Creativity is essential to research. Brainstroming and mind-mapping are sometimes very useful to generate creative ideas. Do you find any good tools for this job?
I've been quite happy with the free version of Mindnode for Mac. It's a very basic application, but it's very simple to create a mind map and export it to pdf, and that's all I've ever needed.
I have been using the (commercial) MindJet MindManager, and have been liking it a lot - it's great for brainstorming exercises and information capture, that can then be easily re-organized later on.
Although a bit more focused in terms of fatures, Conceptboard seems to have lots of interesting offerings for teams - although i don't have personal experience with this platform just yet.