Research going as far back as the last century has shown that ‘brainstorming’ meetings in which individuals shout out ideas to a frantic flipcharter perform poorly compared with alternatives.
There’s ‘Brainwriting’, in which meeting participants write their own contributions in response to those of others. It overcomes the problems of shyness, wasted time waiting for others and certain people dominating the proceedings.
Better still, research says, are electronic techniques such as Electronic pool writing, gallery writing and – the most effective – forced electronic gallery writing (‘FGW’). People sitting at screens can enter their own ideas, and then read and build on others. With FGW, in order to read others’ comments coming in, a contribution must be made. 2007 research by Aiken, Rebman and Vanjani published in the Academy of Information and Management Sciences Journal found that FGW “increased the perceived participation of group members while maintaining meeting satisfaction”. Those using FGW were least likely to feel the sort of apprehension that people get when having to publicly offer up their thoughts. And the overall number of comments was high without people feeling that their thoughts were being dragged out of them.
And in order to stimulate the ideas, avoid asking the big open questions that we think are generous and inviting. There are techniques to use: such as "reversal" or "Janusian thinking," which redefines the problem, or "adopt a role" or "analogy" to impose an unfamiliar context on the problem.
Research offers better ideas for how to stimulate creativity than a blank flip chart and an invitation to a group of colleagues sitting around a table.