I am sure we all have heard or even used brainstorming in our daily life or work. There are a lot of article about brainstorming as well if you haven’t tried it, but in my case, I joined an online course on brainstorming (yes! there is one!). While I don’t have all the information from the course, I do have some notes that I found in my old notebook and decided to put them here so I can review them when I need them. So what are they?

• Brainstorming is a group meeting to propose and generate ideas to solve a stated problem. Make sure to introduce and state the brief clearly. Define a set period of time for the session.
• In doing brainstorming, we should emphasise on Quantity of ideas, rather than the Quality of ideas. So, say everything that you can think of related to the problem. We don’t look for quality first in the early stage of brainstorming.
• Criticism of another person’s idea is STRICTLY forbidden. This is the important one. We have to accept every idea that comes out no matter how foolish it is according to us. Remember point 2 that quantity is more important at this stage.
• No more than 10 people are present, to aid effective group dynamics.
• Have lots of flipcharts, markers, pencils, and paper available.
• Following a brainstorming session, a review should be undertaken to identify ideas or aspects of the concepts generated that have merit for further consideration. This is the stage of elimination after we have all the possible ideas.

Hope this helps and do let me know if it works for you. It works for me 😉

Ciao.