Five ways to brainstorm creative solutions

Eric J. Bravo — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 06:14:30 +0000

The primary purpose of brainstorming is to produce innovative ideas which may give answers to a problem. A group of people come together and come up with creative techniques to generate concepts that may be useful to them in many ways. When you come up as a group and discuss, you will have many solutions, and even if one does not seem to work, you can combine one or more ideas to provide a complete solution.In a brainstorming session, the people in the discussion are encouraged to thinking differently in a way that they explore some of the wildest ideas. The members are also asked to narrow down various possibilities and focusing on a particular concept in depth. Techniques such as written exercises, word games, improvisation and algorithms can be used to make the group come up with more ideas.

The following are some of the ways in which you can brainstorm to bring out creative solutions:

Understanding the requirements:

One of the first steps of brainstorming is to understand the problem. Only when you know what your difficulties are facing, you will come up with a need to identify solutions to those challenges. Without getting a clear outline of the issues that are faced no one will be able to come up with solutions for those problems. When you sit down as a group, try to list our all the requirements and discuss each of them separately.

Make it Visual:

Visualization of the problem can provide a better understanding. The visualization can be as simple as drawing a simple sketch or diagram on a whiteboard. These charts will help everyone to think laterally and come up with many new ideas. You can also arrange a short role play to help the participants grasp the problem in a better way. Visualization will help in getting the message across to the Barnstormers.

Research:

One cannot come up with any solutions if he/she does not know anything about the subject that is being discussed. It is always appreciated when a certain level of research is done before attending the brainstorming session. One of the main reasons to get prior knowledge about the topic that is being discussed is to increase the number of ideas and solutions.

Eliminate the bad ideas:

As a brainstorming session is open to any ideas, everyone can throw in their concepts and thoughts. When lots of ideas are gathered, try to analyse which of those are important and which of them are not necessary. When you eliminate the bad ideas, you can genuinely examine and ponder upon the excellent and challenging ideas.

Think laterally:

You must no think in the path in which the regular crowd would think. Try to think outside the box to bring out right solutions to the current problem.