Brainstorming strategy: Don’t settle for the first idea

Jeffrey Baumgartner is the founder of Bwiti bvba, a Belgian-based company that helps organizations to become more innovative and more creative.

That the best solution is seldom the first to come to mind is one reason behind the effectiveness of brainstorming as a problem-solving technique. Rather than simply taking the first solution that comes to mind, we push our minds further to come up with additional ideas. Typically, the first few ideas will be rather obvious and not very creative solutions. But once we've cleared our minds of the obvious, we must push our minds further to come up with new ideas. This is when creativity kicks in and powers our thinking.