Real Brainstorming

1. Real Brainstorming Often we don’t really carry out the brainstorming (or idea generation) exercise as was originally intended. Follow these pointers to ensure more effective, collaborative, democratic and creative generation of ideas! • Be as creative as you like – it’s easier to tame wild ideas than think up original ideas! • The more ideas suggested the better – you increase the likelihood of coming up with good ones. • Avoid discussing or evaluating your ideas but record all ideas as they are initially expressed – refine later. • Develop and improve each other’s ideas – in combination they might form new and better ideas!

2. Putting brainstorming into practice • Decide on an aspect of the project / group working process that your group needs to generate ideas about. E.g. What tasks are involved in carrying out this project? • Sit comfortably and so that everyone can hear and make eye contact with each other. • Contribute ideas using the technique outlined the previous slide. • Allocate someone, or take it in turns, to write all ideas on a flipchart / white board so that everyone can see them. Alternatively you might use post-it notes which can then be rearranged once the process of building on and refining ideas begins. • When everyone has contributed all the ideas they have start to group ideas into themes. This should generate discussion and more suggestions.