Brainstorming Brilliance — 10 Top Tips
If you can’t come up with a great decision, it’s time to brainstorm! You may do it yourself or together with colleagues. To optimise results, you need to consider what and why you are brainstorming. You need a certain plan.
Collabio Spaces team shares 10 tips for creating truly new ideas.
Let’s go! ;)
#1 — Consider the ‘first principles’ approach
The founder of Space X and Tesla adheres to the first principles method while looking for something new. He believes that for this, we need to identify the fundamental truth of an issue and continue from there, not compare this issue to several past problems.
He says, “I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. With first principles, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths… and then reason up from there.”
Many innovations were introduced using this method. For example, cars are not improved versions of horse carriages and smartphones are not enhanced analogue phones.
Conclusion: When brainstorming new ideas, focus on your project and its core objectives, rather than enhancing something you already have.
#2 — Set boundaries to your brainstorming session
Our energy has its limits, and our brain should take a rest before every next endeavour. Without rest, you’ll spend time in vain struggling to find even the smallest idea. Having an outlined route will pave the way to your goal.
Create an agenda for your session and focus on these questions:
- How long will it last — 10 minutes, 30 minutes or an hour?
- Can you eliminate all possible distractions during the session?
- How many ideas do you want to create — three, five, 10 or even more?
- Can ideas be sorted into categories?
Conclusion: Having these limits set, you’ll know when it’s time to stop and whether you’ve met (or even surpassed) expectations.
#3 — Change your habitual environment
Inspiration is about stimulation. Coming up with something new often comes when outside of your habitual routine or settings. Small changes to your surroundings can awaken new neural connections, activating the imagination. At your desk, everything is familiar, meaning there are fewer sources of inspiration. To diversify ideas and muses, welcome some changes!
Walk around the nearby park, enjoy birds singing and flowers flourishing (May is a perfect month to try this out!) Listen to a new genre of music, or simply work in a different spot of position. If you’ve been sitting at your desk for the whole day, take a quick run to recharge before getting to the brainstorm session.
Conclusion: Small changes to your working routines can bring about BIG thinking.
#4 — Use tools for finding trends and new keywords
Google Trends, Ahrefs, Moz and other keyword research services are useful for discovering popular ideas. If you haven’t yet, you should give it a try.
These services suggest entire phrases. They provide insights into what people are looking for and what is extremely popular right now.
The good news is that some are completely free, for example, Google Trends. Enter your query in the search bar to retrieve popularity stats, interests by region, similar topics and related queries. The latter is what you need for your brainstorming session.
Conclusion: Search for ideas using professional tools, among which some are completely free!
#5 — Spy competitors
When you work on something creative — be it new promo content, a video script, description for your app, a couple of code lines — but have no ideas coming to mind, find inspiration from what others have done.
Sure, this won’t drive so much innovation as the first point on this list, however, you’ll get results asap.
Look at what your competitors do. Don’t copy, as that’s unfair, but grab the best practices of others. This will help initiate your own creative flow and even trigger new thinking for them. Even if you don’t discover ingenious thinking, researching the current activities of competitors is always beneficial for business, and this activity won’t be conducted in vain.
Conclusion: Check out what others do and treat this knowledge as a resource for your own inspiration. Get inspired but beware of plagiarism!
#6 — Stay positive (not negative)
Creative endeavours are hard to come by without a positive attitude. If you’re not in the mood to generate ideas or problem solving, take a break and relax until you feel the readiness for another strive.
Speed the process up with positive thinking. Remind yourself of your professional skills and experience, think of your previous successes at work. Believe that it is possible to find alternate solutions for common problems.
Conclusion: Negative thinking keeps you away from creativity. Look for the positive in your own experiences and past victories.
#7 — Create more questions, not answers
People commonly look for solutions while brainstorming. It helps to shift your approach to looking for new questions, not answers. One question will always be followed by another, keeping the possibilities open. This is rarely the case if you focus on the affirmative answer. Ask yourself what the alternatives are: are they better and what do they lack?
Creating a great variety of questions will boost productivity and provide you with a choice for possible vectors of thinking. All in all, you may come to a solution which you hadn’t imagined before.
Conclusion: Brainstorming questions enriches your thinking and takes you to places you hadn’t ever considered.
#8 — Welcome even the wildest ideas
Could people from the 19th century know that the person will be sent to space someday? Could people from the 70s imagine that we’ll be able to stay in touch with anyone, anywhere, using a tiny phone? Could they know that it will be possible to work remotely with a mobile office in a pocket? Surely, no!
So, if you have an idea that doesn’t fit modern times, keep it! Write it down, add it to your list. Maybe someday, it will become reality! And in the meantime, let it boost creativity and inspire you to create several fresh thoughts!
Conclusion: Don’t discard ideas, especially not the exciting and wild ones!
#9 — Generate as many ideas as you can
While you’re in the flow and are generating an opening after opening, don’t stop! Even if your schedule only allocated half an hour for this. Seize the moment and catch your wave of creativity!
Write down everything and analyse it afterward. You can come back to your list at the end of the day. Don’t interfere with your inspiration — enjoy it!
Conclusion: Adhere to the schedule, but extend the brainstorming session time if you feel the momentum.
#10 — Combine individual and teamwork
Do things faster and use collective wisdom to make the most of results. Shape your innovations together. The saying “Two heads are better than one” did not emerge without a reason. Not so long ago, we talked about the fact that many people feel infuriated by the word “synergy”, but sometimes it is simply necessary to create an ideal.
To optimize ideas, incorporate the different perspectives and insights, finding strengths and weaknesses, sharing different approaches and embrace teamwork. Imagine how your resources will multiply if you work together. We took this idea into account when creating Collabio Spaces, as you can invite your peers and their inputs into your documents. With teamwork, comes the power of several minds producing ideas simultaneously!
Conclusion: Stop suffering in attempts to reinvent the wheel, connect the team — brainstorm together and create new universes!
