How to run a brainstorming session

Most brainstorms fail before they start because the prompt is vague. “Ideas for the product” produces noise; “How might we cut new-user setup time in half?” produces options. Write the question at the top of the whiteboard, add the constraint or goal behind it, and share both before the session so people arrive already thinking.

Open with several minutes of silent, parallel idea capture — everyone writing their own sticky notes before anyone talks. Silent generation avoids anchoring on the first loud idea, gives quieter teammates equal weight, and reliably produces more distinct options than free-form discussion. Quantity is the goal at this stage; judging comes later.

A shared canvas — physical or online — keeps every idea visible at once, which is what lets people build on each other instead of repeating each other. On an online whiteboard, remote teammates add stickies in real time, group related notes as themes emerge, and nothing is lost to whoever happened to hold the marker.

Once ideas slow down, switch modes explicitly: cluster similar notes, name the clusters, then dot-vote to surface what the group finds most promising. Deliberate convergence keeps the session from ending as an unranked wall of stickies — you leave with a shortlist, the reasoning behind it, and clarity about what was set aside.

A brainstorm only matters if something happens next. For each shortlisted idea, capture the next concrete step, an owner, and when you’ll check in. Doing this in the last ten minutes of the session — while context is fresh — is the single highest-leverage habit in this whole guide.

Wyatt — an AI workspace with whiteboards, docs, and tasks in one place — gives the whole loop one home: run the session on a collaborative whiteboard, let the AI assistant suggest angles you haven’t considered or summarize the clusters, and turn the winning stickies into real tasks in the same workspace — so ideas land next to the documents and projects they belong to.