How to Brainstorm Effectively

What is online brainstorming?

Online brainstorming is a powerful tool for unlocking creativity and collaboration in the digital age. By increasing participation, enabling real-time collaboration, and allowing for digital idea capture and sharing, online brainstorming can help teams generate better ideas and work more efficiently. Whether you’re working remotely or in a traditional office setting, online brainstorming can help take your ideation process to the next level. Here are some benefits of online brainstorming:
 

Increased Participation

One of the biggest advantages of online brainstorming is that it allows for increased participation. Traditional brainstorming sessions are often limited to a few individuals who are physically present in the same location. However, with online brainstorming tools, participants can join from anywhere in the world, as long as they have an internet connection.
 

This opens up the possibility for a diverse range of perspectives and ideas to be shared. Online brainstorming can also help introverted team members who may not feel comfortable speaking up in traditional group settings to contribute their ideas.
 

Real-Time Collaboration

Another benefit of online brainstorming is the ability to collaborate in real-time. Traditional brainstorming often involves a whiteboard or flip chart, which can be difficult to capture and share in real-time. However, with online brainstorming tools, ideas can be shared and discussed in real-time, allowing for immediate feedback and collaboration.
 

This can be especially useful for teams working in different time zones, as it allows for asynchronous collaboration without the need for long email threads or delayed responses.
 

Digital Idea Capture and Sharing

Finally, online brainstorming allows for ideas to be captured and shared digitally. This means that ideas are less likely to be lost or forgotten, and can be easily shared with team members who were not present during the brainstorming session.
 

Online brainstorming tools often have built-in features for organizing and categorizing ideas, making it easy to review and prioritize them later. This can save time and improve the efficiency of the brainstorming process.
 

What are Channels?

In the context of online brainstorming, channels are virtual spaces where participants can share and discuss ideas related to a specific topic or theme. Channels can be created for anything from project-specific brainstorming sessions to general ideation around a company’s mission and values.
 

By creating channels, participants can easily navigate through different topics and ideas, rather than having to sift through a large pool of information. Channels also enable participants to focus on specific areas of interest, which can help generate more targeted and relevant ideas.
 

How to Use Channels for Online Brainstorming

To use channels effectively for online brainstorming, it’s important to establish clear guidelines and objectives for each channel. This includes defining the purpose of the channel, identifying the target audience, and outlining any specific parameters or constraints for the ideation process.
 

Once the channel is established, participants can begin sharing their ideas and collaborating in real-time. This can include anything from text-based messages to multimedia content, such as images, videos, and audio recordings.
 

Channels also provide a platform for ongoing discussion and feedback. Participants can respond to each other’s ideas, ask questions, and provide suggestions for improvement. This helps to create a dynamic and collaborative environment that fosters creativity and innovation.
 

If you’re looking for an efficient and user-friendly tool for online brainstorming, Spike is a great option to consider. Spike is an team chat app that offers several features specifically designed to streamline online collaboration and brainstorming.
 

One of the key features of Spike is its ability to turn emails into conversational threads, making it easy to follow the flow of ideas and discussions. This can be especially useful for brainstorming sessions where multiple participants are sharing their thoughts and feedback. Spike’s use of Groups, Channels, and Collaborative Notes also make it ideal for online brainstorming.
 

Benefits of Using Channels for Online Brainstorming

Using channels for online brainstorming offers several benefits. First and foremost, it helps to streamline the ideation process by organizing ideas into specific topics and themes. This makes it easier for participants to navigate through the brainstorming process and identify relevant ideas.
 

Channels also help to foster collaboration and feedback. By providing a platform for ongoing discussion, participants can build upon each other’s ideas and refine their thinking over time. This can lead to more creative and innovative solutions.
 

Finally, channels enable participants to focus on specific areas of interest, which can help generate more targeted and relevant ideas. This can be especially useful for large teams or organizations where there may be multiple areas of focus.

The thought of going to a team brainstorming session might have many people groaning – and rightly so! Despite being in use for more than 70 years, the art of how to brainstorm effectively still escapes most people. The truth of the matter is that when done well, brainstorming sessions can be productive, but what should you do to ensure you’re brainstorming effectively?

How to Perform a Productive Brainstorming Session

Before jumping into some of the steps you should take to perform a productive brainstorming session, consider if this is the correct technique for the task at hand. Brainstorming should be used to field as many ideas as possible, open up new avenues, and create new possibilities. It should not be used to drill down into concepts or plan out tactics, and generally speaking, it will be more helpful at the start of a project when you’re looking into lots of possible directions.

As with any productivity technique, it has its pros and cons. Some common ones are:

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how to perform the most productive brainstorming session possible and maybe overcome some of those cons!

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Prepare Before The Brainstorm

You should never go into a brainstorming session completely unprepared. If you organize the session, make sure to send out a plan in advance with a reminder that people should do a little background research around the topic you’re going to be discussing.

Send links to interesting articles, a couple of videos and pictures, or anything else you can think of to get people thinking about the topic ahead of time.

This is especially important if you know that a team member in the brainstorming session is less confident voicing their ideas. The prep time can give them a chance to note down some thoughts, boosting confidence in delivering them to the group. Of course, it’s best to discourage people from doing all the creativity in advance since this somewhat undermines the point of a brainstorming session.

Similarly, group preparation before the actual brainstorming session can also be beneficial – not just for less confident participants but also for the team. This preparation could include activities like:

Some activities that might work for video conference brainstorming sessions are:

This will help keep people’s focus on the task, idea, or topic at hand in advance of the brainstorm and thus keep the session focussed while allowing for the freedom necessary to generate genuinely new ideas.

Stop Following The Herd Mentality

The herd mentality develops when participants in a brainstorming session feel pressured into agreeing with one idea over another because they believe that is what everyone else in the group thinks is the right choice. This is especially prevalent when there are stronger or more confident speakers, as those who are less sure of themselves may feel the need to “just go along with” the given idea.

This is detrimental to a productive brainstorming session since it limits the quantity and diversity of ideas being put on the table.

One of the best ways to overcome this potential downfall is to designate specific roles to the brainstorming team members. This way, each person feels comfortable, secure, and confident in their role and is more likely to put forward new ideas and challenge old ones.

The thought of challenging ideas can be seen as unfavorable. Still, controlled conflict over ideas is an integral part of brainstorming as it allows for the rapid exchange of ideas, and those systems empower less confident team members to challenge ideas. Which takes us onto our next point…

Encourage a Safe Environment for Throwing Out Ideas

People need to be comfortable in the brainstorming session to share all ideas they have. This will give the space for really innovative suggestions, so it’s a crucial part of effective brainstorming.

Some of the preparation and herd-mentality avoidance mentioned earlier will already be creating a more comfortable environment, but there are some other simple ways to foster inclusiveness, such as:

An essential part of a safe environment is creating boundaries. These enable all participants to feel comfortable sharing their ideas while at the same time knowing that they aren’t going to be caught out by what somebody else says or that they themselves are going to say something out of line.

Whilst these boundaries might seem counterintuitive, they create a more expressive environment in the end and can even help boost creativeness. After all, “necessity is the mother of invention,” and that still holds true today. When you impose limits on yourselves in a brainstorming session, you may well come up with things that you would never have thought about before.

For example, if you’re part of a marketing team and know that you have the means and permission to fly anywhere in the world to shoot a commercial, your ideas are going to conform to that possibility. However, if you limit ideas to your own city? Your own street? Your own office? Well, now you’re thinking outside of your comfort zone, and that’s when you’re going to get some originality.

Play Word Association Games (and Others!)

Even with the greatest structure in the safest environment, brainstorming sessions can still be a little boring if it’s just a bunch of people sitting around a conference table presenting ideas. Think of some ways to make it productive and fun! Word association is a simple option for generating lots of new ideas in a fast and fun way. Here’s how:

This is a great way to produce a huge quantity of ideas, and this “quantity” is key.

Quantity Over Quality is Key for Productive Brainstorming

This isn’t Shark Tank. You don’t have to tear down every idea that comes along to make sure it’s 100% solid. A brainstorming session is about getting those first ideas rolling in, so quantity is much more important than quality at this point. This will allow for a broad range of leads that can then be analyzed and developed at a later stage.

Activities such as word association are a great way to do this and think about imposing a time limit for how long your team can spend on any single idea. This will force people to keep thinking up new things—remember, you can always come back to them later!

Brainswarming – A New Approach to Consider

Brainswarming is a different type of group ideation. Individuals silently come up with new ideas on their own and then add them as notes to a structured graphic, something like a tree of notes mapped together. It is designed as a more efficient form of brainstorming as it cuts out the time-consuming aspects of a traditional storm, such as verbally presenting.

Brainswarming can be especially useful in the digital work age when talking over one another on a video call can become very tiring, very quickly. Since brainswarming relies on short notes in a graphical form, this is the ideal format for a platform that offers collaborative online notes. All the most highly recommended productivity apps for iOS should have collaborative notes. Spike has teams at its core with online notes allowing for group brainswarming wherever your individual members might be.

Brainswarming could also be a much better solution for members of the team who are less confident in public speaking or uncomfortable presenting ideas since it separates them slightly through the use of notes. That said, a mix of tactics, such as including brainswarming within a broader brainstorming session, might prove most effective when trying to include all personalities.

Summary of How to Brainstorm Effectively

Overall, an effective brainstorming session is one that produces a large number of ideas, very quickly, within a safe environment. This must be fostered as part of your broader company culture, but there are specific ways to induce positive sessions such as the inclusion of word games, techniques such as brainswarming, and through the use of different mediums such as digital whiteboards and collaborative notes.

Everyone should walk away happy from the most productive brainstorming sessions, and you can then follow up by developing the best ideas further.

For more information on how to leverage digital tools for productivity, check out the Spike blog today or Tweet us @SpikeNowHQ and let us know what tools and techniques you use to brainstorm.