Hopefully by now it has been established that creative thinking is important. But how does one encourage such thinking? A popular technique for fostering creative thought is known as brainstorming. Brainstorming is typically done in a group environment, and has a few basic ideas behind it:

• Ideas are said as soon as they are thought up, without fear of critism
• No idea is too rediculous - in fact, wild and strange ideas should be encouraged
• The group should rely on each other's thoughts, combining ideas when possible or using one idea as a diving board to an entirely new venue of creative thought
• The more ideas, the better

While a person frequently can come up with more ideas on their own, the advantages of group brainstorming are that many. One is that the entire group learns to be more creative at once, rather than merely one individual. Another is that the group grows closer, learning to encorporate ideas together smoothly. In addition, brainstorming is a fun technique that has been proven to be successful.