Brainstorm & idea prioritization template

Use this template in your own brainstorming sessions so your team can unleash their imagination and start shaping concepts even if you're not sitting in the same room.

Brainstorming provides a free and open environment that encourages everyone within a team to participate in the creative thinking process that leads to problem solving. Prioritizing volume over value, out-of-the-box ideas are welcome and built upon, and all participants are encouraged to collaborate, helping each other develop a rich amount of creative solutions.

The Brainstorm & idea prioritization template helps you:

• Prepare for your brainstorming session
• Define your problem statement
• Collect ideas and gather feedback from everyone
• Group ideas by theme
• Prioritize your solutions and get aligned on next steps

How to use the brainstorming & idea prioritization template

To use the Mural brainstorming & idea prioritization template with your team, follow the steps outlined below.

1. Define goal and invite stakeholders

The first step in the process is to clearly define the goal(s) of your brainstorming session. What problem(s) are you trying to solve? At this stage, you should also carefully select a list of stakeholders who will participate in your brainstorming session.

2. Define your problem statement

The next phase is to create a problem statement that clearly identifies the issue. Frame your problem statement as a ‘How might we?’ question (e.g., ‘How might we shorten wait times for customer service calls?’).

3. Brainstorm!

Have each stakeholder brainstorm as many ideas for possible solutions as they can in a given time.

Pro-tip: Use Mural’s private mode feature to avoid groupthink while brainstorming, allowing everyone to work independently even while synchronous.

4. Group ideas together by theme

Once you’ve generated as many ideas as possible with your team, it’s time to look carefully at the results. What are the natural themes that emerge from your ideation? How should they be grouped together to inform potential solutions?

5. Prioritize solutions

Now that you’ve refined your ideation into themes, you can effectively prioritize the results using the chart tracking importance vs. feasibility.

Tips for running a brainstorming & idea prioritization session

To run a successful brainstorming session and prioritize your ideas, you should:

• Make sure you invite stakeholders representing all aspects of the issue at hand so that you can avoid blind spots when brainstorming solutions
• Use Mural’s timer feature to keep things on track while brainstorming, and use private mode to avoid groupthink; then, you can leverage a voting session to determine the best next steps!
• Keep a record of your brainstorming so that you can return to your ideas and revisit questions over time — this may help generate even more solutions in the future