During these unprecedented times, most creatives will find themselves working remotely in an effort to socially distance and help combat the global spread COVID-19. While working from the comfort of your own home does have its benefits, many businesses are finding it difficult to keep creative ideas flowing and team collaboration alive while working remotely, without being able to get every team member in one room for a brainstorming session.
Brainstorming, when done right, can be a powerful tool for making creative magic happen. It can increase your team members’ excitement, engagement and investment in trying to find novel solutions to a problem. But when everyone is working in separate locations, can you create the same atmosphere for success? Read on for Wordsmith’s top 3 tips on how to brainstorm effectively when working from home.
To fully understand how the landscape of traditional brainstorming is changing, we need to see where it all began. Advertising executive, Alex F. Osborn, is considered to be the father of brainstorming. Introducing the idea and basic rules of this collaborative process, in his 1953 book Applied Imagination, he believed that a successful brainstorm should:
1. Defer judgement
2. Build on the ideas of others
3. Hold one conversation at a time
4. Stay focused on the topic
5. Encourage wild ideas
With these five rules remaining largely unchallenged for decades, new research has emerged on how to effectively take these learnings one step further.
1. Embrace the benefits of solo brainstorming
There’s a significant amount of research in the last decade that suggests if a group of people generate their ideas alone first, a wider and potentially richer pool of concepts are likely to emerge.
Individuals perform better than groups, on average. Author and Cognitive scientist, Art Markman, disagrees with Osborn’s traditional rules of brainstorming by claiming that this method leads to a phenomenon known as, “groupthink”. This is where other members of the group will become influenced by one participant’s idea and as a result, prematurely converge the group’s way of thinking. Outspoken thinkers in brainstorming sessions can even cause, “social loafing”, where individuals will simply coast on their contributions and not put in any effort, which in the long run hinders original thinking and even stifles the voices of introverted members. In essence, the effects of groupthink and social loafing can be self-limiting to the range of new ideas you have the potential conjure up if you had just gone solo.
If your team is used to jumping into large creative brainstorming sessions in the office, being remote may actually work to your advantage to break the negative effects of traditional brainstorming and spur on your own creative thinking.
When it comes to brainstorming alone, this is something we at Wordsmith like to call the “writer’s meditative state.” Every creative requires a good dose of volitional daydreaming – that is, constructive daydreaming. During this process, we tap into the unconscious mind and explore fresh creative connections that our conscious minds may have easily dismissed before. When your brain is on autopilot – it lets the mind wander in a space where new, innovative ideas can form. J.K. Rowling, the British novelist best known for her beloved Harry Potter series, admits that one of the best things she ever wrote was on an airplane sick bag. She claims she came up with the names and personalities for the Hogwart’s Houses while cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet.
Solo brainstorming doesn’t mean anxiously sitting in front of blank screen, waiting for a novel solution to appear. There are many tools at your disposal to help you stimulate enough creative ideas to bring to the proverbial table when your boss opens the Zoom gateway to a larger group brainstorming session.
The simple act of jotting down ideas longhand could be enough to get your creative juices flowing, studies claim. According to research from Indiana University, handwriting sparks neural activity in certain areas of the brain, with Neuroscientist, Dr. Claudia Aguirre, commenting that the act of “mindful writing” sparks new found creativity that you could never hope to achieve with the immediacy of typing. So, there you have it, sometimes, the pen is mightier than Microsoft Word.
If all else fails on the path to solo brainstorm enlightenment, get moving. Harvard Professor Dr John Ratey explains that aerobic exercise can do wonders for creative thinking. In his publication Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (2008), he shows there is an inextricable link between exercise and creativity.
Not only does exercise increase blood flow to the brain, but the simple act of running, for example, also leads to an increase of beta-endorphins. This “runner’s high”, allows the person to experience a powerful feeling of invincibility, which in itself encourages a productive space for volitional daydreaming and effective solo brainstorming. So next time you’ve hit a creative wall, taking a socially-distanced 15-minute run around the park could make all the difference.
2. Brainstorm together, but asynchronously
While remote working is pushing us all into a new era of solo brainstorming – we can’t deny the importance of collaborating (if only in the digital space for now) with the most diverse thinkers in your team. After doing your initial solo session, most of Osborn’s five rules of traditional brainstorming are still relevant today. For great ideas to develop, it’s essential that the next step of the brainstorming process includes “building on the ideas of others” and “encouraging wild ideas”. You’d be surprised – the results may have the power to transform your business.
While working from home, Slack is a great place for brainstorming with your team. Simply start a new channel specific to that brainstorm, then allow your team to drop in their ideas once they’ve finished solo brainstorming. This is great for teams who brainstorm better alone but still want a sounding board. You get the best of both worlds – brainstorming in the comfort of your own head while also getting the opportunity to post it when you’re ready for it to be refined or to spark new ideas from others.
When it comes to building on the ideas of others, no one does it better than English-born American footwear company, Reebok. Effectively changing the game of basketball, Reebok created the concept of the Reebok Pump basketball shoe in a simple brainstorming meeting.
A couple of the designers in the brainstorming session had previously worked with medical equipment and diagnostic instruments, specifically including inflatable pumps. They recognised that inflatable splints might prevent injuries in sports by building ankle support into athletic shoes, and so the idea to create an inflatable custom-made basketball shoe emerged.
One of the Design Continuum managers involved in the brainstorming recalled, “The idea of putting an air system into a shoe seemed like magic to Reebok, and to us it seemed like, well, you weld together some film and you put in a little pump and some check valves and some tubing, what’s the big deal? We know how to do this stuff.”
Leaning on your team’s expertise in your brainstorm, could create a recipe for success. Reebok’s shoe was clearly innovative, but it wasn’t a completely new invention. However, thanks to the Design Continuum engineers that were present in the brainstorming session, Reebok created one of its most popular products of all time. It is one thing to know of a technology; but to know how to apply it and adapt it to new settings is quite another – which is why we need the help of a larger group to develop creative ideas and put them into motion.
Utilising the group’s prior knowledge, Reebok were able to design a revolutionary sneaker that heightened their competitive advantage in the athletic shoe market, proving that there really is strength in numbers when it comes to brainstorming. And the results speak for themselves. In its first year of sales, the Reebok Pump accounted for over US$1 billion in revenue, while also gaining wide praise in international press for its creativity.
This is a great example of mimetic creativity – the process of taking an idea from one area or discipline and applying it to another. In certain situations, comparing seemingly disconnected ideas can deepen understanding and spark your creativity – especially during a brainstorming session.
The late co-founder and CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, believed in the power of mimetic creativity and also saw the benefits of looking elsewhere for inspiration through brainstorming with other creative thinkers and entrepreneurs. “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”
3. Use an online whiteboard to track ideas
During this time when we’re all working remotely, it’s impossible to sit in front of a physical whiteboard with all your teammates. However, it does force you to think outside the Expo marker and come up with new, and maybe more productive, ways to brainstorm with a digital whiteboard.
Online whiteboard functionalities can help teams share ideas, concepts and inspirations visually, which ultimately enables the group to reach a consensus faster and improve ideas before moving forward with a project. Most whiteboard apps also offer a number of different templates, where you can drag and drop copy and images, while also being able to use real-time collaboration features like comments, attach files, and even present solo brainstorms to the rest of your team.
Vice president of marketing at HubSpot, Kieran Flanagan, uses Miro with his team when he’s brainstorming remotely. He was quick to comment, “it’s the closest I’ve gotten to the in-person experience of riffing on an idea”.
As the brainstorming session moves from idea generation to evaluation, some initial ideas can be moved to a “parking lot” section of the whiteboard, so the strongest ideas can be developed further. However, after the meeting is over, you may be surprised to see how many creative ideas in the parking lot can be saved in the bank to use at a later date. Digital whiteboard tools that store brainstorming information could be very useful moving forward, even after lockdown. But it’s always important to remember that the most sophisticated tool required here is your brain, not the canvas – don’t let technology get in the way of a perfectly fluid brainstorm session.
There is no doubt traditional brainstorming produces creative ideas and innovation by making new connections, educating team members, and building novel solutions. But as we adapt to a remote style of working, we need to adapt to a new era of brainstorming.
To ensure that we continue to generate a richer pool of ideas while working remotely, it may be more important now than ever before to break the shackles of traditional brainstorming that can cause “social loafing”, hinder original thinking and even stifle the voices of introverted team members. During these uncertain times, the most innovative companies will instead encourage individual creative thinking, asynchronous brainstorming and look towards digital solutions that help store our team’s best ideas in the bank, to promote a steady stream of great ideas in the future.