[jesterpm]

I was going to say this exactly. We've started doing this recently and it's worked really well.

We'll start off with a topic and give everyone, say, 15 minutes to write ideas in the doc on their own. Then take the next 15 minutes to read digest what everyone else wrote, and then rest of the time to discuss as a group.

It's great because it gives everyone a chance to think through the topic and share their perspective, but also you can quickly see the common themes.