Brainstorming sessions should last 15-45 minutes. Usually, 30 minutes is ideal, according to Brian Tracy, famous presenter and businessman, writing on his blog.
1) Should there be as many participants as possible?
An ideal number of participants is 4-7 people. With fewer people, you may not get enough stimulation; on the other hand, with more people, maybe not everyone will have the opportunity actually to contribute to the joint effort.
2) Choose a leader for the session
There must be a group leader, whose role is to ensure that no ideas are being ignored and that the flow of thoughts is seamless. The group leader stimulates others to bring up new ideas and encourages all participants to make contributions.
3) Record the session
The person acting as a recorder should write down all the ideas that are generated. Later you will probably be grateful for a list that can be circulated amongst other people. You will also be able to return to proposals that were not chosen initially. The recorder can also take pictures of any board or sheet of paper that was used during the session.
4) Emotions must be positive
For any brainstorming technique to be successful, the emotions must stay positive. It is important that during the session there is no criticism.
Evaluation
If you want to evaluate the ideas later, it may prove beneficial to bring in an entirely different group of people who will have no emotional attachment that may be present in members of the original group.
-jk-