Run creative brainstorms.
Brainstorms are fast paced, high intensity creative sessions. Follow these 5 tips to make sure your session is generative, and you walk away with fresh ideas and insights.
Before the session make sure you read How to set up a Brainstorm.
1. Make the environment engaging. The room should be stimulating. Put some candy and a mixture of colorful tactile items (e.g. squeezable balls) at every table and provide strong visual stimulus (e.g. pictures that relate to the topic and/or provide visual prompts for the ideation rounds in tip 3).
2. Break the ice first. The group needs to feel relaxed and comfortable. If you have them in sub-teams, then have them get comfortable within their team by doing a small exercise or sharing something about themselves.
3. Ideate in rounds. If you have a 2-hour meeting plan for 3-4 rounds of rapid (e.g. 10 minute) ideation with clear breaks between. IN those breaks share a small selection of the ideas to stimulate more creativity and excitement. For each round provide a different prompt to help people to look at the problem from different angles. This can either be done by having each sub-team do the same prompt sequence, or have each group do different sequences. Participants can write ideas on large post-its or you can use electronic tools like MIRO.
4. Have your sub-teams silently group ideas and then label ideas. Let each team group their ideas when they are similar - and give them permission to move an idea from one group to another during this sorting. Then ask them to give a pithy name to each grouping. This physically and mentally helps to identify emerging themes and connections.
5. Finish with quick polls, but no decisions. You shouldn’t decide which ideas to move forward with in the session. That synthesis is best done later by a small group of 2-3. However, you should find out where the energy of the room is and determine which ideas and/or themes are most exciting to the participants as this will help your synthesis and decisions later.
