As an entrepreneur, you and your team will inevitably sit around a table and discuss your ideas at some point to develop a new product or marketing strategy. Given that, you probably already know that brainstorming is a great starting point for developing business ideas. But what happens if team members work remotely or notebooks and pens are not the best way to record your results? Since most of the business world is now digitalised, there are brainstorming apps and online tools that have made the process easier. So, what exactly are these apps and how do they work?
What is Brainstorming?
Brainstorming is an activity that can be done individually or in a group. It is a creative idea-generating process in which you come up with as many ideas as possible. Whether your ideas are brilliant or they turn out to be less useful doesn’t matter. You will have time to rearrange and evaluate them later. It is more important to brainstorm in an organised way, using the right tools.
How Do Brainstorming Apps Help You?
In recent years, brainstorming apps have become more popular. Entrepreneurs, students, business owners and anyone who needs to organise new ideas can use online brainstorming tools and apps. These tools can help them to have more successful brainstorming sessions. Some studies, such as this meta-analysis published in Computers in Human Behavior, have also suggested that online brainstorming is more effective than brainstorming sessions held offline. Here are some of the best tools and apps to enhance your brainstorming sessions:
Popplet
Popplet is a fun brainstorming application. This tool uses shapes and symbols to make your results more comprehensible.
You can use it for idea generation, project planning, and studying. Information and ideas are organised into “popples”, or small squares. You can edit, move, and organise the popples on a virtual board. This allows you to keep your ideas organised. It also makes visualising your plans easier.
Not to mention, there are other options such as different fonts and colours. Additionally, you can export the finished brainstorming session as PDF or JPEG files.
Stormboard
Stormboard is an interactive whiteboard designed to capture ideas and plan solutions in one place. It includes many collaboration options, which makes it ideal for team members who work remotely.
The biggest benefit of using Stormboard, is that it allows users to follow idea generation in real-time and make instant reports. In addition, if you care about cybersecurity, this app is perfect for you as it offers various features such as data encryption and 2-factor authentication.
MindMeister
MindMeister is a cloud-based brainstorming tool developed to enhance idea generation and organisation for businesses and students. It offers useful graphical features which help with visualisation, collaboration and problem-solving. The best part is that it’s accessible from any web browser, regardless of your operating system.
Lucidchart
Over the last few years, Lucidchart has grown popular with many industries and business sectors. With Lucidchart you can generate flowcharts and diagrams and have an effective brainstorming session in real-time with your colleagues. You can create powerful and creative charts on a reliable platform and enjoy an optimised user experience.
Coggle
Using Coggle you can create collaborative mind maps for individuals and large groups. You can change the settings on your maps to make them public so that they are ready to be shared with others, an ideal feature for remote colleagues. On top of that, collaborators can benefit from using Coggle to brainstorm by making and editing structured notes in real-time.
Milanote
If you are a creative entrepreneur, UI designer, or marketer, you can use Milanote to generate mind maps on a collaborative online whiteboard. There are various templates to help you start brainstorming, but you can also drag and drop files onto the whiteboard and add links. Team members can use the comment feature to discuss and track the work progress.
Wisemapping
Like many other apps introduced here, Wisemapping is a web-based tool for effective brainstorming. As you can read on their website, their service is completely free and they plan to keep it that way.
On top of that, the user interface is easy to use because of the simple and practical design. The link to your mind map can be embedded in your website and blog, or simply shared with your colleagues, so they can collaborate with you.
Bubble.us
Bubble.us can help you generate and organise your ideas in collaboration with your team. The main idea is introduced first, and other ideas are built around it to form a tree that displays the importance of each idea or task. Bubble.us is a basic platform that allows you to enjoy core options of web-based brainstorming that are useful for anyone from students to entrepreneurs.
Mindly
Mindly is a colourfully designed brainstorming app to help you break your mind blocks and turn them into mind maps. With its smooth design, you can easily generate and customise ideas and create the perfect brainstorming results that can be exported as PDF files. One of Mindly’s most useful features is that it allows users to keep working even when they don’t have access to the internet.
Conclusion
Depending on what your business goals are, you might need different tools for generating new ideas. Nowadays, with many people choosing to work remotely, arranging brainstorming sessions can turn into a challenge. But with the online tools introduced in this article, that obstacle is out of the way. It might take some time to know which of these brainstorming apps works best for you. What can help to ease the process is to try each of them first. Once you have done so, you and your team can pick the tool you found most practical for generating your next great idea.
