---
name: brainstorming
description: Use when asked to run a brainstorming session well — quantity-over-quality, non-judgmental atmosphere, timeboxing, and capture technique — the foundational technique within the broader creative-thinking toolkit (see creative-thinking).
---

# 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.