Something that has taken me 30 years to figure out about "brainstorming:" It is favored by groups with no accountability. "Brainstorming" is such a touchy-feely process. It's used to promote inclusion amongst a group of disparate people who probably shouldn't be a group in the first place. It's used to come up with ideas that cannot be tested or otherwise iteratively developed prior to deployment. It's a way for everybody to contribute to the process, regardless of whether or not they have any justification to contribute to the process or not. Classic brainstorming - gather everyone around the conference room in order to come up with advertising ideas for the company. Traditionally thinking, "brainstorming" permits the introduction of ideas from outside normal channels and puts creativity at the forefront. Realistically speaking, "brainstorming" eliminates expertise, promotes lay thinking, insults those who know what they're doing and patronizes those who don't. Maybe you're an engineering firm with three departments of four engineers each. You have a drafting pool of 8 guys. You've got an accountant, you've got an HR person, you've got a receptionist. Your 12 engineers know fuckall about advertising and don't want to. Yet here they are, shouting out bullshit because they're required to be. Your HR person knows AFLAC and COBRA and doesn't want any part of this. Your receptionist at least went to art school, but here, in this one corner of the world where she's actually got more expertise than the people whose asses she wipes all day, she's relegated to "equal." By sheer number you end up with a bunch of ideas that the engineers come up with, that by concensus, are favored 12:1 over whatever the receptionist comes up with. Ta daa: bad ideas run rampant. Let's suppose instead of burning half an hour (at an average of $150 billable per: that's over $2000 just for this little sit-down) you send out an email to anybody who has ever shown anything like a creative side and put them on a small group whose job it is to evaluate - wait for it - $1000 worth of advertising research by a firm that does advertising for a living. Now nobody's pissed off, the people who want input are enrolled, and you get a quality product without churning your wheels. FUCK brainstorming. Interestingly enough, here's what "brainstorming" looks like when there's some accountability at the end of the process:
It's been my experience that the best "brainstorming" isn't about the "big idea" but about how to bring the "big idea" to fruition. Brain storming should be what happens after the initial idea, because that's when it normally takes multiple teams from within the same organization to implement and enact. -it has it's place.
...but the fundamental tenets of brainstorming - "no criticism" and "maximize quantity" - are anathema to implementation. "After the initial idea" there is a limited solution set governing "how to do it" or else you failed your due diligence in the first place. "Let's figure out how to tell Janice we're taking the christmas party planning away from her" does not have nearly as many possible solutions as "let's pick a theme for the Christmas party" and the solutions to the first problem have consequences, while the solutions to the second do not. Thus my point - brainstorming works best when it really doesn't fucking matter what the answer is. As I tend not to worry about problems whose solutions are irrelevant and hold a dim view of those who do, I've yet to encounter a brainstorming session that was worth the time.
Isn't it essentially crowd-sourcing answers? Why does it have to mean "no criticism" and "maximize" quantity? Who says so? I guarantee that some of the best ideas have come from "spit-balling".As I tend not to worry about problems whose solutions are irrelevant and hold a dim view of those who do, I've yet to encounter a brainstorming session that was worth the time.
-agreed, count me out of that session. That's when I'm secretly checking my email below the table and making comments on Hubski while on a "team call" for work... .like right now.
"Spitballing" and "brainstorming" are two very different things. "Spitballing" means "I'm throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, some of them may be terrible, we'll evaluate them as they come." "Brainstorming" EXPLICITLY means "we're all going to come up with ideas without any criticism or evaluation, then we're all going to sit in a circle and evaluate them after we're completely out of ideas."
I do agree but at that point it's really no longer "brainstorming" it's more about who is taking on what roles in order to implement the big idea.
No, it's still brainstorming. For example, the programmer/coder has an idea about how to approach media or the marketing person has some CSS ideas etc. all geared towards bringing the big-idea to market. These examples exist in traditional brick and mortar businesses too.
"It is favored by groups with no accountability." This.