Brainstorming is one of those faddy methods that is supposed to help people come up with creative and useful ideas. It can be fun and popular, but it actually produces worse results than having the same people work alone. Here is an alternative technique, brainwriting, that seems to combine people writing on their own with time spent working together. Might be worth a try next time somebody suggests another lame brainstorming session.
Forget brainstorming – try brainwriting!
Brainstorming sessions are popular but surprisingly ineffective. Research shows that people actually come up with more ideas working on their own than they do brainstorming together. According to business psychologist Peter Heslin, an alternative way for groups to generate ideas is called “Brainwriting”, and early evidence suggests that it, unlike brainstorming, helps groups to spawn more ideas than the same number of people working alone.
How about a non-performative process? The whole notion that we’re not going to get together, as a group or in our cells, and be creative is rather silly, and speaks more to business’s attitude of deus vult, than to any sense of how ideas are generated. Personally, I’m more a fan of dialogic critical reflection among friends… with wine and cheese. Or beer and fries.