We’ve all been there. That remote brainstorm that was supposed to be a geyser of brilliant ideas, but instead, it was just… crickets. Or worse, it got completely derailed by one person’s monologue. These sessions feel like a massive waste of time, leaving everyone frustrated and no closer to a solution.
Here’s the thing: most of these meetings fail not because the team isn't creative, but because they have no structure.
Why Most Brain Storming Sessions Fail
Too many teams jump into brainstorming assuming that if you get a bunch of smart people on a video call, magic will happen. But this free-for-all approach is exactly why so many sessions fall flat, especially when everyone is remote. When you don't have a plan, you're basically inviting a host of hidden psychological roadblocks to come in and sabotage the whole thing.
The Hidden Barriers to Great Ideas
One of the sneakiest culprits is something called production blocking. This is what happens when someone has an idea, but they have to wait their turn to speak. By the time the virtual talking stick comes their way, they might have forgotten their point or talked themselves out of it. It’s a constant interruption to the natural flow of creativity.
Then there’s evaluation apprehension. This is just a fancy term for the fear of looking stupid. People hold back their half-baked or out-there ideas because they're worried about being judged. This is a huge problem, because the entire point of a brainstorm is to generate a massive quantity of ideas, not just a few perfectly polished ones.
It might sound strange, but traditional group brainstorming often produces fewer ideas than if you just had the same number of people working alone. This has been shown time and time again, and it’s a big reason why a more structured process is so important.
Without a deliberate, facilitated approach, you're not just running a bad meeting—you're actively killing the innovation you set out to find. If you want to get ahead of this, understanding how to prevent groupthink is a fantastic place to start.
The Myth of Group Genius
That picture-perfect scene of a team riffing off each other and rapidly building on brilliant ideas? It's mostly a myth.
In reality, study after study shows that individuals who brainstorm on their own and then pool their ideas consistently outperform groups that try to ideate together from the start. Why? Because working alone sidesteps all the social pressure and logistical chaos that comes with group dynamics.
Prepare for a Breakthrough Session
A great brainstorming session doesn’t happen by accident. It's built on a solid foundation of smart preparation. If you rush this part, you're setting yourself up for a chaotic meeting that goes nowhere. The quality of your ideas is a direct reflection of the quality of your prep work.
The first, and most important, step is to frame the problem you're trying to solve. A vague goal like "let's come up with new marketing ideas" is a recipe for disaster. It's too broad and invites generic, tired suggestions.
Instead, you need to sharpen the focus. We do this by crafting a powerful "How Might We" (HMW) question. This format is a game-changer because it’s inherently optimistic ("How"), it encourages exploration ("Might"), and it frames the work as a team effort ("We").
For example, don't just aim to "improve user retention." A much stronger HMW would be: "How might we make a new user's first 30 seconds so amazing they can't wait to come back?" See the difference? That's a clear, creative target your team can rally behind.
Assembling Your A-Team
With your HMW locked in, it's time to build your crew. The natural tendency is to invite the usual senior stakeholders, but the best ideas often come from a mix of perspectives. Bringing in people from different departments, with varied levels of experience, injects fresh energy and new ways of thinking into the room.
To make sure things run like a well-oiled machine, you need to assign clear roles before the session even starts. This simple step eliminates confusion and gives everyone a specific job to do.
Assigning clear roles prevents confusion and ensures the session runs smoothly. Here are the key responsibilities for each role.
Essential Roles for a Remote Brainstorming Session
| Role | Primary Responsibility | Key Actions |
|---|---|---|
| The Facilitator | Guides the session and maintains focus. | Manages time, enforces brainstorming rules (e.g., no criticism), and ensures everyone participates. |
| The Scribe | Captures all ideas verbatim. | Records every suggestion without judgment, freeing up participants to focus solely on ideation. |
| The Participants | Generates and builds upon ideas. | Arrives prepared, contributes freely, and embraces a "quantity over quality" mindset during the initial phase. |
Having these roles defined from the get-go is one of the easiest ways to guarantee a more productive and organized session.
Sending the Pre-Session Brief
The final piece of the puzzle is to get everyone on the same page before the meeting. Send out a concise briefing document at least 24 hours in advance to kill that awkward "so, what are we doing here?" silence at the beginning of the call.
A great pre-session brief isn't just an agenda; it's a launchpad for creativity. It should provide just enough information to get everyone's gears turning without boxing them into a specific solution.
To truly set the stage for a breakthrough, your HMW question needs to be rooted in real user needs. That’s why we always recommend conducting user interviews effectively to gather the rich insights that lead to powerful questions.
Your briefing document should include the HMW question, a quick summary of any relevant data, the agenda with time estimates, and a link to the digital whiteboard you’ll be using. If you want a head start, our comprehensive brainstorming session template has everything you need to get organized quickly.
Run the Session to Unlock Great Ideas
Alright, you've done the prep work. Now for the main event. A great remote brainstorming session isn't just a free-for-all discussion; it's a carefully facilitated experience designed to pull ideas from everyone, not just the loudest person in the virtual room.
The whole point is to create an environment where ideas can get out on the table before anyone starts critiquing them. To do that, you need a few structured exercises up your sleeve. These are specifically designed to sidestep common remote traps, like people waiting for their turn to speak or feeling nervous about sharing a half-baked thought. When you give people a chance to think and write on their own first, you completely change the dynamic.
Start with Silent Idea Generation
My go-to technique for kicking things off is Brainwriting. Forget asking people to shout out ideas. Instead, give everyone a quiet five to ten minutes to jot down their thoughts on virtual sticky notes. It’s a simple change, but the impact is huge.
This method ensures your introverts and deep thinkers have the space to contribute their best stuff without getting steamrolled. It also means you start with a much bigger pile of raw ideas, which is exactly what you want.
As this shows, getting the problem frame, the team, and the brief right is the foundation. That solid prep work is what makes a powerful technique like Brainwriting so effective.
Structure the Sharing and Build Momentum
Once time is up, you’ll have a digital whiteboard bursting with ideas. Don't just let people talk over each other. It’s time for a Round Robin.
Go around the virtual room, person by person, and have each participant share just one idea from their list. As they share, the scribe jots it down for everyone to see. Keep going around until every single unique idea is up on the board. This approach is fair, methodical, and keeps any one person from hogging the spotlight.
As the ideas start populating the board, you’ll naturally begin to see themes and connections. This is the perfect moment to throw in a few creative prompts to push the team’s thinking.
A facilitator's main job isn't to have the best ideas themselves. It's to create a space where the team's best ideas can surface. You're there to guide, manage the energy, and make sure every voice is heard.
Use Creative Prompts to Go Deeper
Sometimes, after that first big wave of ideas, the energy can dip. This is when a technique like SCAMPER comes in handy to get the creative sparks flying again. SCAMPER is an acronym that gives you seven different ways to look at an existing idea:
- Substitute: What part of this could you swap out for something else?
- Combine: How could you merge this with another idea on the board?
- Adapt: What have you seen work in a totally different field that you could adapt here?
- Modify: How could you magnify, shrink, or change the look of this?
- Put to another use: Could this idea solve a completely different problem?
- Eliminate: What could you remove to simplify this idea?
- Reverse: What if you did the complete opposite or flipped the order?
Let’s say an idea on the board is "create a monthly customer newsletter." A good SCAMPER prompt would be, "How could we Reverse that? What if our customers created the content for us?" These questions are brilliant for shaking people out of their usual thinking ruts. If you want to get really good at this, our guide on how to facilitate workshops has more practical strategies you can use.
Turn Ideas Into Actionable Next Steps
The buzz from a great brainstorming session is contagious, but it can fizzle out fast without a clear path forward. A digital whiteboard covered in sticky notes looks productive, but it's just the starting point. Let’s be honest: an idea without a next step is just a wish.
This is where many teams drop the ball. The real challenge is transforming that creative chaos into a focused, actionable plan. It all starts with bringing some order to the beautiful mess you’ve just created.
Find the Patterns by Grouping Ideas
First things first, let's make sense of it all. Have your facilitator (or a few volunteers) start dragging related sticky notes into clusters on the board. As you do this, you'll naturally begin to see broader themes take shape from all the individual thoughts.
Once you have your clusters, give each one a simple, descriptive name.
For example, a scattering of notes like "add a tutorial video," "create helpful tooltips," and "send a welcome email series" can all be grouped under a single, powerful theme: "Improving New User Onboarding." This simple act of organizing helps everyone grasp the bigger picture and sets the stage for what comes next.
Prioritize with Precision and Clarity
With your ideas now sorted into themes, it’s time to make some tough calls. You can't tackle everything at once, so you need a structured way to decide what gets your attention first. This is where a good prioritization framework is your best friend.
A couple of my go-to methods are simple but incredibly effective.
Comparing Idea Prioritization Techniques
Choose the right method to evaluate ideas based on your team's specific goals and constraints.
| Technique | Best For | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dot Voting | Quick, democratic decision-making with a larger group. | Simple to understand, fast, and gives a clear visual of group consensus. | Can lead to groupthink; doesn't account for effort or complexity. |
| Impact/Effort Matrix | Strategic planning where you need to balance value against resources. | Helps identify quick wins and separates them from major projects. | Impact and effort can be subjective and require more discussion. |
| ICE Scoring | More detailed prioritization, especially for product features. | Adds a "Confidence" score to temper enthusiastic but uncertain estimates. | Can be more time-consuming and slightly more complex to calculate. |
| Kano Model | Customer-centric prioritization to understand feature impact on satisfaction. | Focuses on delighting users, not just fixing problems. | Requires customer research or deep customer empathy; more complex. |
Ultimately, the goal of any framework is to bring clarity and objectivity to your decision-making, ensuring you focus on what truly matters.
For a more strategic view, the Impact/Effort Matrix is fantastic. Just draw a simple 2×2 grid with "Impact" on one axis and "Effort" on the other. Then, as a team, place each idea or theme into one of the four quadrants.
The gold is usually in the "High Impact, Low Effort" box. These are your quick wins—the tasks that deliver the most bang for your buck. This matrix gives you a visual roadmap for what to do now, what to plan for, and what to set aside for later.
Define and Assign Next Steps
Okay, you've got your priorities straight. Now, every single top-tier idea needs three things to survive in the wild: a specific action, a single owner, and a deadline. Vague promises like "we'll look into this" are where great ideas go to die.
For each prioritized idea, define the very next tangible step. Is it "draft a project brief"? "Create a wireframe"? "Research three competitor solutions"? Get specific.
Then, assign that single task to one person and agree on a reasonable due date. This creates clear accountability and is a vital part of the journey from idea to implementation. The facilitator should always send out a summary of these action items right after the meeting wraps.
Once your plan is solid, you'll need to get buy-in from stakeholders. Knowing how to create compelling presentations with AI can be a huge help in clearly communicating your session's results and getting everyone excited about the path forward.
Build a Lasting Culture of Innovation
The buzz you feel after a great brainstorming session is fantastic, but it's also fleeting. To make a real difference, you have to find a way to bottle that lightning and turn the spark of a single session into a sustained flame. Think of a successful brainstorm not as a one-off event, but as a stepping stone toward a more innovative and collaborative team culture.
The foundation for all of this is psychological safety. It's that shared belief that you can toss out a wild idea, ask a "dumb" question, or admit a mistake without being shot down or shamed. When people feel truly safe, they stop self-censoring, and that’s when the half-baked thoughts that often lead to breakthroughs finally come out.
This idea is so powerful that it’s being used to change how students learn. Research shows that structured brain storming sessions can boost student achievement by giving them a safe space to explore and think differently. You can dig deeper into how this works for learners by reading the full research about brainstorming in education.
Nurture Ideas After the Session
Nothing kills an innovation culture faster than great ideas vanishing into a black hole. Following up isn't optional; it's everything.
Make sure you circle back on the action items you defined. Celebrate the small wins publicly. And be transparent about why some ideas are moving forward while others are being shelved for now.
Even the ideas you don't act on have value. Acknowledging the effort validates the person's contribution and makes them want to keep trying. A simple, "That was a really creative angle. While we can't act on it right now, it's sparked a whole new conversation about X," goes a long way.
A team's creative capacity is like a muscle. If you only exercise it during a formal brainstorming session once a quarter, it will never get stronger. Regular, informal challenges and idea-sharing build the endurance needed for real innovation.
Make Creativity a Repeatable System
Don't wait for a crisis to get everyone in a room. Weave creative problem-solving into the very fabric of your team's routine.
Here are a few ways to get started:
- Host regular, low-stakes ideation meetings. Block off 30 minutes every other week to tackle a small "How Might We" question. Keep it light and fun.
- Create a digital "idea parking lot." Set up a simple Miro board or Slack channel where anyone can drop an idea whenever inspiration strikes.
- Integrate mini-brainstorms into project kickoffs. Make ideation a standard step for how your team approaches any new piece of work.
By building these small habits into your team’s rhythm, collaborative creativity stops feeling like a special event and starts becoming second nature. This is how you transform isolated brain storming sessions into a true culture of innovation, one where your team is always ready for whatever comes next.
Your Top Brainstorming Questions, Answered
Even the most meticulously planned brainstorm can hit a snag. Let's be honest, getting a group of people to think creatively together isn't always straightforward. Over the years, I've seen the same questions pop up time and again.
Here are my go-to answers for the most common challenges you'll face when running a remote brainstorming session.
How Many People Should I Invite?
This one comes up constantly. For a remote session, the magic number is between five and eight people. It's big enough to get a great mix of ideas and viewpoints, but small enough that nobody gets lost in the crowd. Everyone has a real chance to speak up.
What if you have a bigger team? Don't even think about trying to squeeze 15 people into one virtual room—it’s a recipe for chaos. The best approach is to split them into smaller breakout groups. Let each group brainstorm on its own and then have them bring their top one or two ideas back to the main session. This keeps things focused and ensures every voice is heard.
How Do I Handle Someone Who Dominates the Conversation?
We've all been there. One person gets on a roll and suddenly they're the only one talking. This is where having a structured process is your best friend.
Techniques like Brainwriting, where everyone jots down their ideas silently before anyone speaks, are a game-changer. It puts everyone on an equal footing from the get-go.
Another great trick is to go "Round Robin" when it's time to share. You simply go around the virtual room, one person at a time. This structure naturally creates space for quieter folks to contribute. As the facilitator, you can also gently steer the conversation.
A simple phrase like, "That's a fantastic point, Sarah. To make sure we get everyone's perspective, let's hear from David next," works wonders. It validates the person's contribution while artfully passing the baton.
What Are the Best Tools? And How Long Should We Meet?
Your choice of tech can make or break a remote session. Virtual whiteboards are non-negotiable for this kind of work. Tools like Miro, Mural, or FigJam give your team a shared space to see ideas come to life visually. The key is picking one that feels easy and intuitive for your team; the last thing you want is for technology to get in the way of creativity.
As for timing, I've found the sweet spot is 60 to 90 minutes. Any shorter and you can't get into a real flow. Any longer and you'll see people start to fade from screen fatigue. A tight, time-boxed agenda is crucial for keeping the energy up.
Here’s a simple structure I often use:
- Welcome & Icebreaker: 5 minutes
- Silent Idea Generation: 15 minutes
- Group Sharing (Round Robin style): 20 minutes
- Dot Voting & Prioritization: 15 minutes
- Wrap-Up & Next Steps: 5 minutes
This rhythm keeps things moving and makes sure you leave with concrete results. To kick things off right, frame your challenge with some solid open-ended questions examples that get people thinking beyond the obvious.
Ready to stop wasting time in meetings and start unlocking real breakthroughs? Bulby gives you the AI-guided workflows and creative sparks to run brainstorms that actually work. Get started for free at https://www.bulby.com and see what your team is truly capable of.