Brainstorming

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Introduction
Brainstorming is the act of coming up with ideas to achieve a goal or solution. There are many ways of brainstorming including bubble sheets, collaboration, and just plain thought. Brainstorming acts as a creative tool to help formulate and provide ideas to different matters of interest. Many individuals use it for work related situations or others use it to come up with a few bright ideas to write about for an upcoming paper. No matter what problem you are faced, brainstorming ideas will help get you closer and closer to the solution.

Purpose
The purpose of brainstorming is to come up with ideas to achieve a goal or solution. Through the collaboration of a group of individuals, people can come up with ideas for a certain subject. Jotting, thought process, and communication are all tools to help come up with ideas to reach a solution. For example, brainstorming can help in business meetings or writing a paper. The purpose is to help people remember and think, and to come up with many ideas and thoughts. Brainstorming is a great technique to use when you know a general subject you're interested in writing about, but don't exactly know what the subject entails. It helps us identify as many ideas that relate back to the overall subject you're trying to pursue. Don Gabor, an interpersonal communication skills trainer states, "The purpose of brainstorming is to produce as many solutions, ideas, or outcomes as possible without stopping to evaluate their feasibility or value. Brainstorming works though the power of association by offering ideas around a particular subject or problem" (Gabor). Critiquing the value of your ideas comes later in the step process. It is a exceptional tool to help guide you to a solution through a thought process of ideas.

Types
There are many types of brainstorming techniques people use to reach a solution. The two main techniques are individual and group brainstorming. For individual thinking, people use their own creativity and experience to come up with ideas. By brainstorming by yourself, you can use your creativity and inventivness to come up with ideas. You can challenge yourself to figure out intuitive and interactive ways of thinking. The other main technique, group collaboration, collects ideas through the creativity of others surrounding the subject. According to Doctor Phil Bartle, "The purpose of a brainstorming session is to work as a group to define a problem, and find it, through a participatory intervention, the best group decision for a plan of action to solve it" (Bartle). Groups can collaborate and come up with inventive ideas just by brainstorming together as a team. The greatest technology and the material goods we have today first came from an individual who brainstormed the idea.