“Brainstorming doesn’t work”? Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/DrAfter123 Interestingly however, since writing that post, I’ve come across a number of opponents to brainstorming, most recently with the recommendation to search for “brainstorming doesn’t work” in Google – in true Google style, there are “About 7,030,000 results (0.21 seconds)”.
In contrast, Googling “benefits of brainstorming” yields only about 4,200,000 results … So what’s wrong? A couple of specific links from these, both directly from the search results as well as from links within the search results, which I found interesting: “Breakthrough Thinking from Inside the Box“, Kevin P. Interestingly, Kevin Coyne (joint author of the first article above), together with Shawn Coyne, recently quoted, in reference to their new book ‘Brainsteering’ in a recent McKinsey Quarterly magazine (“Seven steps to better brainstorming“): Traditional brainstorming is fast, furious, and ultimately shallow.
Conclusions I stand by my original statement. Like this: Brainstorming?…Alex Osborn Tool–brainstorming?..the misused cliche? Idea Generation Hundreds to a few thousand different and in many cases similar Idea Generating Tools and Techniques have been created over the centuries from whatever techiques Lenny from da Vinci used to Tom from Michigan to Walt from the midwest to artists, writers, inventors, business people and other hosts of thinkers who found just sitting there waiting for a MUSE to show up didn’t work.
This page was created to share studies about BRAINSTORMING, the idea generating tool/technique first invented and named by Alex Osborn in the late 30s and written about and described in a mix of books by him in the 1940s and 50s. Not about the poor studies that supposedly debunked or discredit Osborn’s Brainstorming by using the same word brainstorming but using it as a cliche or hackneyed term representing anytime some people are together and asked to generate ideas or work on a problem. Here is a reference to a source you may read along with the growing number of others posted on this webpage. Dr. Why brainstorming doesn’t work – and how it might. Brainstorming is a commonly used technique to generate ideas, but according to Dr Kevin Byron it's not as effective as people think.
The most widely used method for groups of people to generate ideas for solving problems or meeting open-ended challenges is brainstorming. A conventional brainstorm is a kind of verbal free-for-all where participants apply thinking by association to come up with ideas to solve a problem or challenge, and the ideas are listed on a flipchart for all to see.
In the training room when there are multiple groups the writing is usually carried out by a team member, or in other more formal arrangements with one team, a skilled facilitator may be hired to perform the writing and guide the process. This technique and the guidelines to apply it were first developed by Alex Osborn in the 30s, and twenty years later this process had found widespread use (often without the guidelines) globally in many organisations big and small. . [1] Byron, K.C.(2012). Why brainstorming doesn’t work – and how it might. “Brainstorming doesn’t work”? Why ordinary brainstorming doesn’t work. Recently there have been several prominent articles published that disparage brainstorming, making the claim that brainstorming is a failed corporate experiment … that it doesn’t work.
Most recently and perhaps most notable “The brainstorming myth” from The New Yorker (January 27, 2012). This article in particular caught my attention because it provided a fair bit of evidence to support the argument that brainstorming doesn’t work, but it failed in one significant way. It didn’t tell you why. Why doesn’t brainstorming work? This was the topic of the recent Lunch & Learn hosted by Daedalus and Echo Strategies on March 20, 2012.
So, why doesn’t brainstorming work? Stop for a moment. The same corporations who fail to prepare for a brainstorming session would never dream of bringing in people for a focus group without at least a moderator and a discussion guide. Why else doesn’t brainstorming work? Marissa Ann Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, understands why.