We’ve all been there: Brainstorming sessions with a bunch of wise guys who rain ridiculous ideas on the room like a WWII blitzkrieg. It never fails, just as the room starts cooking and folks are really jamming on ideas, some fun-lovin’ wacko suggests something totally out of the blue and disrupts the momentum.

The traditional mindset says it’s good to keep things wide open during a brainstorm. Sure, I agree, but there are limits. I love coming up with crazy ideas as much as the next innovator. That’s easy. What takes more effort (and guts) is coming up with viable ideas – ones that service a real need. Ones that will resonate with consumers. Ones that will generate buzz and bucks in the marketplace.

That takes more than a roomful of crazy idea people.

That takes empathy.

The first step in brainstorming is to come prepared. A good session will supply you with segment info beforehand so you can take an empathetic dive into the their lives pre-brainstorm. The info should also include well-defined insights and needs relating to the segment. If you’re not supplied with this pre-session info, you’re in for a few hours (or days) of blue-sky ideas. And depending on your role, that could either be a lot of fun or a big waste of time, money and effort.

But for the sake of this post’s theme, let’s assume you received good pre-session info. Make sure you spend extra time digging into and learning about the segment. Or to paraphrase a line from Caddyshack: Be the Segment. Understand them and their needs. Think like them. This can be more fun than actually coming up with the ideas. It’s sort of like acting. Getting inside the character deep enough that you feel their pain; understand their insights and needs. Once there, blend those feelings and awareness with your creative mind to solve the problem. I find that my empathetic ideas are fresh and new to the world, but more importantly, they’re closer to a real solution than my wild-hair ideas.

If I become stuck while ideating emphatically, I’ll spend a little time exorcising my crazy ideas. But then I’ll always return to my empathetic lens, revisit those crazier ideas and see if can spin them to something better or more germane to the segment/project.

Play with it and have fun. Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in hundreds of brainstorms. And because of that, I’ve had the fun of thinking like hundreds of different types of people. To name a few, I’ve been a latchkey tween, a denture wearer, a firefighter, a working mom (too many times to mention), a cat owner, a backyard DIYer, a frustrated mechanic, an allergy sufferer and an aging boomer…

That last one was the easiest.

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