Most people think "ideation" means sitting in a room throwing out ideas until something sticks. That's not what makes brainstorming actually work — and it's why most brainstorms produce mediocre results.

Here's the mistake: skipping straight to solutions without a sharp problem statement.

If you ask a group "how do we improve our onboarding?" you'll get vague, unfocused ideas. But if you reframe it as a "How Might We" question tied to a specific insight — e.g. "How might we help new users feel confident within their first 5 minutes, given that most drop-off happens before they complete their first action?" — the ideas that come back are dramatically sharper.

Three quick fixes if your brainstorms feel flat:

1. Write a POV statement first. [User] needs [need] because [insight]. This forces you to name the real insight before anyone starts ideating.

2. Defer judgment completely during idea generation. The second someone says "that won't work," the group quietly stops proposing bold ideas.

3. Go for volume, not quality. Teams that generate 30+ ideas before narrowing down consistently land on better final solutions than teams that stop at 5-8 "good" ones.

This is basically the Empathize → Define → Ideate sequence from design thinking, compressed into a 10-minute pre-brainstorm exercise. Costs nothing, takes 10 minutes, and it's the single biggest lever I've seen for making brainstorms actually produce something useful.

Curious if others have found other blockers that kill good ideation sessions.