What is brainstorming? Methods and best practices

Brainstorming is a structured method for generating ideas or solving problems, usually in a group session focused on a specific topic or challenge. Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, teams set aside dedicated time to produce as many ideas as possible—then evaluate them later.

Businesses rely on great ideas to develop products and improve the . But spontaneous ideas arrive inconsistently, often go uncaptured, and aren’t always shared with decision-makers. Formal brainstorming sessions make idea generation deliberate, so companies can put their time and resources behind the strongest concepts.

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What is brainstorming?

In its simplest form, brainstorming is a method used to generate ideas or solve problems. You may remember being introduced to the term in grade school when teachers taught composition.

In a business context, brainstorming generally involves group exercises. These can be as straightforward as a group discussion or fairly complex, involving software applications, , and outside facilitators.

Group brainstorming sessions often include members from different departments to offer diverse perspectives. In some cases, they may also involve outside stakeholders, such as prospective customers.

Business brainstorming is usually focused on a particular topic or challenge. A team may be tasked with brainstorming ideas for a new product within a certain segment, or asked to brainstorm ways to eliminate a bottleneck in a production process. Such directed brainstorming is also time-limited, since group members have other work priorities.

What are best practices for brainstorming effectively?

Brainstorming isn’t as simple as it seems. With multiple people involved, you need to make sure everyone has the opportunity to participate, everyone actually is participating, and everyone sticks to the central topic.

It’s easy for one or two individuals to monopolize sessions and derail conversations with tangents. Depending on the topic or personalities involved, sessions can even become contentious. Structure your sessions to minimize the potential for conflict and handle any that arises respectfully.

Whatever brainstorming topic or tactic you choose, these best practices increase the likelihood of a productive session.

Set clear expectations

If you’re pulling together a brainstorming session, have a desired outcome in mind. It might be a solution to a design challenge on a new product, a process improvement that increases productivity, or a more general attempt to generate new product ideas. Whatever your intent, make it clear at the outset to keep group members on task.

There’s a balance to strike: you want to provide parameters without constraining ideas. Suppose you sell containers and want new products to introduce. Saying you’re looking for ideas on new containers to sell at a specific price point in a specific region limits innovative thinking from the start.

Instead, give the group an open-ended that’s light on details, or share an end goal and the methods you’ll use to generate ideas. Set a time limit to help group members stay focused. And make clear that the purpose is to generate ideas, not assess them.

Prioritize quantity

The best brainstorming sessions leave the group with many possible ideas and solutions that can be explored, tested, and validated later. Facilitate discussion using techniques that generate the most ideas possible—quantity over quality.

To that end, encourage participation from all group members by selecting techniques most likely to stimulate discussion. Keep the personalities and interests of your group in mind when choosing tactics. And if people are slow to raise a hand, don’t be afraid to call on them.

Discourage criticism

Avoid criticizing ideas that seem farfetched, and keep group members from doing so as well. When someone starts dissecting an idea mid-session, you get fewer ideas because you’re limiting potential discussion areas.

Say a person shares a seemingly dubious idea about flying, which triggers a great idea from another person. If you shoot down the first person’s idea, chances are you’ll never hear the great one the second person was about to raise. Worse, other group members may hesitate to participate because they don’t want their ideas criticized.

As facilitator, cut off criticism unless it’s intrinsically connected to another idea. Remind participants there’ll be time for idea screening later, and keep encouraging people to join the conversation. If criticism keeps creeping in, try having participants write ideas anonymously first so they don’t feel pressured to have the best ideas attached to their names.

Minimize distraction

Many professionals struggle to concentrate on one thing at a time—we’re expected to multitask, juggling competing priorities all day. If you don’t set the stage appropriately, you could end up with lackluster discussion, a shortage of ideas, and a lot of wasted time.

Be mindful of session length, too. The longer the session, the more likely distraction creeps in.

Establish from the outset that no one should be on their phones or checking devices during the session. Make sure the room is comfortable, with adequate seating for everyone. Encourage participants to use the bathroom before you start. And discourage other managers and colleagues from interrupting by letting them know in advance you need the participants’ full attention.

Even tiny distractions can derail everyone’s focus. Create an environment that’s as distraction-free as possible.

Encourage creativity

Rather than discouraging far-fetched ideas, actively encourage weird, unlikely, and creative ones. That’s where innovation comes from. This form of creative brainstorming is called blue sky thinking: no limits, no judgments, and no consequences to where your imagination can take you.

As you’ll see below, there are many techniques to encourage creative thinking, from freewriting to visual tools to unique discussion approaches. The best sessions give participants as much latitude as possible within the stated parameters and encourage freewheeling idea generation.

As the facilitator, decide your role from the outset. Will you also generate ideas or just transcribe them on a whiteboard? Sometimes it’s best to stay out of the idea-generating process. Some group members may see you as an authority figure even if you’re all at the same level, and that perceived authority can steer the conversation in unhelpful ways.

But participating can have benefits, especially if you’re helping build connections between the generated ideas. Combining ideas can push the discussion further and produce higher-quality ideas. And if the conversation starts to wane, throwing out an idea or two of your own can get things going again.

Is individual brainstorming better than group brainstorming?

Group brainstorming can generate a good number of ideas, but sessions can be difficult to manage. No matter how clearly you set expectations, tangents and conflicts happen. Some people think more creatively alone, and the dynamics of the people you assemble may stifle creativity to some degree.

There are times when individual brainstorming yields higher-quality results, and you can encourage people to brainstorm individually to prepare for a group session. But team projects usually call for group brainstorming at some point. The more group brainstorming you do, the more comfortable your team members will feel doing it, yielding better results over time.

You can also incorporate individual brainstorming activities during group sessions, then build on those individual ideas in a group format.

What are some common brainstorming approaches?

There are many ways to facilitate idea generation in group discussions. What follows isn’t an exhaustive list, but it covers some of the most common approaches businesses use to get the creative juices flowing.

Brainwriting

You may be familiar with freewriting, an individual technique in which you spend a finite amount of time writing freely about a specific topic. You’re not crafting coherent prose—you’re writing the first thoughts that pop into your head without regard for convention or structure.

Brainwriting is a similar exercise designed for groups. Write down the central idea or topic and pass it around the team. Give each group member a finite amount of time to write down their thoughts and questions about the topic. When everyone is finished, reflect on the result and use it to facilitate discussion.

Cubing

A cube has six sides, so cubing encourages group members to think about a topic from six different perspectives. Share the topic with the group, then ask members to:

Analyze the topic
Argue for or against it
Compare it to other ideas or topics
Describe it in detail
Discuss applications of it in real life
Engage in free association about it, letting whatever thoughts, words, or images come to mind

Share the results with participants and discuss them further to capture additional insights.

Five whys

Here, you repeatedly ask the assembled group “Why?” to dig into the cause of a topic.

Pose your topic or idea to the group, and ask a question about it that begins with “Why.” For example, you might ask why consumers want a particular product or why a specific outcome occurred.

Once you’ve gathered a good amount of feedback, ask “Why” again. Repeating the question pulls participants into a more detailed discussion, eventually getting to a core purpose or root cause. Solicit feedback again, then repeat the exercise three more times.

Forced relationships

The forced relationships technique encourages participants to make connections between disparate topics. In this straightforward exercise, you take two radically different topics and ask the group how they’re related. Visually map the connections on a whiteboard so they become more apparent to everyone.

Gap filling

In gap filling, you brainstorm ways to reach an ultimate goal. Start by identifying a current state (or a problem) and the goal of where you want to be (or an ideal outcome). Then ask participants to fill in the gap between them, brainstorming possible solutions or actions that get closer to the goal.

Group sketching

Using a whiteboard or a large piece of paper you pass around, encourage every group member to sketch ideas related to your topic. If inspiration strikes, they can add to each other’s drawings.

When everyone has had a turn, pass the finished product around and start a discussion about what everyone sees. You may end up with design ideas you never thought of.

Journalistic questions

In this exercise, your team considers the standard questions a journalist covers in an article: who, what, where, when, why, and how. Kick off the discussion by posing a topic, then ask participants to share their thoughts on each question as it relates to the topic.

For example, if the topic is a possible brand refresh, ask questions like:

Why would a brand refresh make sense (or not)?
Where (locally, regionally, or nationally) might refreshing it make sense?
What aspects of the brand should we refresh?

Use the insights from their answers to guide your discussion.

Mind mapping

Also known as webbing, this exercise is similar to brainwriting. You start by listing the key topic in the center of the page and ask people to write their thoughts along lines extending outward from the center—the diagram may resemble a sun. Use different colors, sticky notes, or line styles to distinguish the connected ideas from each other.

Similes

Similes are both a figure of speech and a brainstorming technique built on it. Challenge participants to describe their topic in terms of similes, or to use similes to describe aspects of it. For example, if you’re brainstorming a concept car, ask them to finish the statement, “The interior is like….”