Last Updated on 14 June 2011
I recently read a blog article that all but declared brainstorming broken and worthless.
And, in the comments that followed, a few people disagreed… a few people agreed. One of the comments even explained ‘fifty years of research shows brainstorming kills ideas‘.
Many brainstorming sessions are awful. They’re run so poorly they waste time and money. Nevertheless, declaring brainstorming broken or worthless because a lot of people are bad at it is like declaring the game of golf broken and worthless.
Bad meetings are the result of bad leadership… rarely poor participants.
Leading a brainstorm session is like coaching a sport. While the game has rules, there is no fixed approach. Strategy and approach varies with the players, the situation, and the challenge.
How can you blanketly declare “thinking up ideas doesn’t work?”
If brainstorming is broken, blame the players, not the game.
