Ever stare at a blank page during a team meeting, feeling your brain short-circuit at the word “brainstorm”? Yeah, me too. You’re not alone in the mental gridlock. But have you ever noticed how, now and then, someone blurts out an oddball idea and—suddenly—the energy shifts? It’s electric. The room sits up straighter. Why does that happen? Because creativity isn’t just a buzzword—it’s the engine that jumpstarts a pile-up of sticky notes into something tangible. And let’s get one thing straight up front: without creativity, brainstorming’s just a way to pass the time eating stale cookies.
The Stuck Problem: Why “More Ideas” Doesn’t Mean Better
Here’s a confession: Early in my career, brainstorming felt like a box to check before the “real work” began. The manager would say, “Don’t filter, throw out any idea,” but the room defaulted to the same safe stuff. “Increase sales.” “New logo.” Yawn. I once sat in a startup meeting where the most creative thing anyone offered was, I kid you not, “Make it blue instead of green.” Flop.
And this isn’t rare. Companies everywhere push for innovation, but most haven’t got a clue how to trigger it. In 2024, a global survey from Deloitte found 61% of employees feel their organizations stifle unconventional thinking. So, if you think your team is the only one recycling old ideas, think again.
Brainstorming works best when it shakes up the usual suspects and lets everyone play in the margins, not the middle.
Unfiltered Creativity: How the Best Ideas Crawl Out
You don’t “do” creativity; you build a space for it. That’s what changes the game. It’s not about dragging more ideas into the room—it’s creating a mood where one weird thought can set off an avalanche.
- Try this: Next time, ask your team to bring the wildest ideas they’re afraid to say out loud. Promise there’s no such thing as “too weird.” Watch what happens.
- Mind mapping on paper beats any app, hands down. Draw big circles, scribble lines, let it look like a crime scene from a detective show you’d binge on Netflix.
- Break the walls. Once, my colleague had us brainstorm in a park instead of a conference room: Birdsong, coffee, grass stains. The number of solid, strange, and usable ideas tripled.
Tech companies get it. Google famously launched “20% time,” letting employees tinker with whatever inspired them. Gmail and AdSense both started as side projects. What made the difference? Not magic—trust in letting creative momentum run its course, even if the outcome was (at first) a hot mess.
Reverse, Analogy, Repeat: Techniques Anyone Can Grab
You want hacks. Here’s what works when brain fog rolls through:
- Throw things into reverse. Start with your endpoint—say, “People love our app”—and work backwards. What cracks in logic appear? That’s where fresh solutions hide.
- Force analogies. Ask, “How is this project like planning a road trip?” It makes you look for shortcuts, speed bumps, and unplanned detours. Suddenly, the path looks different.
- No boundaries. Truly. In my experience, setting zero limits—even on the seemingly dumbest ideas—leads to at least one gold nugget. Apple’s first iPhone, mocked as “hilarious and impossible” on tech forums in 2007, wasn’t born from safe ideas.
- Get physical. Use sticky notes, index cards, LEGOs, whatever. A team at IDEO developed a new toothbrush for kids by playing with toy parts. Tactile experiences stimulate your brain to think in 3D.
Divergent > Convergent: The Messy Road to Genius
When I coach teams, I encourage divergent thinking first. Everyone throws out every idea, big or small, and even the weirdest ones. No judgment. It gets loud. Then, only when the wall’s plastered with options, we swap hats—time for convergent thinking. This phase cuts the nonsense and finds what’s possible.
But here’s the kicker: Most teams skip or rush the divergent step. That’s why the final choices are lukewarm. Give the messy part more time.
You want numbers? Over five years, IBM reported an 18% jump in successful product launches from teams that embraced divergent-convergent brainstorming versus those that “skipped straight to solutions.” That’s the difference between a new hit and a flop.
Breaking Barriers: The Real Work
We all bring baggage into meetings—fear of looking foolish, ego trips, and impatience. Real creativity can’t thrive where people guard their thoughts like a poker game. One strategy: roleplaying.
Sometimes I pick a persona—like, “What would Beyoncé suggest for our brand rollout?” Suddenly, the answers crackle with energy and surprise. Other times, I force myself to explain an idea with a quick story or even a doodle. It makes everything less precious and more malleable.
Structured chaos works, too. Some companies, including Spotify and Zappos, set up sprints where teams have 30 minutes, a specific prompt, and rules (no phones, hats are required, and only visuals are allowed, whatever shakes things up). It’s not about rules—it’s about energy.
- Build psychological safety. You want people to tell the truth, even if the truth sounds bonkers. At Pixar, every “Braintrust” meeting starts with leaders sharing a recent personal mistake. If bosses own up to small failures, others will share unfinished ideas.
Diverse Voices: Where Magic Happens
Look around the next time you’re in a brainstorm. Does everyone look and sound the same? That’s a red flag. The most significant creative leaps I’ve seen come when two people least likely to talk start riffing. I once watched an intern from a customer service school present a suggestion to the product team, drawn from her dad’s food truck business—a solution the engineers would never have imagined on their own.
Remote teams? That’s no excuse. Use asynchronous boards, voice notes, or video “bursts.” Atlassian found in 2023 that remote brainstorms using short video clips outperformed in-person ones, thanks to more introverted folks joining in.
Personal Story Break: My Worst Brainstorm
Picture this—a humid Tuesday afternoon, four execs, one flickering overhead light. Everyone is anxious, watching the clock. The goal: “revolutionary” marketing ideas (“revolutionary” being code for “no one knows what management wants”). Crickets. Someone mutters, “What if we tried, I dunno… billboards in space?” Sarcastic laughter. The meeting ends almost precisely as it started—empty-handed and in a state of annoyance.
Moral of the story? Bad vibes poison creativity. If the room’s flat, morale’s flat, or people feel disposable, you’re better off rescheduling. Work on the energy before you bother with the whiteboard.
Concrete Steps—What Works Every Time
Here’s the shortlist. These don’t always sound clever. But they work.
- Mind mapping: Start messy on paper, not an app.
- Analogies: “How’s our process like a kitchen at rush hour?” Find hidden chaos.
- Reverse brainstorming: Start with your ideal outcome and work backward to identify the steps.
- Roleplay: Pretend you’re a competitor, or a fictional character, or your oldest customer.
- Ditch bad ideas quickly, but give all ideas a chance to breathe first. The first “bad” idea often triggers the best one three steps later.
- Schedule at odd times. Try going out at sunrise or right after lunch. Upset the routine.
- Physical movement. Walk-and-talks or standing brainstorms wake up tired brains.
- Collaboration tools: in 2025, Miro boards and Notion’s AI sketchpad gained double the adoption over classic whiteboards—because everyone gets a say, not just the loudest.
- Celebrate the process. Don’t just clap for final answers. Acknowledge someone’s weird chain of thought along the way.
What Will You Risk?
I used to believe only certain people were “the creative type.” Nonsense. The truth? Anyone gets creative in the right climate, if people are honest, brave, and weird together. Business school didn’t teach me that—a disastrous, silent brainstorm at my first job did.
The result (I said what I said—redundant, but it feels right here): ideas worth a damn show up only when you drop pretense, share honest thoughts, and give strangeness room to breathe.
So here’s my challenge:
Instead of running the same old brainstorm—sitting in silence, scribbling the same three ideas—shake things up. Ask yourself: What’s the weirdest angle my team hasn’t tried? Who in the room doesn’t usually get a word in? What’s the worst that could happen if the next meeting broke the rules a little?
What’s stopping you from making your next brainstorm equal parts chaos and brilliance—on purpose?
Your ideas won’t wait. Why should you?