Name: Unlock better creative ideas using brainwriting
Uploaded: 2025-06-17T18:46:11.000Z
Duration: 3 min 42 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

If you really want to take your brainstorming to the next level, don't brainstorm, brainwrite.

Brainwriting is a collaborative dreaming technique that maximizes your team's ability to create more ideas and more original ideas.

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I'm going to talk about how this works in person, but it can easily be adapted for virtual work.

What's a challenge you're trying to solve?

Next, have everyone sit in their groups and give each person a stack of long stickies with a fine tip Sharpie marker.

That's what they'll use to capture their ideas.

You'll start by having each person write down any idea they have for their challenge you're trying to solve, one idea per sticky.

This is done individually, no talking here.

Each person will write down as many ideas as they can think of.

As each person writes down their ideas, they will place their sticky note on their right side.

Allocate about five to seven minutes for this first part of the exercise.

As people run out of their own ideas for the challenge, they will start collaborating on other ideas.

They'll take the first sticky note, read what has been written, and then add their own thoughts to the idea to build upon it.

This is still done individually, no talking.

After they've contributed their thoughts, they'll place that sticky note on their right, essentially passing it to the next person.

That person will then look at the next idea on the sticky pile on their left and repeat the process.

If a sticky note runs out of space, add another sticky note to it.

This might sound more complicated than it really is.

Your team will review the ideas on the sticky pile on their left, collaborate their thoughts on it, and then move it to the right.

This will keep happening until all the ideas at the table have been reviewed.

Eventually, each person's sticky notes will return to them.

Remember, all of the steps in this exercise are done with no talking.

When the sticky notes have returned to the original idea creator, have each person read through their ideas and see how the ideas have evolved over time.

This first round will probably last up to 20 minutes.

Put all the ideas on the wall and have the group review the ideas.

Give out sticky dots and have the group vote on their favorite ideas from the first round.

If you're working with multiple groups, share the top three ideas from each group to the other groups and allow conversation for each of the ideas.

I'd recommend going to a second round of voting, where all the groups will vote on their favorite ideas from all the groups.

Distribute sticky dots and have them vote on their favorites.

From here, you can end the brain writing activity, or you can go further.

You can take the top three ideas and do three more rounds of brain writing.

One additional round for each idea, and see where it goes from there as you go deeper.

Regardless of your choice, know that this activity will lead to more ideas and more collaboration with your team.

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Unlock better creative ideas using brainwriting

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