Brainstorming has a bad reputation. Is there a way to make it more useful?

I first learned about the concept of Expansive vs Reductive thinking from Duncan Wardle, the former head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney.  (Career goals, #amirite?)  Duncan presented at our company’s annual conference in 2020, and held a private workshop for our team members.

The idea is simple: Expansive thinking is massive open-ended brainstorming.  How big can you think?  How can you encourage the free association that generates great ideas? How can you get past the “no reflex?”   

Reductive thinking is narrowing down a wild list of options. What won’t work because of resource constraints, market conditions, or bad timing?  What ideas have promise but need structuring or grooming?  And what ideas rise to the top? 

Separately, these are each recipes for bad brainstorming.  Expansive thinking can get impractical, and reductive thinking can be too constraining.  But used together, they create a structure that enables a diverse team to find great ideas collaboratively. 

I’ve tried this a few times with a few different teams.  (In fact, the first time it was wisely suggested by one of the leaders on my team.) And the best way to do it is in two separate meetings.  First, you have an expansive meeting.  Everyone contributes all their ideas of nearly any quality.  There’s no editing, no blamestorming, and no limitations.

Then you have a separate reductive meeting, ideally a few days later.  You remind everyone of the problem you are all trying to solve, or the goal you are all trying to achieve.  This meeting is about narrowing down the ideas to one or more that pass a “sniff test” the group agrees on. 

The beauty of separating these two phases out is that you immediately remove the anxiety that plagues the planners and the skeptics in the group.  You can say things like, “we have a meeting next week to validate this can actually be done, but for now, let’s just write it down,” and “that’s ok, we may not actually do this, but let’s capture it for now.” By giving their instincts and anxieties a place to go (the meeting next week), you make space for the dreamers and visionaries.

Similarly, when it comes down to brass tacks, you have already let those visionaries air their ideas.  Now, the thing we all know about visionaries is that they never run out of ideas – so you can say things like, “that would be cool – but today we’re narrowing down last week’s list of ideas,” and “you contributed so much last week, let’s see if we can execute some of those ideas first.”  

Different teams have different challenges with brainstorming, but this approach seems to have solved a few of ours.