Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a creative problem-solving technique for generating a large number of ideas in a short period, promoting a free-flowing, non-linear environment that lets diverse perspectives and possibilities actually surface — widely used across business, education, and problem-solving contexts specifically because it's simple to run and reliably produces a wide idea pool to work from.

Key aspects of doing it well

• Quantity over quality — generate as many ideas as possible without evaluating feasibility yet; premature filtering during generation suppresses ideas that might have been valuable once actually explored.
• Non-judgmental atmosphere — no criticism or evaluation during the brainstorming phase itself; save that for a separate, later step.
• Free thinking — actively encourage unconventional, imaginative, even seemingly wild ideas; a session that only produces safe, obvious ideas hasn't really used the technique's divergent-thinking strength.
• Build on ideas — combine or extend others' contributions rather than only generating in isolation; this collaborative building is where brainstorming often produces ideas no individual participant would have reached alone.
• Participation — give everyone a real chance to contribute (e.g. round-robin turn-taking, or equal airtime rules) rather than letting the loudest voices dominate the session.
• Timebox — a set time limit keeps focus and energy up; an open-ended session tends to lose momentum well before it should.
• Capture — document every idea in a visible, accessible format (whiteboard, flipchart, shared doc) so nothing generated is lost before the evaluation phase.

After the session

Evaluate the ideas — brainstorming's suspended-judgment discipline applies specifically to the generation phase; a genuine evaluation step afterward is still necessary and shouldn't be skipped just because the generation phase felt productive.

Common pitfalls

• Evaluating ideas as they're proposed — the single most common way to sabotage a brainstorming session; even mild, well-meant criticism during generation measurably suppresses subsequent idea flow.
• No participation structure — without one, a session defaults to whoever's most comfortable speaking up, missing quieter participants' contributions entirely.
• No capture mechanism — ideas generated but not written down are effectively lost the moment the session ends.
• Never actually running the follow-up evaluation — a captured list of un-evaluated ideas produces no decision and no outcome.

Learn more

• Creative Thinking for the wider technique family brainstorming belongs to.
• Ideation for the general divergent-thinking discipline brainstorming is the most common instance of.