5 Types of Brainstorming to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

Coming up with new ideas isn’t always easy. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to think of topics to blog about this week, where you want to go on vacation next year, or how to come up with romantic dinner ideas. Many people find the best way to solve problems like these is to sit down and spend time brainstorming.

Here are five types of brainstorming techniques that can help get your creative juices flowing:

Brainwriting. Brainwriting is a type of brainstorming that works best with a group of people who write down their ideas and put them in a pile or share them with the group. Suppose you’re trying to plan a destination family reunion, so you need to find a location where everybody can meet and then plan activities, meals, and excursions for the whole family. Use brainwriting as a way to get the family to work together to create ideas. They can all include their favorite locations, places they haven’t been to yet but would like to go, a favorite movie location, or whatever else they feel would be useful. You can use online meeting tools to collaborate with everyone in the group, so you have a single location where all the ideas are consolidated.

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Online brainstorming. Similar to brainwriting, you can easily collaborate with people from all over the world by using online brainstorming. Create a document that everyone can use to contribute their ideas. One of the benefits of brainstorming ideas on a collaborative document is that everybody can draw inspiration from each other’s ideas and continue to grow the idea pile. It becomes a fluid space where ideas take shape into a solution that works for everyone.

Stop-and-go brainstorming. We don’t always have days, weeks, or months to come up with solutions to problems. Idea generation techniques with brainstorming sometimes call for much faster problem solving than asking friends or family members to throw ideas into a virtual pile. If you’re in a time crunch, stop-and-go brainstorming might be the best technique for you.

Stop-and-go brainstorming works best when you can get everyone in your group together in person or over a virtual meeting to talk things over. Set a time limit for everyone to take five to ten minutes to brainstorm their own ideas. Once time is up, spend time going over ideas and deciding what you want to move forward with. If you feel it’s necessary to have another session, set a timer and go at it again.

Two people brainstorming at a desk with laptops.

“We don’t always have days, weeks, or months to come up with solutions to problems.”

Starbursting. Sometimes we try brainstorming ideas without really knowing the endpoint we’re trying to reach. Starbursting is a great way to help shape your journey to a solution. Let’s revisit planning a family reunion. Consider things like:

What kind of amenities do we want?
What kind of activities do we want nearby?
Are there any special needs in the family?
Is there a place we haven’t been to that we’d like to?
When are we available for this trip?

If you’re having a hard time coming up with questions that need answering, try starting with a who, what, when, where, why and how approach. Answering each of these questions can help you start to shape what you’re really looking for with your brainstorming session.

Mind mapping. Building a mind map and sharing it is a great way to create a visual of what you’re thinking. You start by putting your main topic in a circle in the middle of a page, then build out other circles around it with ideas that support the topic. To continue with planning a reunion, you would put “Family Reunion” in the center circle and have the next level of circles include things like “Amenities,” “Activities,” “Needs,” and “Locations.” Beyond the second level, you would start attaching more ideas and continue to get more specific as you move farther out from the middle of the map.

Mind mapping can help to create new associations and get you thinking outside the box as you’re more focused on individual aspects of the bigger picture. It’s like going from looking at the forest as a whole to focusing on individual trees and their branches.

Now, that you have a few ways to get those creative juices flowing, go ahead and start brainstorming ideas for your next big event, vacation destination, or just some healthy family meals. Whatever it is that you need ideas for, brainstorming can help.