Top 10 Brainstorming effective techniques for your team

Brainstorming is a process that helps you in coming up with solutions for many different problems. While the traditional method of brainstorming is to take a pen and note your ideas until you come up with a solution. Sometimes this gets very boring and most of the time people fail to produce many ideas.

Top 10 Brainstorming effective techniques

Daniel Guajardo

Chief Executive Officer

Andres Rodriguez

CMO at Instagantt

Nowadays people are introducing new fun ideas for effective brainstorming. The best part is that these brainstorming ideas not only are beneficial for the productivity of your employees. They can also be very beneficial for increasing the brainstorming senses of your employees along with the progress of your business.

Let’s take a look at some of the best brainstorming effective techniques available, so you can select the best fit for your team:

1. Mind Mapping.

This is an effective way of getting a solution to any problem. Here all you need to do is to know what problem you are facing and your goal. After finding the goal and the task, you can simply create a map between things related to each other by starting from the task and proceeding towards the goal.

One benefit of this method is that many online tools can help you in easily getting the solution to all your problems. In an office, you can also create competition between telling the person with the best map will be the winner. This will encourage people to reduce the less profitable things in their maps. It will also be very beneficial for getting a solution to certain problems.

Benefits of this method.

This technique of brainstorming has the following benefits.

  • Improvement in thinking ability.
  • People will know their abilities.
  • Promotes competition between individuals.

2. SWOT analysis.

SWOT is the abbreviation of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This analysis is a type of brainstorming that can be done for teams and individuals for a specific project. For any project or problem, the subject will consider these 4 things according to their abilities regarding the object. After the analysis, the subject will be able to know if they can tackle the problem.

While the analysis, the person or group of people can also come up with the solution to the problems assigned.

Benefits of this method.

This technique of brainstorming has the following benefits.

  • People will be encouraged to think about themselves.
  • After the analysis, people will be able to know a lot about themselves

3. Star bursting.

If you know a team that tends to overlook certain aspects of a certain problem, this method of brainstorming can be very beneficial for them. It requires the team to start making questions about the problem instead of finding the answers to the problem.

In this way, the team will be able to know answers to the most important questions about the task and the answers to those problems will guide towards the solution to the problem. The best method of this technique of brainstorming is that the team answers the “5 W’s”. This is why it is one of the top 10 brainstorming effective techniques.

Pros of this technique of brainstorming.

The following are the benefits of this technique of brainstorming.

  • Teams will be able to know what they are missing about a certain problem.
  • Discussion about the questions will promote communication among different people.

4. Rapid Ideation.

This method of brainstorming is also on our top 10 brainstorming effective techniques list because it is unique as compared to other methods. In this way of brainstorming, the team or individuals are informed about the problems of the project, the deadline for the project, and the budget.

After telling them the problems, they are asked to provide the solution to that problem in a limited time. For the solution, they can put their ideas on paper or anything according to their choice.

The amazing thing about this method is that the time limitation of this method helps people in generating ideas quickly. The quick-thinking can come up with some of the greatest ideas.

Benefits of this method.

This technique of brainstorming has the following benefits.

  • Discussion can provide better ideas in teams.
  • Short deadlines for ideas help in developing quick thinking.
  • No need of filtering ideas helps people to provide their true ideas without changing them.

5. Round Robin Brainstorming.

This method uses the round-robin algorithm of problem-solving for getting the solution to a specific problem. It includes people sitting in a circuit and as the task is introduced, one of the people has to give their idea according to the problem. After one person presents the idea, the next one discusses the flaws/improvements in that idea and adds their idea to that person’s idea.

This process is carried on until every person gets their turn. 

This is a very effective way of brainstorming as people have to think according to the ideas of others and implement their ideas according to the ideas of others. This is one of the quickest and best methods for providing the solution to complex problems as it includes the involvement of several minds.

Pros of this technique of brainstorming.

The following are the benefits of this technique of brainstorming.

  • Thinking ability of people increases.
  • Promotes discussion and communication.

6. Reverse Brainstorming.

Unlike the traditional brainstorming, this method of brainstorming will make people find the problems that they can create for a specific reason. AS they know the problems, they will come up with solutions to those problems and this will help in getting the solution to that problem.

This method of brainstorming is based on “how can I cause this problem?” as the causes and the problems that can be faced will be broken down in smaller parts, it will be very easy to solve the problems. This brainstorming technique is part of our top 10 brainstorming effective techniques because this can be done individually or in groups.

Pros of this technique of brainstorming.

The following are the benefits of this technique of brainstorming.

  • In group activities, the communication will be promoted.
  • With promoted communication, the communication skills of employees will be enhanced. This will be very helpful to them.

7. Stepladder Technique.

In this method of brainstorming, many people are told about a specific problem. They are then given time and the discussion starts from an idea of 2 people and continuously people are added to the discussion one by one.

This helps in giving the best idea by combining the ideas and solutions of everyone. This is the reason why this method is included in our list of top 10 brainstorming effective techniques.

Benefits of this method.

This technique of brainstorming has the following benefits.

  • Helps in developing the best solution to a problem by considering different ideas.
  • A lot of communication is involved which means different people can enhance their communication skills.

8. Wishing or Dreaming.

This way of brainstorming asks people to think and create scenarios in their minds where they are thinking about almost impossible things. As everyone will have their thinking, they will come up with different ideas and this will be very helpful in getting a unique idea.

This is achieved by letting people think about how their imagination can be broken down in a set of ideas and how they can solve the problem for each idea. This process of solving after thinking can also be conducted in teams but it is optional.

Pros of this technique of brainstorming.

The following are the benefits of this technique of brainstorming.

  • Encourages people to achieve the impossible.
  • Increases the thinking capabilities of individuals.
  • Group discussion and problem-solving can help in promoting discussion.

9. Forced connections.

This way of brainstorming includes some very different things and people are asked to think about how they can work together or how they can be integrated to provide a solution to different problems. This includes having thought at a meeting or their images in any form.

With the help of critical individual thinking, people can come up with very interesting scenarios. One of them can be the problem solver for the project.

Benefits of this method.

This technique of brainstorming has the following benefits.

·       A unique type of brainstorming can promote silly but functional results.

·       Can improve creativity in individuals and teams.

10. Brain Writing.

This technique of brainstorming includes people to think and produce their ideas. Each person isasked about their idea and presents their idea, and nobody discusses the ideas.This individual way of thinking and presenting the ideas can help provide someof the best solutions to a specific problem.

Pros of this technique of brainstorming.

The following are the benefits of this technique of brainstorming.

·       A great method for expressing ideas for the introverts.

·       People can express their pure ideas.

Conclusion.

While a problem might seem almost impossible to solve, brainstorming is a technique that can help in finding a solution to that problem easily. With these top 10brainstorming effective techniques, you and your employees can easily find the solution to their problems.

Apart from finding the solution to the problems, these top 10 brainstorming effective techniques can also be very helpful in enhancing the thinking abilities of everyone in a fun way.

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