Ditch brainstorming meetings, use the Idea Avalanche instead

How to source great product ideas at a fraction of the time.

Great ideas can come from anywhere. But if you are a product person, odds are that you listen to too many that are not useful (at the moment). So much that you might develop a “default to ‘no’” mentality.

It's your loss.

Don't we believe cross-functional teams trump specialists working alone in silos? Innovation thrives on diversity. We lose a lot of diverse perspectives by brainstorming solution ideas with only the product development team responsible for addressing a problem.

That's why I like to use a special way of generating ideas for important problems. I call it the “Idea Avalanche.”

What is the Idea Avalance

It's just a fancy way of saying async brainstorming, which involves a large group of people and is often open to anyone in the company.

Cross-functional collaboration is widely recognized as best practice in many business areas, not the least in product development. With brainstorming, nothing is more cross-functional than getting the entire company involved.

Building Context

Of course, just asking for ideas without providing the right context leads to suboptimal results. People need to understand the problem clearly to offer valuable suggestions. This doesn’t mean overwhelming them with hours of reading material; context should be concise and prioritized.

In my experience, a short video—less than five minutes—highlighting key insights about the problem works wonders. Make it easily accessible and include links to more detailed documentation for those who want to dive deeper. This ensures everyone is on the same page without demanding too much time.

Recruiting participants

Once the context is well explained, share it in wide forums (e.g., a company-wide Slack channel) and invite participation.

It’s also crucial to set clear criteria for evaluating ideas by sharing a clear goal you want to achieve. This helps assess which suggestions will most likely solve the problem effectively, keeping the brainstorming more focused.

Executing the Idea Avalanche

I find that asynchronous brainstorming has significant advantages over synchronous methods. Research shows that asynchronous work can boost creativity, especially for those in lower positions who might feel less comfortable speaking up in live settings. Plus, asynchronous brainstorming can involve way more people—potentially thousands—compared to the limitations of a live session.

I prefer a simple way to contribute anonymously, such as a Google Form with just one text input and no need to log in.

Encourage everyone to generate as many ideas as possible, emphasizing that no idea is too wild at this stage.

Also, remember to set a deadline for contributing—nothing too far in the future. One or two days should be enough. That's probably less than the number of days you would need to book a sync brainstorming meeting with the more relevant stakeholders.

Filtering and evaluating ideas

After gathering many ideas, the next step is to filter them. Expect a mix of high-quality suggestions, random thoughts, and some that will be indecipherable. This I prefer to do in a small group, like the product development team.

Here’s how to handle this phase:

• Remove the trash: Some ideas will not impact the goal at all, some will solve different problems, some will be unintelligible, etc. Just remove them.

• Group similar ideas: Combine very similar suggestions.

• Voting: Have the product development team vote on the ideas to identify the most promising ones.

• Selection: Choose a few top ideas to explore further. These ideas should be fleshed out and de-risked before moving forward.

Closing thoughts

The Idea Avalanche, or simply async brainstorming, is the best way to gather a diverse range of ideas quickly. We tap into a vast reservoir of creativity and insight by inviting the entire company to participate. This approach leads to better solutions and fosters a culture of collaboration and innovation. Remember, great ideas can come from anywhere—our job as product leaders is to create the conditions that let these ideas flourish.

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