Develop phase

Brainstorming Warm Up

A quick, fun lead-in activity to get teams into a creative mindset before any ideation session.

What it is

An easy lead-in to any group ideation or brainstorming session.

Good to use for team members who might not be familiar with brainstorming. Encourages quantity over quality and warms up creative thinking.

Ask everyone to grab a piece of paper and pen.

Tell them you are going to set a timer for 2 minutes and in that time they have to write down all the uses they can think of for a brick.

At the end of the allocated time ask everyone to put their pens down.

Ask the group who had more than 5 ideas, more than 10 etc until you work out who had the most ideas.

Ask the person with the most ideas to tell everyone their first idea, their last idea and their favourite idea.

Ask a few more people to share their ideas.

You can have a bit of fun with this and ask e.g. did anyone have a weapon?

Set the scene by telling everyone this might seem a bit silly but have fun with it and it’s a great way to warm your brain up.

Encourage people to go for quantity over quality.

Ask them not to judge their ideas and a good way to do this is to suggest they keep writing.

Encourage wild ideas.

This exercise is time boxed which encourages more creative thinking.

Pairs well with these other methods from the develop phase.