One of the characteristics distinguishing Motivated Academic from the rest of academics is the fact that they believe that their research is a calling.
They are eager to develop new research ideas, brainstorm, explore the unknown, face uncertainty, and challenge the status quo in their research. They’re not worried to innovate, they’re innovators!
The generation of ideas is a crucial aspect of research. After all, we do need to come up with ideas for our research projects and, consequently, research articles. We briefly explained this key characteristic of motivated academics in our Manifesto.
But we believe that developing brainstorming skills is crucial to your academic success. That is why in this article, I would like to give you some of the best brainstorming tools and techniques that you can use at different phases of your research.
Let’s get started, Motivated Academics!
Table of Contents
What is brainstorming?
Before we jump into discussing different brainstorming tools and techniques that you can apply in your research, let me define what brainstorming actually is.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, “an activity or business method in which a group of people meet to suggest a lot of new ideas for possible development.”
The above definition implies that you need to have a group of people for an efficient brainstorming session. This could include your PhD supervisors, project leads, principal investigators and even your teammates.
However, I believe that you can also make significant progress in your research when you use the brainstorming techniques just yourself.
Why is brainstorming useful?
Now that you know what brainstorming is, let me explain why it is useful and why we should be using it in our research.
The main benefit of brainstorming is that it allows you to ideate and develop ideas in a systematic way. In addition, brainstorming techniques provide frameworks that help you guide your thinking. This will help you to generate multiple ideas in a short period of time.
Moreover, if you involve others in your ideas brainstorming session, you’ll benefit from reduced bias, consideration of different perspectives, understanding the bigger picture of the problem you’re trying to solve.
What are the best tools and techniques for brainstorming?
When you search Google for “brainstorming tools”, the answer you’ll receive is a set of software of freeware that can support your brainstorming. These usually include Google Docs, MindMap, IdeaBoardz or AYOA tools, just to name a few. There are many online brainstorming tools that you can consider in your research.
But in many situations, what you are actually looking for are brainstorming techniques that will let you achieve the goal of your brainstorming activity. That’s why in this article, I’m going to discuss the best brainstorming techniques you can use at different phases of your research project.
Brainstorming tools for idea generation
Six thinking hats
The six thinking hats model was developed by Edward de Bono. It helps you approach the problem from six different perspectives, allowing you to reduce bias in your brainstorming. This model is especially useful when you brainstorm potential ideas for your research papers or projects.
The six hats include:
- the factual hat (white hat) – at this stage, you are thinking about what you already know or need to find out;
- the creative hat (green hat) – at this stage, you are thinking about alternatives, ideas, possibilities that can help you generate solutions to your challenge in focus
- the optimist’s hat (yellow hat) – at this stage, you are thinking about the solutions or issues from the most positive perspective; try to identify benefits and value added;
- the judge’s hat (black hat) – at this stage, you are exploring the risks and critically appraising any concerns you may have;
- the hat for the heart (red hat) – at this stage, you consider the feelings you have about the solution or the challenge you’re trying to solve; think about fears and likes;
- the conductor’s hat (blue hat) – at this stage, you’re controlling the decision-making process and you organise the entire process to make sure you followed the six thinking hats guidelines.
Here you can find a brainstorming template of the six thinking hats model.
Gap analysis
A gap analysis is a model that you can use to identify the gaps between the current performance (or state-of-the-art) and the desired performance.
This is particularly useful when you perform a literature review and want to identify knowledge gaps.
The process for gap analysis is relatively simple and comprises of 5 steps:
- Define focus for your analysis – determine what it is that you want to focus on in your brainstorming activity, including research gap, specific area of the literature, or even your approach to project management
- Reflect on the cu