By Doug Hall Over the past 20 years, Eureka Ranch has played host to more than 6,000 teams of people in search of the next big idea. At the end of each brainstorming workshop, we ask participants to rate their session on its levels of stimuli, diversity, fun, fear, cooperation, and openness to radical ideas. By correlating their responses with the number of big ideas the teams came up with, we've been able to identify three simple principles that make brainstorming more powerful. Briefly stated, any team is more likely to create a big idea if it starts by exploring various stimuli, leverages diversity, and drives out fear.

Sound simple? Bear with me while I add some math. More specifically: Doug Hall is the author of the Jump Start Your Business Brain book series. He's also founder and CEO of the Eureka! Ranch and a judge on ABC's American Inventor