Brainstorming is thought to be one of the most effective ways in which students can generate ideas on a topic. This technique enables them to promote their thinking ability and find out effective solutions to a problem. Under this method, a group of people comes up with thoughts and ideas by jolting them out of their normal ways of thinking. When used during problem-solving, it brings team members' diverse experience into play. What's more, as brainstorming is fun, it helps teammates to bond together in a positive, rewarding environment. Well, here you need to consider that this technique of idea generation is effective only when it’s approached with an open mind and a spirit of judgment. Otherwise, the ideas may plummet, and morale can suffer. Here we have discussed the best techniques for brainstorming:
1. Brain Writing
In this method, the team members are given a topic and asked to write their opinions about that. As this technique eliminates anchoring bias, it is effective in encouraging everyone to share their own ideas. The best benefit of using this technique is that it gives everyone more time to think over their ideas, which is especially helpful for introverted participants.
2. Figuring Storming
This type of group activity generates good results under certain circumstances. Here a team leader asks the group members to put themselves into someone else’s shoe. For instance, if there is a particular question related to political instability, think how Abraham Lincoln would have solved it. This technique works best for teams that find themselves coming across the same challenges for repetitive projects. For example, the disaster management forces develop their strategies after researching the past scenarios.
3. Online Brainstorming
As technology has become part and parcel of our daily life, new businesses do not insist on its employees to remain physically present during a brainstorming session. Rather, they are encouraging them to work remotely by using email and collaboration tools. But by using these techniques back and forth, it becomes difficult to achieve them. Thus, it’s important to create a central location online where team members can collaborate and use cloud-based document storage or an online collaboration tool. Well, these days many great brainstorming tools help make online sessions more of a visual and collaborative experience, so you need not develop special software for this purpose.
4. Rapid Ideation
Sometimes, you need not ponder over a single thought for hours rather a quick scanning of ideas can work better. In this technique, a team leader provides context beforehand with information or questions on the topic, and then allot a certain amount of time to write down as many thoughts or ideas around the topic as possible. The best thing about this style of brainstorming is that it’s completely customizable to meet the team’s demand.
5. Round Robin Brainstorming
This method is more like group discussion where the team members sit around in a circle and speak about the topic one by one. Here each person is given a certain amount of time to speak his mind. The teammates get the freedom to generate more ideas, without being influenced by the assertiveness or dominance of others. With a growing list of others’ ideas for reference, even the introverts gather the confidence to speak in front of all.
6. Starbursting
This form of brainstorming focuses on generating questions rather than answers, and integrates both an individual and a group participation aspects. Here the team leaders challenge the group mates to come up with as many questions as they can. This assures that all aspects of the project are addressed before any task is executed. It's a valuable technique for teams that tend to overlook certain aspects of their projects, and end up rushing to get things done at eleventh hour.
Well, whichever technique of brainstorming you use, coming up with new ideas isn’t easy, and brainstorming sessions aren’t always productive. In that case, you should not give up; rather it’s better to show trust towards your teammates and ask them to come up with valuable ideas next time. It may take time and effort, but brainstorming techniques will surely help you in solving the problem up to some extent. If you are not able to organize some group sessions with your classmates due to loads of pending college projects at hand, then take assignment help Cairns from a reputed company. In this way, you will have enough time to try and practice the above-mentioned techniques.
Summary- Read this article to learn some effective techniques for brainstorming.