​Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Brainstorming, Affinity Grouping, and Multivoting are tools for generating, categorizing, and choosing among ideas in a group of people. Using these techniques to generate, categorize, and choose among ideas has a number of benefits:

• It allows every member of the group to participate.
• It encourages many people to contribute, instead of just one or two people.
• It sparks creativity in group members as they listen to the ideas of others.
• It generates a substantial list of ideas, rather than just the few things that first come to mind; categorizes ideas creatively; and allows a group of people to choose among ideas or options thoughtfully.