Brainstorming techniques: 10 methods that work, and how to run each

Ten brainstorming techniques

• 1. Free writing Set a timer for five to ten minutes and write about the problem without stopping or editing. Spelling, sense and judgement are off. The point is to get past the first, obvious ideas, which usually run out around minute three; what you write after that is where it gets interesting. Good for working alone.
• 2. Mind mapping Write the topic in the centre of a page and draw a branch for each theme that comes to mind, then branches off those. Because it's spatial, it shows gaps and connections a list hides. Good when the topic is broad and you don't yet know its shape. See our guide to making a mind map.
• 3. SCAMPER Take something that exists and ask seven questions of it: what could you Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate or Reverse? Each question forces a different kind of change. Good for improving a product, a process or an offer.
• 4. Brainwriting (6-3-5) Six people each write three ideas in five minutes, pass the sheet to the next person, who builds on them, and repeat. It gets ideas from everyone at once, so the loudest voice doesn't set the direction. Good for groups with a mix of confident and quiet people.
• 5. Reverse brainstorming Ask how you could make the problem worse, or how you could guarantee failure, and list the answers. Then turn each one around into a way to solve the real problem. It's easier to think of ways to break something than to fix it, and the flipped answers are often ones you wouldn't have reached directly.
• 6. Starbursting Instead of answering, generate questions: who, what, where, when, why and how, around the idea or the problem. You find out what you don't know before you commit to an answer. Good early in a project, or when an idea feels solid but you can't say why.
• 7. Rolestorming Take on someone else's view and brainstorm as them: a customer, a competitor, a ten-year-old, an expert from a different field. It's a quick way out of your own assumptions. Good when a team keeps producing the same ideas.
• 8. The worst possible idea Deliberately come up with terrible ideas, then look inside each for what makes it terrible, and what that would look like in the opposite direction. It removes the pressure to be good, which is what stops most people from starting.
• 9. Forced connections Pick something unrelated (an object, an industry, a random word) and ask how it could connect to your problem. A restaurant booking system meets a library; a pillow meets an alarm clock. Most connections are nonsense, and a few are ideas you'd never have had on purpose.
• 10. Six Thinking Hats Edward de Bono's method has the group look at an idea through one angle at a time: facts, feelings, caution, benefits, creativity and process. Everyone wears the same hat at once, so a discussion doesn't turn into people defending positions. Good for judging ideas after you've generated them.

How to run a brainstorm that works

1. Narrow the question first. “How do we grow?” produces vague answers. “How could we get twenty more people to try the product this month without spending money?” produces ideas. Spend the first five minutes on the question.
2. Separate generating from judging. Ideas die when they're criticised as they appear. Generate first, with no comments allowed, then judge. If you do both in one pass, you only ever hear the safe ideas.
3. Aim for quantity. Set a number, such as thirty ideas in twenty minutes. The first ideas are the ones everyone else has also had, and quantity is what gets you past them.
4. Go for a mix of near and far. Close ideas improve what you have and are easy to act on. Far-out ones come from other fields and are risky but occasionally change the whole problem. Ask for both on purpose.
5. Choose with criteria. Before you vote, agree what matters: cost, speed, how well it fits the people you're serving, how easily you could test it. Then rank against the criteria, not against how much each idea charmed you.
6. Test the survivor cheaply. Pick the idea you'd most like to be true, and find the smallest experiment that could prove it wrong. A conversation, a mock-up or a one-week trial will tell you more than another meeting.

Alone or in a group?

Groups are better at building on each other's ideas and at catching holes, but a group in one room often produces fewer ideas than the same people working separately and pooling the results, mostly because only one person can talk at a time and people hold back. A reliable pattern is to brainstorm alone first, bring the lists together, and then build and judge as a group.

Where Ideaful fits

Ideaful turns several of these techniques into things you do on a canvas. Typing a thought and watching it branch is mind mapping with the first branches done for you. Asking for close and far ideas builds in the mix of near and far-out. Merge is forced connections: push two ideas together and get the one thing they become. Review has critics attack an idea, a cousin of reverse brainstorming and the cautious hat. Research checks who's already doing it, and a brief gives you the cheap first test.

You can try it with no account: type a thought in the box above and you get a free spark.