will want in your toolbox as a facilitator.

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)   #idea generation   #liberating structures   #action   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   DADs make it easy for a group or community to discover practices and behaviors that enable some individuals (without access to special resources and facing the same constraints) to find better solutions than their peers to common problems. These are called positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices. DADs make it possible for people in the group, unit, or community to discover by themselves these PD practices. DADs also create favorable conditions for stimulating participants’ creativity in spaces where they can feel safe to invent new and more effective practices. Resistance to change evaporates as participants are unleashed to choose freely which practices they will adopt or try and which problems they will tackle. DADs make it possible to achieve frontline ownership of solutions.

7. Design Sprint 2.0

Want to see how a team can solve big problems and move forward with prototyping and testing solutions in a few days? The Design Sprint 2.0 template from Jake Knapp, author of Sprint, is a complete agenda for a with proven results.

Developing the right agenda can involve difficult but necessary planning. Ensuring all the correct steps are followed can also be stressful or time-consuming depending on your level of experience.

Use this complete 4-day workshop template if you are finding there is no obvious solution to your challenge and want to focus your team around a specific problem that might require a shortcut to launching a minimum viable product or waiting for the organization-wide implementation of a solution.

8. Open space technology

Open space technology- developed by Harrison Owen – creates a space where large groups are invited to take ownership of their problem solving and lead individual sessions. Open space technology is a great format when you have a great deal of expertise and insight in the room and want to allow for different takes and approaches on a particular theme or problem you need to be solved.

Start by bringing your participants together to align around a central theme and focus their efforts. Explain the ground rules to help guide the problem-solving process and then invite members to identify any issue connecting to the central theme that they are interested in and are prepared to take responsibility for.

Once participants have decided on their approach to the core theme, they write their issue on a piece of paper, announce it to the group, pick a session time and place, and post the paper on the wall. As the wall fills up with sessions, the group is then invited to join the sessions that interest them the most and which they can contribute to, then you’re ready to begin!

Everyone joins the problem-solving group they’ve signed up to, record the discussion and if appropriate, findings can then be shared with the rest of the group afterward.

Open Space Technology   #action plan   #idea generation   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #large group   #online   #remote-friendly   Open Space is a methodology for large groups to create their agenda discerning important topics for discussion, suitable for conferences, community gatherings and whole system facilitation

Techniques to identify and analyze problems

Using a problem-solving method to help a team identify and analyze a problem can be a quick and effective addition to any workshop or meeting.

While further actions are always necessary, you can generate momentum and alignment easily, and these activities are a great place to get started.

We’ve put together this list of techniques to help you and your team with problem identification, analysis, and discussion that sets the foundation for developing effective solutions.

Let’s take a look!

• The Creativity Dice
• Fishbone Analysis
• Problem Tree
• SWOT Analysis
• Agreement-Certainty Matrix
• The Journalistic Six
• LEGO Challenge
• What, So What, Now What?
• Journalists

Individual and group perspectives are incredibly important, but what happens if people are set in their minds and need a change of perspective in order to approach a problem more effectively?

Flip It is a method we love because it is both simple to understand and run, and allows groups to understand how their perspectives and biases are formed. 

Participants in Flip It are first invited to consider concerns, issues, or problems from a perspective of fear and write them on a flip chart. Then, the group is asked to consider those same issues from a perspective of hope and flip their understanding.  

No problem and solution is free from existing bias and by changing perspectives with Flip It, you can then develop a problem solving model quickly and effectively.

Flip It!   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Often, a change in a problem or situation comes simply from a change in our perspectives. Flip It! is a quick game designed to show players that perspectives are made, not born.

10. The Creativity Dice

One of the most useful problem solving skills you can teach your team is of approaching challenges with creativity, flexibility, and openness. Games like The Creativity Dice allow teams to overcome the potential hurdle of too much linear thinking and approach the process with a sense of fun and speed. 

In The Creativity Dice, participants are organized around a topic and roll a dice to determine what they will work on for a period of 3 minutes at a time. They might roll a 3 and work on investigating factual information on the chosen topic. They might roll a 1 and work on identifying the specific goals, standards, or criteria for the session.

Encouraging rapid work and iteration while asking participants to be flexible are great skills to cultivate. Having a stage for idea incubation in this game is also important. Moments of pause can help ensure the ideas that are put forward are the most suitable. 

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.

11. Fishbone Analysis

Organizational or team challenges are rarely simple, and it’s important to remember that one problem can be an indication of something that goes deeper and may require further consideration to be solved.

Fishbone Analysis helps groups to dig deeper and understand the origins of a problem. It’s a great example of a root cause analysis method that is simple for everyone on a team to get their head around. 

Participants in this activity are asked to annotate a diagram of a fish, first adding the problem or issue to be worked on at the head of a fish before then brainstorming the root causes of the problem and adding them as bones on the fish. 

Using abstractions such as a diagram of a fish can really help a team break out of their regular thinking and develop a creative approach.

Fishbone Analysis   #problem solving   ##root cause analysis   #decision making   #online facilitation   A process to help identify and understand the origins of problems, issues or observations.

12. Problem Tree 

Encouraging visual thinking can be an essential part of many strategies. By simply reframing and clarifying problems, a group can move towards developing a problem solving model that works for them. 

In Problem Tree, groups are asked to first brainstorm a list of problems – these can be design problems, team problems or larger business problems – and then organize them into a hierarchy. The hierarchy could be from most important to least important or abstract to practical, though the key thing with problem solving games that involve this aspect is that your group has some way of managing and sorting all the issues that are raised.

Once you have a list of problems that need to be solved and have organized them accordingly, you’re then well-positioned for the next problem solving steps.

Problem tree   #define intentions   #create   #design   #issue analysis   A problem tree is a tool to clarify the hierarchy of problems addressed by the team within a design project; it represents high level problems or related sublevel problems.

13. SWOT Analysis

Chances are you’ve heard of the SWOT Analysis before. This problem-solving method focuses on identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a tried and tested method for both individuals and teams.

Start by creating a desired end state or outcome and bare this in mind – any process solving model is made more effective by knowing what you are moving towards. Create a quadrant made up of the four categories of a SWOT analysis and ask participants to generate ideas based on each of those quadrants.

Once you have those ideas assembled in their quadrants, cluster them together based on their affinity with other ideas. These clusters are then used to facilitate group conversations and move things forward. 

SWOT analysis   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   #meeting facilitation   The SWOT Analysis is a long-standing technique of looking at what we have, with respect to the desired end state, as well as what we could improve on. It gives us an opportunity to gauge approaching opportunities and dangers, and assess the seriousness of the conditions that affect our future. When we understand those conditions, we can influence what comes next.

14. Agreement-Certainty Matrix

Not every problem-solving approach is right for every challenge, and deciding on the right method for the challenge at hand is a key part of being an effective team.

The Agreement Certainty matrix helps teams align on the nature of the challenges facing them. By sorting problems from simple to chaotic, your team can understand what methods are suitable for each problem and what they can do to ensure effective results. 

If you are already using Liberating Structures techniques as part of your problem-solving strategy, the Agreement-Certainty Matrix can be an invaluable addition to your process. We’ve found it particularly if you are having issues with recurring problems in your organization and want to go deeper in understanding the root cause. 

Agreement-Certainty Matrix   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   #problem solving   You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. The combination of two questions makes it possible to easily sort challenges into four categories: simple, complicated, complex , and chaotic .  A problem is simple when it can be solved reliably with practices that are easy to duplicate.  It is complicated when experts are required to devise a sophisticated solution that will yield the desired results predictably.  A problem is complex when there are several valid ways to proceed but outcomes are not predictable in detail.  Chaotic is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward.  A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”  The Liberating Structures Matching Matrix in Chapter 5 can be used as the first step to clarify the nature of a challenge and avoid the mismatches between problems and solutions that are frequently at the root of chronic, recurring problems.

Organizing and charting a team’s progress can be important in ensuring its success. SQUID (Sequential Question and Insight Diagram) is a great model that allows a team to effectively switch between giving questions and answers and develop the skills they need to stay on track throughout the process. 

Begin with two different colored sticky notes – one for questions and one for answers – and with your central topic (the head of the squid) on the board. Ask the group to first come up with a series of questions connected to their best guess of how to approach the topic. Ask the group to come up with answers to those questions, fix them to the board and connect them with a line. After some discussion, go back to question mode by responding to the generated answers or other points on the board.

It’s rewarding to see a diagram grow throughout the exercise, and a completed SQUID can provide a visual resource for future effort and as an example for other teams.

SQUID   #gamestorming   #project planning   #issue analysis   #problem solving   When exploring an information space, it’s important for a group to know where they are at any given time. By using SQUID, a group charts out the territory as they go and can navigate accordingly. SQUID stands for Sequential Question and Insight Diagram.

16. Speed Boat

To continue with our nautical theme, Speed Boat is a short and sweet activity that can help a team quickly identify what employees, clients or service users might have a problem with and analyze what might be standing in the way of achieving a solution.

Methods that allow for a group to make observations, have insights and obtain those eureka moments quickly are invaluable when trying to solve complex problems.

In Speed Boat, the approach is to first consider what anchors and challenges might be holding an organization (or boat) back. Bonus points if you are able to identify any sharks in the water and develop ideas that can also deal with competitors!   

Speed Boat   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Speedboat is a short and sweet way to identify what your employees or clients don’t like about your product/service or what’s standing in the way of a desired goal.

17. The Journalistic Six

Some of the most effective ways of solving problems is by encouraging teams to be more inclusive and diverse in their thinking.

Based on the six key questions journalism students are taught to answer in articles and news stories, The Journalistic Six helps create teams to see the whole picture. By using who, what, when, where, why, and how to facilitate the conversation and encourage creative thinking, your team can make sure that the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the are covered exhaustively and thoughtfully. Reporter’s notebook and dictaphone optional.

The Journalistic Six – Who What When Where Why How   #idea generation   #issue analysis   #problem solving   #online   #creative thinking   #remote-friendly   A questioning method for generating, explaining, investigating ideas.

18. LEGO Challenge

Now for an activity that is a little out of the (toy) box. LEGO Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that can be used to improve creative thinking and problem-solving skills. 

The LEGO Challenge includes giving each member of the team an assignment that is hidden from the rest of the group while they create a structure without speaking.

What the LEGO challenge brings to the table is a fun working example of working with stakeholders who might not be on the same page to solve problems. Also, it’s LEGO! Who doesn’t love LEGO! 

LEGO Challenge   #hyperisland   #team   A team-building activity in which groups must work together to build a structure out of LEGO, but each individual has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative process more challenging. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, conflict, cooperation, patience and problem solving strategy.

19. What, So What, Now What?

If not carefully managed, the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the problem-solving process can actually create more problems and misunderstandings.

The What, So What, Now What? problem-solving activity is designed to help collect insights and move forward while also eliminating the possibility of disagreement when it comes to identifying, clarifying, and analyzing organizational or work problems. 

Facilitation is all about bringing groups together so that might work on a shared goal and the best problem-solving strategies ensure that teams are aligned in purpose, if not initially in opinion or insight.

Throughout the three steps of this game, you give everyone on a team to reflect on a problem by asking what happened, why it is important, and what actions should then be taken. 

This can be a great activity for bringing our individual perceptions about a problem or challenge and contextualizing it in a larger group setting. This is one of the most important problem-solving skills you can bring to your organization.

W³ – What, So What, Now What?   #issue analysis   #innovation   #liberating structures   You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

20. Journalists  

Problem analysis can be one of the most important and decisive stages of all problem-solving tools. Sometimes, a team can become bogged down in the details and are unable to move forward.

Journalists is an activity that can avoid a group from getting stuck in the problem identification or problem analysis stages of the process.

In Journalists, the group is invited to draft the front page of a fictional newspaper and figure out what stories deserve to be on the cover and what headlines those stories will have. By reframing how your problems and challenges are approached, you can help a team move productively through the process and be better prepared for the steps to follow.

Journalists   #vision   #big picture   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   This is an exercise to use when the group gets stuck in details and struggles to see the big picture. Also good for defining a vision.

Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions 

The success of any problem-solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. After you’ve defined the issue, explored existing ideas, and ideated, it’s time to narrow down to the correct solution.

Use these problem-solving techniques when you want to help your team find consensus, compare possible solutions, and move towards taking action on a particular problem.

• Improved Solutions
• Four-Step Sketch
• 15% Solutions
• How-Now-Wow matrix
• Impact Effort Matrix

21. Mindspin  

Brainstorming is part of the bread and butter of the problem-solving process and all problem-solving strategies benefit from getting ideas out and challenging a team to generate solutions quickly. 

With Mindspin, participants are encouraged not only to generate ideas but to do so under time constraints and by slamming down cards and passing them on. By doing multiple rounds, your team can begin with a free generation of possible solutions before moving on to developing those solutions and encouraging further ideation. 

This is one of our favorite problem-solving activities and can be great for keeping the energy up throughout the workshop. Remember the importance of helping people become engaged in the process – energizing problem-solving techniques like Mindspin can help ensure your team stays engaged and happy, even when the problems they’re coming together to solve are complex. 

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.

22. Improved Solutions

After a team has successfully identified a problem and come up with a few solutions, it can be tempting to call the work of the problem-solving process complete. That said, the first solution is not necessarily the best, and by including a further review and reflection activity into your problem-solving model, you can ensure your group reaches the best possible result. 

One of a number of problem-solving games from Thiagi Group, Improved Solutions helps you go the extra mile and develop suggested solutions with close consideration and peer review. By supporting the discussion of several problems at once and by shifting team roles throughout, this problem-solving technique is a dynamic way of finding the best solution. 

Improved Solutions   #creativity   #thiagi   #problem solving   #action   #team   You can improve any solution by objectively reviewing its strengths and weaknesses and making suitable adjustments. In this creativity framegame, you improve the solutions to several problems. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. At the conclusion of the activity, each player ends up with two solutions to her problem.

23. Four Step Sketch

Creative thinking and visual ideation does not need to be confined to the opening stages of your problem-solving strategies. Exercises that include sketching and prototyping on paper can be effective at the solution finding and development stage of the process, and can be great for keeping a team engaged. 

By going from simple notes to a crazy 8s round that involves rapidly sketching 8 variations on their ideas before then producing a final solution sketch, the group is able to iterate quickly and visually. Problem-solving techniques like Four-Step Sketch are great if you have a group of different thinkers and want to change things up from a more textual or discussion-based approach.

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

24. 15% Solutions

Some problems are simpler than others and with the right problem-solving activities, you can empower people to take immediate actions that can help create organizational change. 

Part of the liberating structures toolkit, 15% solutions is a problem-solving technique that focuses on finding and implementing solutions quickly. A process of iterating and making small changes quickly can help generate momentum and an appetite for solving complex problems.

Problem-solving strategies can live and die on whether people are onboard. Getting some quick wins is a great way of getting people behind the process.   

It can be extremely empowering for a team to realize that problem-solving techniques can be deployed quickly and easily and delineate between things they can positively impact and those things they cannot change. 

15% Solutions   #action   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference.  15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change.  With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.

25. How-Now-Wow Matrix

The problem-solving process is often creative, as complex problems usually require a change of thinking and creative response in order to find the best solutions. While it’s common for the first stages to encourage creative thinking, groups can often gravitate to familiar solutions when it comes to the end of the process. 

When selecting solutions, you don’t want to lose your creative energy! The How-Now-Wow Matrix from Gamestorming is a great problem-solving activity that enables a group to stay creative and think out of the box when it comes to selecting the right solution for a given problem.

Problem-solving techniques that encourage creative thinking and the ideation and selection of new solutions can be the most effective in organisational change. Give the How-Now-Wow Matrix a go, and not just for how pleasant it is to say out loud. 

How-Now-Wow Matrix   #gamestorming   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   When people want to develop new ideas, they most often think out of the box in the brainstorming or divergent phase. However, when it comes to convergence, people often end up picking ideas that are most familiar to them. This is called a ‘creative paradox’ or a ‘creadox’. The How-Now-Wow matrix is an idea selection tool that breaks the creadox by forcing people to weigh each idea on 2 parameters.

26. Impact and Effort Matrix

All problem-solving techniques hope to not only find solutions to a given problem or challenge but to find the best solution. When it comes to finding a solution, groups are invited to put on their decision-making hats and really think about how a proposed idea would work in practice. 

The Impact and Effort Matrix is one of the problem-solving techniques that fall into this camp, empowering participants to first generate ideas and then categorize them into a 2×2 matrix based on impact and effort.

Activities that invite critical thinking while remaining simple are invaluable. Use the Impact and Effort Matrix to move from ideation and towards evaluating potential solutions before then committing to them. 

Impact and Effort Matrix   #gamestorming   #decision making   #action   #remote-friendly   In this decision-making exercise, possible actions are mapped based on two factors: effort required to implement and potential impact. Categorizing ideas along these lines is a useful technique in decision making, as it obliges contributors to balance and evaluate suggested actions before committing to them.

27. Dotmocracy

If you’ve followed each of the problem-solving steps with your group successfully, you should move towards the end of your process with heaps of possible solutions developed with a specific problem in mind. But how do you help a group go from ideation to putting a solution into action? 

Dotmocracy – or Dot Voting -is a tried and tested method of helping a team in the problem-solving process make decisions and put actions in place with a degree of oversight and consensus. 

One of the problem-solving techniques that should be in every facilitator’s toolbox, Dot Voting is fast and effective and can help identify the most popular and best solutions and help bring a group to a decision effectively. 

Dotmocracy   #action   #decision making   #group prioritization   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Dotmocracy is a simple method for group prioritization or decision-making. It is not an activity on its own, but a method to use in processes where prioritization or decision-making is the aim. The method supports a group to quickly see which options are most popular or relevant. The options or ideas are written on post-its and stuck up on a wall for the whole group to see. Each person votes for the options they think are the strongest, and that information is used to inform a decision.

All facilitators know that warm-ups and icebreakers are useful for any workshop or group process. Problem-solving workshops are no different.

Use these problem-solving techniques to warm up a group and prepare them for the rest of the process. Activating your group by tapping into some of the top problem-solving skills can be one of the best ways to see great outcomes from your session.

• Check-in/Check-out
• Doodling Together
• Show and Tell
• Constellations
• Draw a Tree

28. Check-in / Check-out

Solid processes are planned from beginning to end, and the best facilitators know that setting the tone and establishing a safe, open environment can be integral to a successful problem-solving process.

Check-in / Check-out is a great way to begin and/or bookend a problem-solving workshop. Checking in to a session emphasizes that everyone will be seen, heard, and expected to contribute. 

If you are running a series of meetings, setting a consistent pattern of checking in and checking out can really help your team get into a groove. We recommend this opening-closing activity for small to medium-sized groups though it can work with large groups if they’re disciplined!

Check-in / Check-out   #team   #opening   #closing   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Either checking-in or checking-out is a simple way for a team to open or close a process, symbolically and in a collaborative way. Checking-in/out invites each member in a group to be present, seen and heard, and to express a reflection or a feeling. Checking-in emphasizes presence, focus and group commitment; checking-out emphasizes reflection and symbolic closure.

29. Doodling Together  

Thinking creatively and not being afraid to make suggestions are important problem-solving skills for any group or team, and warming up by encouraging these behaviors is a great way to start. 

Doodling Together is one of our favorite creative ice breaker games – it’s quick, effective, and fun and can make all following problem-solving steps easier by encouraging a group to collaborate visually. By passing cards and adding additional items as they go, the workshop group gets into a groove of co-creation and idea development that is crucial to finding solutions to problems. 

Doodling Together   #collaboration   #creativity   #teamwork   #fun   #team   #visual methods   #energiser   #icebreaker   #remote-friendly   Create wild, weird and often funny postcards together & establish a group’s creative confidence.

30. Show and Tell

You might remember some version of Show and Tell from being a kid in school and it’s a great problem-solving activity to kick off a session.

Asking participants to prepare a little something before a workshop by bringing an object for show and tell can help them warm up before the session has even begun! Games that include a physical object can also help encourage early engagement before moving onto more big-picture thinking.

By asking your participants to tell stories about why they chose to bring a particular item to the group, you can help teams see things from new perspectives and see both differences and similarities in the way they approach a topic. Great groundwork for approaching a problem-solving process as a team! 

Show and Tell   #gamestorming   #action   #opening   #meeting facilitation   Show and Tell taps into the power of metaphors to reveal players’ underlying assumptions and associations around a topic The aim of the game is to get a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives on anything—a new project, an organizational restructuring, a shift in the company’s vision or team dynamic.

31. Constellations

Who doesn’t love stars? Constellations is a great warm-up activity for any workshop as it gets people up off their feet, energized, and ready to engage in new ways with established topics. It’s also great for showing existing beliefs, biases, and patterns that can come into play as part of your session.

Using warm-up games that help build trust and connection while also allowing for non-verbal responses can be great for easing people into the problem-solving process and encouraging engagement from everyone in the group. Constellations is great in large spaces that allow for movement and is definitely a practical exercise to allow the group to see patterns that are otherwise invisible. 

Constellations   #trust   #connection   #opening   #coaching   #patterns   #system   Individuals express their response to a statement or idea by standing closer or further from a central object. Used with teams to reveal system, hidden patterns, perspectives.

32. Draw a Tree

Problem-solving games that help raise group awareness through a central, unifying metaphor can be effective ways to warm-up a group in any problem-solving model.

Draw a Tree is a simple warm-up activity you can use in any group and which can provide a quick jolt of energy. Start by asking your participants to draw a tree in just 45 seconds – they can choose whether it will be abstract or realistic. 

Once the timer is up, ask the group how many people included the roots of the tree and use this as a means to discuss how we can ignore important parts of any system simply because they are not visible.

All problem-solving strategies are made more effective by thinking of problems critically and by exposing things that may not normally come to light. Warm-up games like Draw a Tree are great in that they quickly demonstrate some key problem-solving skills in an accessible and effective way.

Draw a Tree   #thiagi   #opening   #perspectives   #remote-friendly   With this game you can raise awarness about being more mindful, and aware of the environment we live in.

Each step of the problem-solving workshop benefits from an intelligent deployment of activities, games, and techniques. Bringing your session to an effective close helps ensure that solutions are followed through on and that you also celebrate what has been achieved.

Here are some problem-solving activities you can use to effectively close a workshop or meeting and ensure the great work you’ve done can continue afterward.

• One Breath Feedback
• Who What When Matrix
• Response Cards

How do I conclude a problem-solving process?

All good things must come to an end. With the bulk of the work done, it can be tempting to conclude your workshop swiftly and without a moment to debrief and align. This can be problematic in that it doesn’t allow your team to fully process the results or reflect on the process.

At the end of an effective session, your team will have gone through a process that, while productive, can be exhausting. It’s important to give your group a moment to take a breath, ensure that they are clear on future actions, and provide short feedback before leaving the space. 

The primary purpose of any problem-solving method is to generate solutions and then implement them. Be sure to take the opportunity to ensure everyone is aligned and ready to effectively implement the solutions you produced in the workshop.

Remember that every process can be improved and by giving a short moment to collect feedback in the session, you can further refine your problem-solving methods and see further success in the future too.

33. One Breath Feedback

Maintaining attention and focus during the closing stages of a problem-solving workshop can be tricky and so being concise when giving feedback can be important. It’s easy to incur “death by feedback” should some team members go on for too long sharing their perspectives in a quick feedback round. 

One Breath Feedback is a great closing activity for workshops. You give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback on what they’ve done but only in the space of a single breath. This keeps feedback short and to the point and means that everyone is encouraged to provide the most important piece of feedback to them. 

One breath feedback   #closing   #feedback   #action   This is a feedback round in just one breath that excels in maintaining attention: each participants is able to speak during just one breath … for most people that’s around 20 to 25 seconds … unless of course you’ve been a deep sea diver in which case you’ll be able to do it for longer.

34. Who What When Matrix 

Matrices feature as part of many effective problem-solving strategies and with good reason. They are easily recognizable, simple to use, and generate results.

The Who What When Matrix is a great tool to use when closing your problem-solving session by attributing a who, what and when to the actions and solutions you have decided upon. The resulting matrix is a simple, easy-to-follow way of ensuring your team can move forward. 

Great solutions can’t be enacted without action and ownership. Your problem-solving process should include a stage for allocating tasks to individuals or teams and creating a realistic timeframe for those solutions to be implemented or checked out. Use this method to keep the solution implementation process clear and simple for all involved. 

Who/What/When Matrix   #gamestorming   #action   #project planning   With Who/What/When matrix, you can connect people with clear actions they have defined and have committed to.

35. Response cards

Group discussion can comprise the bulk of most problem-solving activities and by the end of the process, you might find that your team is talked out! 

Providing a means for your team to give feedback with short written notes can ensure everyone is head and can contribute without the need to stand up and talk. Depending on the needs of the group, giving an alternative can help ensure everyone can contribute to your problem-solving model in the way that makes the most sense for them.

Response Cards is a great way to close a workshop if you are looking for a gentle warm-down and want to get some swift discussion around some of the feedback that is raised. 

Response Cards   #debriefing   #closing   #structured sharing   #questions and answers   #thiagi   #action   It can be hard to involve everyone during a closing of a session. Some might stay in the background or get unheard because of louder participants. However, with the use of Response Cards, everyone will be involved in providing feedback or clarify questions at the end of a session.

Save time and effort discovering the right solutions

A structured problem solving process is a surefire way of solving tough problems, discovering creative solutions and driving organizational change. But how can you design for successful outcomes?

With SessionLab, it’s easy to design engaging workshops that deliver results. Drag, drop and reorder blocks  to build your agenda. When you make changes or update your agenda, your session  timing   adjusts automatically , saving you time on manual adjustments.

Collaborating with stakeholders or clients? Share your agenda with a single click and collaborate in real-time. No more sending documents back and forth over email.

Explore  how to use SessionLab  to design effective problem solving workshops or  watch this five minute video  to see the planner in action!

Over to you

The problem-solving process can often be as complicated and multifaceted as the problems they are set-up to solve. With the right problem-solving techniques and a mix of creative exercises designed to guide discussion and generate purposeful ideas, we hope we’ve given you the tools to find the best solutions as simply and easily as possible.

Is there a problem-solving technique that you are missing here? Do you have a favorite activity or method you use when facilitating? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you! 

thank you very much for these excellent techniques

Certainly wonderful article, very detailed. Shared!

Your list of techniques for problem solving can be helpfully extended by adding TRIZ to the list of techniques. TRIZ has 40 problem solving techniques derived from methods inventros and patent holders used to get new patents. About 10-12 are general approaches. many organization sponsor classes in TRIZ that are used to solve business problems or general organiztational problems. You can take a look at TRIZ and dwonload a free internet booklet to see if you feel it shound be included per your selection process.

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5 brainstorming techniques for efficient problem-solving

Executive Summary:

There are plenty of advantages that come with efficient problem-solving, such as quicker decision-making, overcoming obstacles, gaining a competitive edge, and generating business growth. So, it’s pretty clear that problem-solving is crucial for businesses, and effective brainstorming techniques are vital when it comes to achieving it.

Brainstorming is a method used by individuals or groups to generate innovative ideas or solutions for a specific issue. It encourages free thinking and unrestricted sharing of thoughts, promoting a creative and collaborative atmosphere. Yet, at the end of the day, brainstorming is only part of problem-solving; they aren’t the same thing and here are three reasons why:

• Brainstorm focuses on generating ideas, while problem-solving involves analyzing andimplementing solutions.
• Brainstorming is informal and spontaneous, encouraging creativity and diverse opinions, whereas problem-solving follows a systematic and structured method whereby the outcome is a solution.
• Brainstorming produces multiple ideas, while problem-solving simply seeks one practical and effective solution.

So, as you’re probably realizing, brainstorming is only the starting point for problem-solving. During brainstorming sessions, a wide range of ideas and perspectives are generated. These ideas are then evaluated and selected during the problem-solving phase of the process. By incorporating diverse ideas, problem-solving becomes more innovative and creative, leading to more effective solutions.

To help you reach your goals for efficient problem-solving, here are five examples of brainstorming techniques that you can implement in your company:

• Team Relay : small groups share and build on ideas to foster creativity and initiate new projects.
• Reverse Brainstorming: generating ideas that exacerbate the problem to find unconventional, out-of-the-box solutions.
• Focus Group: small group discussions to generate suggestions and ideas for problem-solving.
• Crazy-8 : fast-paced brainstorming technique to generate ideas within 8 minutes. ‍
• 1-2-4-All: individual and group idea generation to facilitate teamwork and quick idea generation.

If you run a business, you should know one thing.

You’re inevitably going to be faced with challenges. 

While no one likes to talk about when things go wrong, there’s no denying that it happens pretty regularly in the world of business. There are always going to be problems and challenges to overcome. But instead of becoming sitting ducks for these challenges, you’ll gain the upper hand if you know how to solve these problems… and how to solve them fast !

Quick problem-solving has many advantages, including quick decision-making , overcoming obstacles, a competitive edge over others , business success/growth, among many more.

That said, all the benefits look great, but there’s one underlying question: how can you solve your company’s problems fast? The answer lies in the concept of efficient brainstorming techniques .

In this article, you’ll find a step-by-step guide, telling you all you need to know about brainstorming to make problem-solving decisions more efficiently, boosting your company's success and promoting efficient teamwork .

Key concepts

What is problem-solving.

Problem-solving is a process that seeks to find solutions to problems or challenges. It includes a series of steps: 

• Examining the problem
• Identifying potential solutions
• Assessing them
• And then choosing the optimal solution

But most importantly, you should know that problem-solving follows a structured methodology . It combines critical thinking, creativity, and decision-making abilities , all to reach the goal of a straightforward solution to problems.

Now that that’s sorted, let’s talk about brainstorming .

What is brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a method used by individuals or groups to generate multiple inventive ideas or solutions for a particular issue or subject. The whole concept is based on a cooperative effort and an approach that prompts you and your team members to think freely, articulating any thoughts you have without restriction.

This process aims to build a creative and encouraging atmosphere , where everyone within your company can expand each another's ideas to collaboratively come to creative solutions.

It takes the pressure to come up with one ultimate solution, and shares it out between everyone on the team – as they say, “a problem shared is a problem halved” and the same notion applies here!

You can skip the next section if you’re already confident in differentiating between the two concepts of brainstorming and problem-solving . However, plenty of people tend to mix the two up given their similarities. So, the next section focuses on the differences between them.

What are the differences between problem-solving and brainstorming?

There are three key differences between problem-solving and brainstorming,  but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use them in close connection. After this section, we’ll cover how the two concepts work hand-in-hand, but in order to combine them successfully, you also need to understand each of them individually .

The first difference is the focus or the objective . Aside from the fact that brainstorming is simply an initial stage within the problem-solving process, it also has a different objective. The goal of brainstorming techniques is to simply generate ideas. In this phase, there’s no evaluation of their feasibility or efficiency - the goal is simply to come up with as many ideas as possible for solving the problem in question.

Conversely, problem-solving is a more complex process. It entails the analysis of the problem, the evaluation of potential solutions, and the selection of the most suitable way to implement it. It revolves around identifying the best solution from the numerous ideas generated through the brainstorming process. The goal of problem-solving is not to generate ideas, but rather to find the ones that will solve the problem.

Another difference between the two can be found in the approach by which the process is conducted . Brainstorming adopts a more informal approach as participants are encouraged to think freely, to share ideas spontaneously , and to build on each other's suggestions. Of course, there is a need for structure, but there are no boundaries for efficient teamwork.

Then, we have the difference in the emphasis on encouraging creativity and a range of opinions , which isn’t so much the case in problem-solving. The problem-solving process adheres to a systematic and structured methodology, including problem identification, analysis, solution evaluation, and implementation. It relies on an established structure that can guarantee a solution.

The last of the three differences lies in the result — or the outcome, as we often refer to it. Brainstorming sessions produce so many ideas, as they aim to drum up as many options through different creative thinking approaches that can then be further explored. For problem-solving, you’re only looking for one practical and effective solution to the problem.

The success of a problem-solving process doesn’t just depend on how many ideas you can come up with, but rather depends on whether the identified solution is able to adequately address the issue and achieve the desired results.

If you’ve kept up this far, you’ve probably started to realize that the two can work hand-in-hand.

How can brainstorming and problem-solving be complementary for efficient teamwork?

You already know that a brainstorming session is the starting point for a problem-solving process, but that’s not all that there is to it.

You and your team members can generate various ideas, approaches, and perspectives during the brainstorming phase. This uninhibited flow of ideas helps expand everyone’s thinking and thought processes , and to explore multiple potential solutions.

Once the brainstorming phase is complete, you can transition into problem-solving mode . This is when you and your team can evaluate the ideas generated during brainstorming and select the most promising ones for further analysis and development. This evaluation ensures that the chosen ideas align with the problem at hand and are more likely to succeed.

By incorporating the diverse ideas generated during brainstorming, problem-solving becomes more creative and innovative . You and your team can explore unconventional approaches and perspectives that may only have been briefly considered during the brainstorming phase. The result? More effective and efficient solutions.

How can brainstorming help in problem-solving in teams of any size?

You might be thinking, ‘Haven’t we already gone over this?’, but the answer is, not really!

While we have explored the correlation between brainstorming and problem-solving, this section will look into the benefits of brainstorming and which ways it can be the best starting point to guarantee optimally efficient problem-solving process. Here are a few reasons as to why brainstorming is the ultimate solution for efficient problem-solving in your business.

A range of perspectives leading to a broader range of solutions

Brainstorming involves collecting input and ideas from different team members. So, the larger the team, the more diverse perspectives and experiences are likely to be offered up. This diversity can lead to a broader range of ideas and solutions as individuals approach problems from various angles .

Higher chance of unique ideas

Brainstorming encourages free thinking and is conducive to creativity. Purely down to numbers, larger teams have a higher chance of generating unique and innovative ideas. Team members' collective intelligence and creativity can result in unexpected, breakthrough solutions.

Collective intelligence and synergy

Brainstorming facilitates collaboration and encourages active participation from team members. When people come together to generate ideas, they can build on each other's suggestions, expand upon initial concepts, and create synergistic solutions. The whole team can benefit from the collective intelligence and creativity of everyone involved.

Brainstorming facilitates problem-understanding

In a larger team, different individuals bring diverse expertise and knowledge to the table, and brainstorming allows team members to share their insights and understanding of the problem, enabling a more comprehensive analysis. This broader perspective can lead to a deeper understanding of the problem and help uncover underlying factors that may have been previously overlooked.

Increased solution pool

With a larger team, there is a higher likelihood of generating a larger pool of potential solutions. Brainstorming enables the team to explore a wide range of ideas, even if some may initially seem unconventional or unlikely. A larger solution pool enhances the chances of finding an optimal and effective solution .

Increased motivation to find a solution through team accountability

When team members are actively involved in brainstorming sessions, they feel a sense of accountability and engagement to the problem-solving mission. In larger teams, more individuals have the opportunity to contribute and to be heard, leading to higher engagement levels and boosting motivation to find a solution.

Higher chances of making a decision

Brainstorming also helps in narrowing down the options and selecting the most viable solutions . Larger teams can leverage their collective wisdom and diverse perspectives to evaluate and prioritize the ideas generated during brainstorming. This collaborative decision-making process increases the likelihood of selecting the best solution for the problem.

5 brainstorming methods that can help for efficient problem-solving – and how they do it

Team Relay involves working together in small groups to share ideas. It’s just like a relay race; instead of passing on the baton, you pass and build on ideas. Everyone takes turns to put their two cents in, and the ideas continue to evolve within the group . This helps you to work with your team members and come up with lots of creative ideas.

Team Relay is best for teams of about 12 participants , and this method helps you find new ideas by bouncing off what the team says. You can identify and initiate new projects by working as a cohesive team, capitalizing on every idea collectively and elevating your thinking powe r to new heights. If you want to kick things off with the Team Relay method, the Klaxoon visual platform has a readymade template for this brainstorming technique that you can use.

Reverse Brainstorming

Reverse brainstorming is a technique where, instead of generating ideas to solve a problem, you focus on creating ideas that will make the problem worse or that will cause the problem. In other words, you’ll turn the problem upside down to define the worst-case scenario. So, how does this help solve the problem?

This excellent brainstorming tool can be used with your team at the start of a project or when you're stuck at a crossroads with a problem. It helps you t hink outside the box and unleash your imagination . Then, just like magic, the solutions will start to appear on their own! Give this tool a go, and try this template .

Focus group

A focus group is a small group of people (about 6 to 12 participants) who have been selected to meet up and talk or share ideas about a specific problem (strategic development, marketing positioning, etc.). 

This selected team works together to generate thoughts and suggestions to help solve the problem or develop new ideas. You can either conduct a qualitative survey on a concept, product, or service, or you can ask the participants to fill in this ready-to-use template .

Crazy 8 is a pretty fast-paced, dynamic technique, so we’ll try to keep up the pace and explain it concisely.

This is a unique strategy that allows you to brainstorm with your team with a key element… speed ! While some brainstorming techniques could simply waste time and drum up an excessive volume of sub-par or irrelevant ideas, this method is all about eyes on the prize, full steam ahead. 

With the Crazy 8 methodology, you can generate new ideas as a team in less than 8 minutes ! If you want to know more about this unique technique, head over to the this Klaxoon template .

As the last of the five, we are introducing you to a concept that has proven to be very effective. The 1-2-4-All method is like regular brainstorming but in several steps:

• First, everyone thinks on their own; 
• Then, they share their ideas in bigger groups (in pairs, then in groups of 4, and then with everyone). 

The goal is to help your team come up with ideas together. With this method, everyone can first think independently , no matter how many people are in the group. Other people can't influence their ideas or make them doubt themselves, and in this uninhibited way, the ideas pile up quickly. 

It makes it easier for both you, as the leader, and your team members, to contribute their ideas and progressively confirm their objectivity through the groups’ input. It's a relaxed and pressure-free way to get everyone involved.

Try ready-to-use brainstorming tools and resources

On the Klaxoon visual platform, we have tools that you can use with your team to lead more effective brainstorming sessions . We also provide ready-to-use templates for brainstorming that can be used in different ways for quick problem-solving.

Our visual tools are designed to promote efficient teamwork and collaboration, no matter what kind of business you have. So, if you want to boost your business, hone your problem-solving strategy, and refine your brainstorming techniques , check out our resources and see how the Klaxoon platform can help you.

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Overview of the Problem-Solving Mental Process

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

• Identify the Problem
• Define the Problem
• Form a Strategy
• Organize Information
• Allocate Resources
• Monitor Progress
• Evaluate the Results

Frequently Asked Questions

Problem-solving is a mental process that involves discovering, analyzing, and solving problems. The ultimate goal of problem-solving is to overcome obstacles and find a solution that best resolves the issue.

The best strategy for solving a problem depends largely on the unique situation. In some cases, people are better off learning everything they can about the issue and then using factual knowledge to come up with a solution. In other instances, creativity and insight are the best options.

It is not necessary to follow problem-solving steps sequentially, It is common to skip steps or even go back through steps multiple times until the desired solution is reached.

In order to correctly solve a problem, it is often important to follow a series of steps. Researchers sometimes refer to this as the problem-solving cycle. While this cycle is portrayed sequentially, people rarely follow a rigid series of steps to find a solution.

The following steps include developing strategies and organizing knowledge.

1. Identifying the Problem

While it may seem like an obvious step, identifying the problem is not always as simple as it sounds. In some cases, people might mistakenly identify the wrong source of a problem, which will make attempts to solve it inefficient or even useless.

Some strategies that you might use to figure out the source of a problem include :

• Asking questions about the problem
• Breaking the problem down into smaller pieces
• Looking at the problem from different perspectives
• Conducting research to figure out what relationships exist between different variables

2. Defining the Problem

After the problem has been identified, it is important to fully define the problem so that it can be solved. You can define a problem by operationally defining each aspect of the problem and setting goals for what aspects of the problem you will address

At this point, you should focus on figuring out which aspects of the problems are facts and which are opinions. State the problem clearly and identify the scope of the solution.

3. Forming a Strategy

After the problem has been identified, it is time to start brainstorming potential solutions. This step usually involves generating as many ideas as possible without judging their quality. Once several possibilities have been generated, they can be evaluated and narrowed down.

The next step is to develop a strategy to solve the problem. The approach used will vary depending upon the situation and the individual's unique preferences. Common problem-solving strategies include heuristics and algorithms.

• Heuristics are mental shortcuts that are often based on solutions that have worked in the past. They can work well if the problem is similar to something you have encountered before and are often the best choice if you need a fast solution.
• Algorithms are step-by-step strategies that are guaranteed to produce a correct result. While this approach is great for accuracy, it can also consume time and resources.

Heuristics are often best used when time is of the essence, while algorithms are a better choice when a decision needs to be as accurate as possible.

4. Organizing Information

Before coming up with a solution, you need to first organize the available information. What do you know about the problem? What do you not know? The more information that is available the better prepared you will be to come up with an accurate solution.

When approaching a problem, it is important to make sure that you have all the data you need. Making a decision without adequate information can lead to biased or inaccurate results.

5. Allocating Resources

Of course, we don't always have unlimited money, time, and other resources to solve a problem. Before you begin to solve a problem, you need to determine how high priority it is.

If it is an important problem, it is probably worth allocating more resources to solving it. If, however, it is a fairly unimportant problem, then you do not want to spend too much of your available resources on coming up with a solution.

At this stage, it is important to consider all of the factors that might affect the problem at hand. This includes looking at the available resources, deadlines that need to be met, and any possible risks involved in each solution. After careful evaluation, a decision can be made about which solution to pursue.

6. Monitoring Progress

After selecting a problem-solving strategy, it is time to put the plan into action and see if it works. This step might involve trying out different solutions to see which one is the most effective.

It is also important to monitor the situation after implementing a solution to ensure that the problem has been solved and that no new problems have arisen as a result of the proposed solution.

Effective problem-solvers tend to monitor their progress as they work towards a solution. If they are not making good progress toward reaching their goal, they will reevaluate their approach or look for new strategies .

7. Evaluating the Results

After a solution has been reached, it is important to evaluate the results to determine if it is the best possible solution to the problem. This evaluation might be immediate, such as checking the results of a math problem to ensure the answer is correct, or it can be delayed, such as evaluating the success of a therapy program after several months of treatment.

Once a problem has been solved, it is important to take some time to reflect on the process that was used and evaluate the results. This will help you to improve your problem-solving skills and become more efficient at solving future problems.

A Word From Verywell​

It is important to remember that there are many different problem-solving processes with different steps, and this is just one example. Problem-solving in real-world situations requires a great deal of resourcefulness, flexibility, resilience, and continuous interaction with the environment.

Get Advice From The Verywell Mind Podcast

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares how you can stop dwelling in a negative mindset.

Follow Now : Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts

You can become a better problem solving by:

• Practicing brainstorming and coming up with multiple potential solutions to problems
• Being open-minded and considering all possible options before making a decision
• Breaking down problems into smaller, more manageable pieces
• Asking for help when needed
• Researching different problem-solving techniques and trying out new ones
• Learning from mistakes and using them as opportunities to grow

It's important to communicate openly and honestly with your partner about what's going on. Try to see things from their perspective as well as your own. Work together to find a resolution that works for both of you. Be willing to compromise and accept that there may not be a perfect solution.

Take breaks if things are getting too heated, and come back to the problem when you feel calm and collected. Don't try to fix every problem on your own—consider asking a therapist or counselor for help and insight.

If you've tried everything and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix the problem, you may have to learn to accept it. This can be difficult, but try to focus on the positive aspects of your life and remember that every situation is temporary. Don't dwell on what's going wrong—instead, think about what's going right. Find support by talking to friends or family. Seek professional help if you're having trouble coping.

Davidson JE, Sternberg RJ, editors.  The Psychology of Problem Solving .  Cambridge University Press; 2003. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511615771

Sarathy V. Real world problem-solving .  Front Hum Neurosci . 2018;12:261. Published 2018 Jun 26. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2018.00261

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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• Unlocking Creative Problem-Solving

To unlock creative problem-solving, “ Creative Confidence” by Tom and David Kelley is an illuminating guidebook.

This compelling book unravels the intricacies of fostering creativity and innovation, emphasizing that creativity isn’t a rare gift but a skill that can be nurtured and developed. Tom and David Kelley, renowned designers and innovation experts at IDEO, outline practical strategies and exercises to awaken creative potential and instill confidence in tackling problems creatively.

Empowering Creativity

Moreover, the late Steve Jobs, the visionary behind Apple Inc ., exemplifies the embodiment of unlocking creative problem-solving in technology and design. Jobs’ legacy transcends his products; his innovation and problem-solving approach have left an indelible mark on the tech industry. His ability to fuse technology with artistry, visualize the future, and challenge conventions mirrors the principles championed in “Creative Confidence.” Jobs’ relentless pursuit of innovative solutions by thinking differently and pushing boundaries continues to inspire generations of innovators worldwide.

Cultivating a Creative Mindset

The insights encapsulated in “Creative Confidence” resonate deeply with Steve Jobs’ creative problem-solving approach. Both sources underscore the transformative power of cultivating a creative mindset, encouraging individuals to embrace curiosity, take risks, and approach problems with an open mind. By leveraging the wisdom from the Kelleys’ book and drawing inspiration from Jobs’ innovative legacy, individuals can unlock their creative potential and harness it to tackle challenges, innovate, and drive meaningful change.

Practical Strategies for Creative Problem Solving

Embrace curiosity.

Curiosity fuels creativity. Asking questions and seeking new knowledge opens the door to innovative solutions. Tom and David Kelley emphasize the importance of staying curious and exploring the world around us. This practice helps uncover hidden opportunities and inspires fresh ideas.

Taking risks is a crucial component of creative problem-solving. Both the Kelleys and Steve Jobs advocate stepping out of their comfort zones. Risk-taking leads to discovery and growth. Embracing failure as a learning experience can lead to unexpected breakthroughs.

Open-Mindedness

Approaching problems with an open mind is essential. Doing so means being willing to consider unconventional solutions and different perspectives. Steve Jobs was known for thinking outside the box and encouraging his team to do the same. The Kelleys also stress the importance of keeping an open mind in their book.

Techniques to Enhance Creativity

Brainstorming sessions.

Regular brainstorming sessions can significantly enhance creativity. Gathering diverse individuals to discuss ideas without judgment fosters an environment where creativity can thrive. These sessions should encourage wild ideas and build on each other’s suggestions.

Prototyping

Prototyping is a hands-on approach to problem-solving. Creating tangible models or simulations of ideas allows for testing and refinement. This process helps identify potential issues and improve solutions before implementation. The Kelleys highlight prototyping as a vital tool in the creative process.

Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a visual tool that helps organize thoughts and ideas. It allows for the exploration of connections between different concepts. This technique can lead to discovering innovative solutions by visually mapping problems and their potential solutions.

Real-Life Examples of Creative Problem Solving

Steve jobs and the iphone.

One of the most notable examples of creative problem-solving is the development of the iPhone. Steve Jobs envisioned a device that combined a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator. This innovative approach revolutionized the mobile industry and set a new smartphone standard. Jobs’ ability to see beyond the existing technology and create something entirely new exemplifies creative problem-solving.

IDEO’s Shopping Cart Project

IDEO, under the guidance of the Kelley brothers, undertook a project to redesign the shopping cart. They employed creative problem-solving techniques to address safety, convenience, and theft. The result was a revolutionary design that improved the shopping experience. This project showcased the power of creative thinking and innovation in solving everyday problems.

Unlocking creative problem-solving involves nurturing an innovative mindset, embracing curiosity, taking risks, and maintaining an open mind. Practical strategies such as brainstorming, prototyping, and mind mapping can enhance creativity. Drawing inspiration from visionaries like Steve Jobs and learning from the insights in “Creative Confidence” can empower individuals to tackle challenges creatively. By adopting these principles and techniques, anyone can unleash their creative potential and drive meaningful change in their personal and professional lives.

UMBC’s Entrepreneurial Mindset Course

Information contained in this article comes from the teachings of UMBC’s Entrepreneurial Mindset course . (ENTR 601). The course equips participants with tools for applying entrepreneurial thinking in work and life. It teaches creative problem-solving, resource selection, project planning, and promoting teamwork. The course emphasizes exploring possibilities, handling ambiguity, adapting to unexpected circumstances, and innovating within one’s field.

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Free Microsoft Word Brainstorming Templates

By Becky Simon | May 30, 2024

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We’ve compiled the most useful free brainstorming templates to improve the creativity, productivity, and efficiency of your team’s brainstorming sessions. You can also learn how to create a brainstorming template in Microsoft Word , and find additional related brainstorming templates . Included in this article, you’ll find the following:

Column and row brainstorming template

Mind map brainstorming template

Compare and contrast brainstorming diagram template

Microsoft Word Basic Brainstorming Template

Download the Basic Brainstorming Template for Microsoft Word

When to Use This Template: This template is ideal for business, project management, healthcare, and human resources professionals to brainstorm ideas for planning, problem solving, and more. Share this template with your team to help generate and organize ideas.

Notable Template Features: This printer-friendly format provides plenty of fields and space for handwritten brainstorming, with rows for each new idea. The template is arranged with five different spokes for different categories or themes, which you can fill in for your team.

Learn more about brainstorming solutions for your organization and best practices with our guide to discovering the best brainstorming approaches and techniques .

Microsoft Word Column and Row Brainstorming Template

Download the Column and Row Brainstorming Template for Microsoft Word

When to Use This Template: Project management, marketing, business strategy, and data analysis professionals can use this template to organize ideas in a structured matrix.

Notable Template Features: This template comes pre-built with subcategories, so you can structure your brainstorm thematically. Use this template matrix to generate ideas by answering relevant questions for each subcategory. This format makes it easier to see patterns and interactions when brainstorming ideas.

Check out this collection of free Google Docs brainstorming templates to help your organization generate ideas and promote collaboration.  

Microsoft Word Mind Map Brainstorming Template

Download the Mind Map Brainstorming Template for Microsoft Word

When to Use This Template: This template is ideal for brainstorming and visualizing ideas for marketing, project management, and business strategy professionals.

Notable Template Features: This template is structured as a mind map : a diagram where you can list ideas related to a central concept, and link related ideas with lines. The mind map structure makes it easy to visualize information and ideas nonlinearly. 

Check out this collection of free SWOT analysis templates for Microsoft Word to help your team identify favorable internal and external factors to achieve its objectives.

Microsoft Word Compare and Contrast Brainstorming Diagram Template

Compare and Contrast Brainstorming Diagram Template for Microsoft Word

When to Use This Template: Business analysis, marketing, and project management professionals can use this template to analyze the similarities and differences between two items or scenarios.

Notable Template Features: This template features a comparison chart, or Venn diagram, that you can use to visualize and simplify complex relationships among ideas. This alternative approach to brainstorming and presenting ideas allows you to compare options, so you can see the pros and cons, as well as overlapping consequences of each.

Check out this free fishbone diagram template to determine the root causes and show their relationships for a specific problem or effect.

Microsoft Word Word Association Brainstorming Template

Download the Word Association Brainstorming Template for Microsoft Word

When to Use This Template: This template is ideal for marketing, brand strategy and design, product development, and UX/UI design professionals to generate new, creative ideas by encouraging free association. Encourage team members to add ideas by free associating related words or concepts based around a single central idea. This approach jump-starts creativity without logical constraints that can sometimes limit the brainstorming process.

Notable Template Features: Use random words from one side of the template to brainstorm new ideas and perspectives that relate to the central topic on the other side. The template center is large enough to accommodate a large, in-depth main topic with several associations.

How to Create a Brainstorming Template in Microsoft Word

You can create a brainstorming template in Microsoft Word to structure your brainstorming session and generate ideas. Start by identifying the core problem or topic in the center of the template center, and add ideas to the text boxes that surround the main topic.  Download a basic brainstorming template to guide your brainstorming process. Follow these steps to have a successful session:

Define and Enter the Main Brainstorming Topic Define the problem or topic and enter it into the center box with the star.  

List New and Related Ideas in the Text Boxes Enter additional ideas from the brainstorm in the text boxes connected to the central problem or topic.  

Brainstorming Related Templates

Check out this list of problem-solving and strategic planning templates. Like brainstorming templates, these tools are designed to inform and improve decision-making processes.

Free Fishbone Diagram Templates

A fishbone diagram is a problem-solving tool that you can use to identify potential causes of a specific issue. Use this fishbone diagram template for Microsoft Excel to help your team identify and organize causes for an event.

Free SWOT Analysis Templates for Microsoft Word

  Use one of these SWOT templates for Microsoft Word to evaluate how strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats can impact your organization.

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When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

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