How to Brainstorm and Generate Creative Ideas for your Business

by Gareth
16 minutes
How to Brainstorm and Generate Creative Ideas for your Business

Companies must constantly be making decisions, solving problems, and seeking alternative solutions to certain problems and procedures. To tackle these situations and avoid coming up with common solutions, I highly recommend incorporating some creative techniques such as brainstorming to generate innovative and effective solutions. 

What is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a creative technique, devised in 1939 by Alex Faickney Osborn, which is based on the interaction between the members of a group to create new ideas on a specific topic.

Brainstorming is a creative group technique whose objective is the generation of new idea on a particular issue or problem in a relaxed environment.

According to this technique, the interaction between the different members of the group enhances creativity and ideas are generated that wouldn't be achieved if they were working individually. 

What is Brainstorming for?

Brainstorming is primarily used to:

The use of Brainstorming helps solve problems, generate innovative solutions and overcome conformism in a given job or situation. Sometimes, it can also help you find ideal business opportunities to implement in a company.

Brainstorming: Step-by-Step

Before conducting a brainstorming session, it is necessary to know several fundamental aspects about brainstorming, such as some basic rules, the personnel involved in the session, the space in which it takes place and, finally, common failures to avoid at all costs. In this way, all the necessary steps are taken so that the brainstorm is effective and efficient as possible.

Basic Rules

There are four main rules and you have to follow to do brainstorming properly:

Suspend the trial

During the process of generating ideas, there is no need to make any assessment or criticism of them. Only the ideas are noted, the evaluation is carried out later. This rule is very important and, perhaps, one of the most difficult for people to follow, since we are trained to be analytical of new ideas.

Think freely

It is very important for an effective Brainstorming session that users think freely and have ideas even if they seem impossible or unfeasible. Through this, it is possible to escape the routine of having logical and habitual ideas, thus promoting the creation of new solutions.

Amount

When brainstorming, the purpose is to generate a large number of ideas, then choose the best of them. This is due to two reasons:

  1. At first, the most obvious and common ideas usually appear in the mind, so these ideas are not innovative.
  2. The more ideas generated in the session, the more you can choose, combine and adapt them to solve the problem posed at the start.

Multiplier effect

Participants in brainstorming not only contribute their thoughts, but can also suggest improvements or combine the ideas that others have. Thus, the ideas that some users have serve as a stimulus for the other participants.

"Improving one aspect of an unfeasible idea can make it the perfect solution to the problem"

Main Personnel

Moderator

This is the person in charge of guiding the brainstorming session so that it is effective and fulfils the objective set at the start. This figure is essential, as they serve as a filter to answers, and they can moderate and energise the group members.

Secretary

The secretary is the person in charge of solving any problem in the session. In addition, he/she is the person who notes all the ideas that arise during the brainstorming session. 

Participants

They are all those people who contribute to the brainstorming to find and propose solutions to the proposed problem.

Choice of Space

The space you use is an important factor when conducting a brainstorming session. It is advisable to do it in a large room, with natural light and boards to write on.

However, sometimes, this perfect space is not always available. Therefore, you should take into account the following factors, as far as possible, for your brainstorming to be effective:

  1. The place where the session takes place should be wide. Thus, the fluidity and creativity of the participants is improved.
  2. The furniture in the room should be as comfortable as possible for the participants of the session.
  3. It is necessary to have a whiteboardcomputer or notebooks to write down the ideas generated by the participants.
  4. There should be a source of hydration. This is ideally water and drinks rich in sugar and caffeine.

Phase 2: Development of the Brainstorming Session

Once all the initial preparations have been made, it is time to start the session. Brainstorming is made up of four stages: warm-up, idea generation, idea improvements, and evaluation.

#1 Problem Statement

It is time to start brainstorming. At this point you must:

  1. Explain the purpose of the session to the participants.
  2. Set a maximum duration of the brainstorming session.
  3. Indicate a maximum or minimum number of ideas that you want to achieve.
  4. Remember the basic rules above.

Having said that, participants should begin to unleash their imagination and say the ideas they come up with freely to solve the problem.

#2 Idea Generation

Before starting to brainstorm, it is necessary to break the ice between the participants of the session. This is important to encourage better collective functioning during the brainstorm and avoid possible tensions between the participants.

It is common to use games and/or tests to do this. Once the game is over, it is time to start generating ideas that can solve the problem(s) previously raised.

#3 Analysis and Choice

With this last step the ideas are analysed and the most appropriate / interesting one is chosen to solve the problem posed at the beginning of the session and, therefore, the brainstorming session is terminated.

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