Are you facilitating brainstorming sessions for a new product launch? Brainstorming sessions are essential to come up with the best possible idea among the experts. Although most of the time, many ideas are mediocre, they can significantly boost and trigger others' way of thinking to think of a more innovative idea.

Facilitating new product brainstorming sessions comes with a lot of responsibility. However, if you’re used to proper corporate event management, you can easily conduct successful sessions, even if it’s your first time facilitating.

In this article, we’ll give you some tips on how to effectively facilitate new product brainstorming sessions.

1. Set Clear Objectives

What are you aiming to accomplish during your brainstorming sessions? Establishing a clear objective is essential when hosting brainstorming sessions so that the ideas are similar or at least going in the right direction.

One of the important factors of successful corporate event management is productivity. And since a brainstorming session is a type of corporate event, it should have a clear set of objectives to focus on.

2. Select the Right Participants

A brainstorming session should comprise diverse participants to come up with the best possible product. For instance, you can gather individuals from various departments under the same demographic you’re targeting to market to. This allows you to collect a wide range of ideas depending on their specific preferences and needs.

At the same time, there should be non-expert participants, like those who are not employed in the company. Of course, you need to give them compensation or a token for their participation.

3. Set the Ambience of the Venue

Since the main goal is to gather ideas, the venue for the brainstorming session should be conducive to collaboration. There shouldn’t be any distractions, and the right materials, and everyone should have refreshments for a more relaxing vibe.

Additionally, you can alter the decorations in the venue, and let everyone feel the theme of the product you’re aiming for.

4. Set the Ground Rules

Establishing ground rules is another tip for a successful brainstorming session. You can set a time for the discussion, and encourage participants to listen carefully before giving their opinions. If someone has an idea, it should be welcomed by the whole group. Additionally, avoid giving criticism, and keep each idea open for improvement.

Meanwhile, if there’s an idea with a lot of potential, encourage everyone to give their comments on how to improve it. Usually, an idea improves if it’s seen from different perspectives.

5. Use Creative Techniques

Do you know some creative techniques that can be used for brainstorming? Some of these include:

• SWOT analysis. Evaluating the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to the product you’re trying to come up with.
• Mind mapping. What’s the main idea for the new product? Use the general idea to come up with more specific ones until the connection leads you to the new, specific product.
• Brainwriting. Each participant writes their identity anonymously. As the host picks one idea after another, others can give their honest opinion about it.
• Round robin. Participants form groups randomly, a couple of times, and each group should come up with an idea for the product.

6. Encourage Out-of-the-Box Ideas

One random idea can lead to a useful one, so encourage participants to give even some out-of-the-box ideas that can help generate better ones. At the same time, give these ideas some chance to be developed before setting them aside.

Even if you don’t come up with the best idea for the first session, the main goal is to gather as many ideas as possible that can later be refined.

7. Use Time Constraints

As mentioned, brainstorming sessions should be productive, and one of the ways to do it is to set a time limit for every part of the session. Similar to other types of programmes, there should be an allotted time for the introduction, exercises, the actual brainstorming session, and the conclusion. This is essential since if you don’t set a time limit, you can also lose the structure of the session.

8. Facilitate, Don’t Dominate

As the host or facilitator, your role is to guide the session, not to lead it where you want to. For instance, if you’re asking questions, ensure they’re open-ended to avoid dominating the conversation. At the same time, don’t let anyone else lead the collaboration just because they want to pursue their idea. If you think a participant is acting that way, try to divert the conversation to what the others think.

9. Capture All Ideas

As much as possible, capture all available ideas in the room, and don’t let any of them slip away. Who knows, if the session concludes without a solid product idea, the suggestions made for the current session can still be improved for the next ones.

10. Follow Up

Once all the ideas are gathered, your team should review and prioritise those concepts with high potential. Try to explore more options and test them for implementation. Of course, let the participants know whether their idea made progress, and communicate with them during the whole process.

11. Schedule Regular Sessions

Instead of a one-time thing, you can schedule regular brainstorming sessions, especially since your company often strive for products to develop. So, even if it’s not needed yet, at least you have already generated some ideas.

Final Thoughts

We hope this article helps you get started with facilitating brainstorming sessions for a new product launch. If you want to share your thoughts about this, don’t hesitate to comment below!