According to research by Stanford Professor Bob Sutton, innovative businesses need to generate about 4,000 ideas to come up with two or three really good ones.
Think about that.
4,000 ideas.
What does that mean for our students? In their busy whirlwind days, they’re likely to opt for their first or second idea on any given assignment. A thesis pops into their head? They’ll probably hit the ground running with it so they can get their paper done. They think of a project concept for genius hour? Boom. They jump on board.
In an era of busy busy and test prep, brainstorming often gets shortchanged. But what if that means students are spending hours, days, even weeks on ideas that don’t deserve their time? Ideas they would have quickly surpassed with a few more minutes of thinking, and a quick feedback session with a partner?
Today on the pod, let’s talk about how can we build a better brainstorming engine into our projects, paper processes, and units. We’re going to take a peek at two quick case studies today – one in a classroom full of students just getting started on a podcast project, and another from my experience working on a concept for PD.
Recently, I got to guest teach a class in the midst of a life skills podcasting unit. The students had just started to listen to podcasts and were beginning the process of “thinking like a podcaster” as they listened, but they hadn’t started the process of coming up with their own ideas for shows yet.
Together, we listened to a few show trailers, rating and reviewing each on whether the students would find them worth listening to, and how they might tweak their premises to make them more interesting. We had fun criticizing the pros and shouting out their highpoints – it reminded me of my favorite part of many slam poetry units, rating video performances.
But eventually, it was time to move on.
It was time for them to start thinking about their own shows. I set a timer and challenged them to come up with ten show ideas.
In the past, I might have offered five minutes to come up with “a show idea,” but not anymore.
I told them about Bob Sutton’s research, and asked them to come up with ten. The show ideas could all be really different, or they could be riffs on a similar concept, like the example brainstorming list I projected on the board.
After five minutes almost everyone had ten, so next, I invited them to stand up and find someone away from their table to whom they could pitch their ideas.
Based on their partner’s feedback, their new goal was to narrow the list to three.
Slowly, in conversation with a potential audience member for their podcast, they narrowed their lists.
And again, we switched feedback partners.
They stood up, found a new audience, and pitched their final three. Their new partner’s job was to ask questions about each one and give them an idea of how interested they would be. Essentially they were brainstorming possibilities for all three, or eliminating any that didn’t work.
Pretty soon everyone had a solid show concept they were ready to run with, as I wandered around shouting out show ideas that were amazing so everyone could be impressed by their peers’ innovative plans.
Could we have spent even more time on the ideation part of the project than 20 minutes? Sure.
Was 20 minutes a lot more than most students would spend on their own if given “come up with a show topic” as homework? Yes.
Plus, they probably wouldn’t have gotten feedback from multiple possible listeners along the way.
My goal today isn’t to demonstrate how to run brainstorming for your next podcast unit, but rather to bring up this idea of brainstorming, period.
When students are going to write a paper, maybe have them come up with ten thesis ideas instead of one.
When they’re going to launch into a research project, consider having them bullet ten ideas and then ten spin offs of their favorite idea.
Then consider the idea of feedback – are other people interested? What questions do they have? How might that make the process more worthwhile for them, knowing which topics are appealing and helpful to others? Questions like these can have real repercussions into their future jobs.
For example, I was recently considering possibilities for a professional development workshop. I brainstormed ideas for a while, eventually narrowing it to three.
In the first concept, a challenge day, teachers would get to work on a project challenge of their choice, whether it was upgrading their space, adding more choice to a unit, creating a collaboration outside their discipline, exploring and integrating some current research they’d been wanting to read, etc. They’d simply choose a challenge card with a QR on the back to walk them through steps and resources to help in their self-defined project.
In the second concept, a discussion gallery, teachers would get to test out a variety of discussion methods in different rooms, learning how to use each one and what its strengths and challenges are.
In the third, teachers from within the community would apply to share on what was working best for them over special lunches. The PD money would pay teachers internally for taking the time to create a meaningful experience, as well as for a beautiful lunch for everyone who chose to attend.
I popped over to our Creative High School English Facebook Group to pitch these three ideas, feeling sure I knew which one would win. The Challenge day felt like such a win to me, so that teachers could work on whatever they were truly interested in, though I also thought the lunch series ideas was a winner.
A few hours later, when I checked the poll I created, 100 % of the votes went to one contender.
Guess which one.
The only one I didn’t think had a chance.
The discussion gallery.
People used exclamation points. Someone joked that they came in to the thread to say “discussion gallery” but then saw that everyone else had already said the same thing.
Imagine if I hadn’t bothered to brainstorm ideas beyond the challenge day I thought of first, or if I hadn’t asked for feedback. I could have days working on a PD that got 0% of the votes.
My Challenge to You
It’s simple! See where you can build in small shifts towards generating and testing ideas. And let students know why. Share what Bob Sutton discovered in his research – 4000 ideas for 2-3 innovative ones. It’s a pretty amazing fact, and the kind of thing that sticks in your mind. I should know, it’s sure stuck in mine.
Want to go Deeper?
Check out this guide to Brainstorming from the Stanford d.School.
Explore the Masters of Creativity Video Series from Stanford.
Sources:
Potash, Betsy. “Research-Based Practices to Ignite Creativity, with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle.” The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 393.
Pringle, Zorana Ivcevic. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs, 2025.
Utley, Jeremy and Kathryn Segovia. “Masters of Creativity: Updating the Creative Operating System (Design Thinking).” Stanford d.School Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggza7df7N7Y&t=2233s. Accessed October 17, 2025.
