What separates a good company from a great one? Innovation.
To remain relevant and competitive, you must constantly develop new ways to sell current services and products or make new ones.
And the best way to do so is by collaborating with your team. Brainstorming allows you and your team to generate creative ideas and solve a clearly defined problem.
Although it’s the most common way for groups to produce new ideas, brainstorming isn’t for everyone.
“How come brainstorming doesn’t work for everyone?” you may ask? For starters, having too many different people brainstorming can cause chaos and lead to conflicts among you. Conversely, if there’s only one vocal majority within group collaboration, brainstorming can lead to groupthink, which also hampers creativity.
Because of these limitations, many teams are now looking for alternatives to brainstorming they could use to generate creative ideas.
Here are some of them.
The Sleepover Method.
One of the most common alternatives to brainstorming that companies use today is the sleepover method.
As its name implies, this method utilizes the state in-between sleep and waking up when our minds’ creative engines can speak to our conscious minds very clearly to generate ideas. This state allows us to come up with newer and more innovative ideas.
This method starts with a traditional brainstorming session with your team, which could last thirty minutes to an hour. If there’s a member who can’t join, they could still add their input to the notes.
Once the notes are complete, distribute these to every team member so they can read and sleep on them. The next day, have everyone take fifteen minutes to write down any ideas they can come up with and share them with the group.
The Strolling Method.
Are you and your team up for some exercise while brainstorming? Try the strolling method.
Essentially, this alternative to brainstorming adds walking to your regular brainstorming meetings to help boost your team’s creativity. Besides giving your body a much-needed workout, walking also fosters creativity as it provides the executive part of your brain with something to do so your mind can start to wander.
Like the sleepover method, you begin by conducting a regular brainstorming session with the rest of your team. Once you’ve finished gathering everyone’s ideas, pass the notes to your other team members so they can read through them.
When everyone’s done reading through them, have all your team members take a fifteen to forty-five minute walk outside before convening again. After everyone’s back, you can start discussing any new ideas they may have had during their walks.
The Gamestorming Method.
When we think of brainstorming, we usually see it as a dull meeting where you spend an hour doing largely nothing.
Well, not anymore. Spice up your brainstorming sessions by including gaming exercises in your group meetings.
Playing games is a great way to energize everyone’s minds so you can come up with innovative ideas. It also makes your meetings more fun and lighthearted, so your team can focus on generating creative ideas.
And the best part? You can do these online!
Some games to consider when trying this alternative to brainstorming include:
- Squiggle birds: In this game, your team needs to draw squiggles and then find a way to turn these into birds. This game helps train your team to produce unique and out-of-the-box solutions to problems.
- Idea Swapping: In this game/exercise, your team is given a topic in advance, and each member must produce a brief statement about it. The twist is that you won’t present what you’ve come up with; you must swap with someone else and discuss theirs instead.
The Ambassador Method.
Another of the popular alternatives to brainstorming is the ambassador method.
This method is done by splitting your team into two and then putting them into two breakout rooms. The first team doesn’t speak but quietly jots down their thoughts, while the second team does a standard brainstorming session.
After five to fifteen minutes of deliberation, give the teams about five to ten minutes to organize their thoughts and finish their discussion. Afterwards, the teams can nominate an ambassador to share what they came up with to the other group.
Once they finish their report, they’ll return to their original rooms, and a new round begins. Your team members can now switch teams if they want to.
After five to fifteen minutes, the discussion ends, and they must select a new ambassador again. You can repeat this cycle three times; beyond that, it may have diminishing returns.
Choice Mapping.
Developed by Prof. Sheena Iyengar from the Management Department at Columbia Business School, Choice Mapping is a new alternative to brainstorming that focuses on producing excellent solutions to a problem. It has six steps:
The first step is identifying the problem. Look into your current issue from multiple angles to discover the best solution.
Next, break down the problem into at least five components. Solving these separately are not only easier, but they serve as steps you must take to solve your main problem.
Afterwards, ask yourself: “How do I want to feel after solving this problem?” Knowing your motivation behind wanting to solve the problem goes a long way, as compared to just asking what your goals are.
Next up, when you’re coming up with a solution to your current problem, don’t just look at what your competitors are doing. Try to look at how other industries solve similar problems. And once you’ve gathered enough information, it’s time to choose a solution for each component before connecting them to form a comprehensive new solution.
Finally, proofread your solution by reading it to a friend and asking them to repeat what you said. This is called a “Third Eye Test.”
Any New Ideas?
Even though it’s the most popular method to generate new ideas, brainstorming isn’t the only problem-solving method out there.
Today, there are many other alternatives to brainstorming that are just as effective, if not more so. The ones mentioned above are just a few that you could try to improve your team’s ability to generate creative ideas.
And if you’re still searching for online jobs, you don’t need to brainstorm where to look anymore. Just head to Remote Staff! Our jobs list has a wide range of available positions for you to choose from, so you’ll never run out of options.
Good luck!
