Thomas Edison put it plainly: "To have a great idea, have a lot of them." Steve Jobs said something similar. "Creativity is just having enough dots to connect... to connect experiences and to synthesise new things."
Both of them are saying the same thing. Your first idea is rarely your best one.
The reason why people you call creative can come up with great ideas easily is that they have had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people.
So the question becomes: how do you get more ideas, faster?
The Most Used Method for Applied Creativity
The answer has a name. It was coined by advertising executive Alex Osborn in the 1940s. He called it brainstorming - using the brain to storm a creative problem, with each person in the room attacking the same objective.
It sounds simple. Most teams think they already do it. Most of them are wrong.
Real brainstorming is a structured process with rules. Break the rules, and you get something that looks like brainstorming but produces far fewer useful ideas.
Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Fail
Here is what kills a brainstorming session before it even starts.
Someone says an idea. Someone else says, "That won't work." The room goes quiet. People stop sharing.
That is it. That is the whole problem.
When people fear judgment, they self-censor. They only say the safe, obvious ideas. The interesting ones, the ones that could actually lead somewhere, stay locked inside people's heads.
Most teams have that one gaffer who has already decided which ideas are worth hearing before anyone has finished their sentence. Or the one who gives you the floor, listens patiently, and then quietly bins everything you said, not because it was bad, but because it was not theirs. Both types do the same damage. The room reads it. People stop sharing. And just like that, the best idea in the session never gets spoken.
The goal of brainstorming is to get more ideas. That means the number one rule is: defer judgment.
The Rules That Actually Work
1. Defer judgment of ideas
Do not evaluate while you generate. These are two different brain modes and they do not mix well. When someone shares an idea, your job is not to assess it. Your job is to write it down.
2. Build on the ideas of others
Instead of saying "that won't work," try asking "how could we make that even better?" This is sometimes called the "yes, and" rule. You take what someone gave you, and you add to it. The idea evolves into something neither person would have found alone.
3. Encourage wild ideas
This one confuses people. Why would you encourage ideas that cannot possibly work?
Because even a bad idea points somewhere useful, a wild idea might show you a direction you had not considered. Someone else in the room might hear it and think of a version that actually works. Wild ideas are not dead ends. They are arrows pointing at unexplored territory.
4. Express ideas visually
Do not just talk. Draw. Sketch. Make a rough model out of whatever is nearby. A sketch that takes thirty seconds can communicate something that would take five minutes to explain in words, and it gives the group something concrete to react to and build on.
And do not stop at sketching. Build sketch models as early as possible. You do not need a finished prototype. Cardboard, foam, tape, anything that makes the idea three-dimensional. The moment something exists in physical form, even crudely, the conversation changes. People can point at it, hold it, and immediately see things that a drawing hides. The sooner you build it, the sooner you learn what is wrong with it and what is worth keeping.
5. Stay focused on the topic
Good ideas are everywhere once you start. The facilitator's job is to keep the group from drifting. One problem at a time.
6. One conversation at a time
Side conversations fracture the group's energy. When three people are talking at once, nobody is building on anyone else. The facilitator manages this. Everyone gets heard, one at a time.
7. Use stimuli - related or unrelated to the topic
Sometimes you need a jolt from outside the problem. A random image, an unrelated object, a word pulled out of the air. These force unexpected connections. Creativity is connecting dots, remember? More stimuli means more dots.
How to Set Up a Session That Actually Works
The environment matters more than people think.
A comfortable room. Four to eight people, small enough that everyone speaks, large enough to get diversity of thought. Paper and Post-its. Coloured markers. A whiteboard. Coffee and snacks, because people think better when they are relaxed.
Give participants homework before the session. Ask them to come with ideas already formed. This is not just a nice-to-have. Research shows that people generate more and better ideas when they think individually first, before being influenced by the group.
Individuals First, Then the Group
Here is the process that works.
Start as individuals. Everyone works alone on the problem. They come up with ideas without hearing what everyone else is thinking. This builds a genuine variety of starting points, different approaches, different angles, and different assumptions about what the problem even is.
Then come together as a group. Each person shares how they approached the problem. Not just the ideas, but the thinking behind them. This is where the magic happens. One person's framing unlocks a connection in someone else's mind. Ideas combine. They get refined. Something better emerges that nobody could have reached alone.
The group goes from quantity and variety to quality and refinement.
What the Research Actually Says
Classic brainstorming has one famous rule: no criticism. But research from Charlan Nemeth at UC Berkeley suggests that allowing debate and even dissent actually produces more ideas, not fewer.
In a study across groups in France and the United States, participants were split into three conditions. The minimal condition gave people almost no guidance, just the problem. The brainstorming condition followed traditional rules: generate freely, defer judgment, and no criticism. The debate condition encouraged participants to argue, challenge, and push back on each other's ideas.
The results were striking and went in one clear direction. The minimal condition produced the fewest ideas. The brainstorming condition produced more. But the debate condition produced the most, by a meaningful margin, and consistently across both countries.
This does not mean you should tear ideas apart the moment they are spoken. It means healthy challenge, the kind that makes people think harder and explore further, is not the enemy of creativity. Groupthink is.
The rule is not "never criticise." The rule is "never dismiss." There is a difference.
That Being Said
Brainstorming is a skill. Like any skill, it gets better with practice and worse when you ignore the fundamentals.
If your team's sessions always produce the same three ideas, it is not because your team lacks creativity. It is because someone is killing ideas before they can breathe.
Run the process properly. Start individually. Come together. Build on each other. Defer judgment, then apply it.
The best idea in the room is almost never the first one out.
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