There’s a sort of irony in receiving a meeting invite entitled Brainstorm Session.

At 1:58pm, you’re wrapping up another call. At 2:00pm, you join a room with six other people, half of whom are still clearing notifications from whatever they were doing five minutes ago. Someone pulls up the brief, talks through the problem, and asks the inevitable question:

Okay, what ideas do we have?

And just like that, everyone is expected to be creative.

But creativity doesn’t work that way. It’s not something you can toggle on and off, or force just because the calendar says so. In the age of “AI slop” and perpetually recycled ideas, every organization wants original thinking, but most are creating conditions that reward immediate thinking instead. We introduce a problem, gather people around a table, and hope a good idea will somehow materialize before the hour is up. 

And sometimes it does, but truly great ideas need time and space to develop. Sometimes that happens in conversations that follow, sometimes it happens in the shower or on a walk. Very rarely does it happen because someone said, “Quick, think!” 

Give creativity somewhere to begin

If you want your team to generate great ideas, start planting seeds well before the meeting.

Send the prompt ahead of time, and make it specific enough that people know what they should start thinking about. Include the context and constraints they need without handing them a 30-slide deck to digest. Then make it clear that you aren’t asking for finished answers.

Something like:

“We’re launching a new campaign next year. Before the meeting next week, spend a little time thinking about what would make you personally stop and pay attention. Bring anything that comes to mind. Half-baked ideas welcome.”

You could even include a prompt or two to give their thinking somewhere to start:

“Bring one example from outside our industry that does this particularly well.”

“Over the next few days, pay attention to every time you experience X. What catches your attention?”

The point is to let the question live with people for a while before asking them for an answer.

Give ideas somewhere to land

Telling people to “think about it” only gets you so far if there’s nowhere to capture what follows.

Create a shared space where people can contribute before the meeting and return after it. That might be a running document, a dedicated channel, or a digital whiteboard. Keep the barrier to entry low enough that an unpolished thought belongs there.

This also opens the creative process to people who don’t do their best thinking aloud in a room.

Get out of the conference room

Walking may be one of the simplest tools we have for generating new ideas.

In a Stanford study on walking and creative thinking, researchers found that walking consistently improved divergent thinking – the kind we use to generate different possibilities. In one of their experiments, participants’ creative output increased by an average of about 60% while walking compared with sitting. The effect appeared whether people walked indoors or outside, and some of the creative boost even remained after they sat back down.

Next brainstorming session, try taking the problem for a walk. Whether it’s taking a lap around the block as a team or giving everyone ten minutes to walk with the prompt before regrouping, opening the doors might be exactly what you need to open the mind too. 

Protect the time before the thinking happens

Look at where the brainstorm session sits on people’s calendars.

If people are arriving directly from a budget review, client call, or another meeting that demands their full attention, they may be physically present, but their attention is likely still catching up. 

Fresh thinking requires breathing room. Block focus time earlier in the day, leave a buffer before the session, or give people explicit permission to step away from messages while they spend time with the problem.

The calendar should reflect that thinking is part of the work, rather than something people are expected to squeeze between everything else, or save until after they log off. There’s a big difference between an idea that pops into your head mid-shower when you’re not looking for it and the shower being the only time your brain has space to think.

Let everyone think before anyone leads

Brainstorms can move quickly once someone puts the first idea on the table, especially when that person carries seniority or simply happens to be comfortable thinking aloud.

Before opening the floor, give everyone a few minutes to jot some things down independently. If hierarchy is likely to shape the conversation, collect initial thoughts anonymously, or ask the leader to contribute last.

By doing this, you create a window in which people can form their own perspective before they begin responding to someone else’s. 

Make the meeting room the place where ideas get better

A brainstorm becomes far more interesting when people arrive having already spent some time with the topic. The meeting can become a place to connect ideas that began separately, challenge assumptions, spot possibilities someone couldn’t see alone, and follow an unexpected thread somewhere new.

Give people space to generate ideas independently. Then bring those thoughts into the room and let the group do what a group does best: make an idea better through other perspectives.

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Organizations will always need ideas on a deadline. That’s part of work. But if we want original thinking, we need to create more room for thinking before we ask people to produce.

Give people the prompt early enough to live with it. Give ideas somewhere to land when they arrive, and protect enough space for people to follow them.

Then send the calendar invite.