How to bring creative and divergent thinking to brainstorms

Some of the best fun I had when I worked as an in-house content producer was hosting creative brainstorms for content marketing ideas. My team and I nailed down a really successful format using a range of creative thinking techniques, some wackier than others.

While I have mostly used this method to generate ideas for blog articles, it also works for other ideas – campaigns, digital tools, new products – anything really!

Brainstorming is all about divergent thinking, which means reaching outwards in many directions. When it comes to choosing which ideas to actually use, you’ll be employing convergent thinking – the exact opposite approach to narrow your focus. Both stages are vital, but it’s important to keep them distinct. My rule during at least the first half of a brainstorming session is ‘no buts’, because negativity can be poison to creativity.

Another important note before I dive into the tips: brainstorms should absolutely not be reserved only for ‘creative’ types. Everyone and anyone can come up with great ideas, and sometimes the best ideas come from people with an external perspective.

1. Ask everyone to come prepared for creative thinking with a few ideas

If you want a bunch of original and diverse ideas, it’s important to do what you can to avoid the ‘groupthink’ that sometimes infects group brainstorm sessions.

I think the best way to do this is to give out a (clear, condensed) brief before the session and ask everyone to come along with a few ideas. This way, everyone gets a chance to bring their unique perspective to the problem, especially quieter individuals who might feel less comfortable speaking up. Plus, it primes everyone to fully engage once the session starts.

When I hosted brainstorms at Deakin University, we shared our individual ideas first-up after the warmup (which I’ll go into below), before progressing into more collaborative brainstorming. I found it worked best to keep everyone engaged when we went around the circle and each shared one idea, one at a time. Often, an idea would spark a discussion or lead someone to ask a question, which was great. But at this stage we stuck strictly to the first rule of divergent thinking: ‘no buts’. Because nothing spoils the magic of a good creative session like someone piping up with reasons why the idea wouldn’t work.

Another interesting approach is to get everyone to write down their individual ideas and dump them at the door on the way in. This way your session is guaranteed to go beyond the obvious.

2. Start the brainstorm session with a warm-up

An effective group experience depends on a positive dynamic, so I can’t stress enough how important it is to set the scene with a good introduction and warm-up.

People will arrive at your brainstorm session with other things on their mind – straight out of another meeting, swamped with emails, on a deadline. It’s always worth taking the time to set the mood, let everyone relax and submit themselves to the brainstorming experience.

Depending on your topic, you might need to start by sharing a bit of contextual information about the problem you’ll be brainstorming and reassure everyone that all ideas will be valid.

Next, get playful! The idea is to stimulate divergent, out-of-the-box thinking. There are lots of crazy things you can do, but my favourite isn’t too daunting for anyone new to this kind of thing. Ahead of the session, ask everyone to bring along a random object. For the warmup, go around the room and have each person:

• Introduce themselves and their object

• Describe the most useful use for the object

• Describe the least useful use they can think of for their object.

For example: This hairclip is great for holding my hair out of my face, but it wouldn’t be great to catch a fish with. This photo frame reminds me of my lovely family, but it wouldn’t help me if I needed to jumpstart my car.

It’s silly and nonsensical, but that’s the point. Everyone loosens up with a laugh and their minds start wandering into creative places.

3. Share the responsibility of capturing creative ideas

Once discussions ramp up, it can be tricky for a scribe at a whiteboard or butcher’s paper to capture everything in a way that’s memorable and useful.

I liked how we democratised this at Deakin by getting everyone to write their individual ideas down themselves. We used handheld agile cards and thick black sharpies, which forced us to distil each idea into a clear, short sentence. Everyone stuck their own ideas up on the wall with little bits of tape – it was all very visual and kinaesthetic.

That said, these were the pre-Covid olden days, and brainstorms were always in-person. If you’re doing it remotely – and I absolutely think remote brainstorms can work fine – I suggest a shared spreadsheet or similar tool that everyone can access themselves.

Then afterwards, the individual organiser needs to take responsibility for following up with anyone whose documented ideas need more fleshing out. But don’t leave it more than a day or so or the magic will be forgotten!

4. Work together to reach the next level of creative ideas

Once you’ve got everyone’s individual ideas out of the way (see above), it’s time to squeeze some magic from the group. At Deakin, we experimented with various group brainstorming techniques, and some worked better than others. To give credit where it's due, many of our ideas came from training sessions Deakin did with Inventium and Hardhat.

Often it works well to do an activity in pairs or smaller groups of three to five (I wouldn’t recommend groups larger than that as quieter voices get lost). If possible, I highly recommend switching up the small groups for each activity to keep refreshing the dynamic. As a participant in brainstorms, I’ve often felt frustrated when asked to do multiple activities with the same partner if I find we’re not particularly gelling.

If you’re looking for big ideas, I’ve found people work well with clear boundaries as part of a somewhat wacky activity. A lot of these require a bit of pre-work by the organiser – all worth it once you see the ideas start flowing. Here are a few I’ve tried and liked:

‘Assumption crushers’

• Give each pair or small group an assumption relevant to the problem they’re brainstorming (e.g. for a university audience, an assumption is ‘you need a good ATAR score to get into uni’)

• Crush the assumption. This means, for the sake of the brainstorm, assume the assumption is false. (e.g. ‘ATAR scores no longer have any power’)

• Generate new ideas based on the ‘new reality’.

What would X do?

• Each pair or small group puts themselves in the mindset of a different celebrity or brand (e.g. Jamie Oliver, Kim Kardashian, Nike, Disney, etc.) When we did this, we made up cards about a few celebrities and brands that distilled their key characteristics, to help people shift mindsets easily.

• Generate new ideas based on your new persona.

Get fired

• First, have each small group come up with an idea that would get them fired. The crazier the better!

• Second, swap the ideas and have each group take another group’s fireable idea and flip it to create a version that solves the problem being brainstormed – and would let them keep their jobs.

5. Follow up your brainstorm session with convergent thinking

As I mentioned earlier on, convergent thinking shouldn’t pollute the brainstorm itself, but it plays an important role at the end.

Basically, you need to come back to the problem you were originally trying to solve, and work out which ideas give you what you need. At this stage, you’re looking for reasons to say no to some ideas – it could be due to budget, time required, or simply that the idea would need more fleshing out than others.

At Deakin, we found it was often most practical for the core team to filter through the ideas to choose our favourites after the wider group had thrown everything into the divergent thinking session. I personally liked doing this straight after the session – a few of us would be in the zone with the ideas fresh in our minds and we would just crack on with it. But there’s also a lot to be said for taking a break and coming back to it all with fresh eyes. We always had a set of criteria we were weighing the ideas up against, and it helped to have that in front of us while we sorted through them all.

During my busiest time at Deakin, we used to hold brainstorm sessions like these at least once a month. Apart from being a really useful way to get us doing our best work, they worked wonders for getting everyone in the team smiling!