In brainwriting, participants collect ideas by writing them down on Post-It’s. In contrast to brainstorming, in brainwriting each participant collects ideas independently of the group and writes them down in order to later develop them together associatively into creative problem-solving ideas.
Brainwriting takes care to minimize any factors that may inhibit the production of new ideas. Participants should produce ideas without any restriction and/or combine their ideas with other ideas.
Ideally, participants inspire each other with their ideas during the discussion, which they can then develop further.
The advantage of this method over other creativity techniques is that it can capture ideas from otherwise more passive or silent participants. Due to the anonymity of the submitted notes, critical ideas and suggestions can also be revealed here.
Variants of the method include the Brainwriting Pool, Collective Notebook, and the 6-3-5 method.
