Why Brainstorming is Weak

Why Brainstorming is a Weak Tool for Creative Thinking

Brainstorming is by far the most widely used tool for creative thinking. It was developed in the 1940s and 1950s by advertising executive Alex Osborn, who developed a crisp list of four basic rules for generating creative ideas:

Criticism is ruled out. Adverse judgment of ideas must be withheld until later.
"Free-wheeling" is welcomed. The wilder the idea, the better; it is easier to tame down than to think up.
Quantity is wanted. The greater the number of ideas, the more the likelihood of winners.
Combination and improvement are sought. In addition to contributing ideas of their own, participants should suggest how ideas of others can be turned into better ideas; or how two or more ideas can be joined into still another idea.

From what we now know about the mechanics of mind, Osborn's four simple rules are brilliant. They clearly address the key issues of premature judgment and mental movement. The weakness of the modern practice of brainstorming lies in the fact that these four basic rules do not address the mental subsystem of perception; nor do they give strong guidance on how to use what is stored in our mind, but still be original in our thinking.

Specifically, modern brainstorming is a weak tool for four reasons.

First, while suspension of judgment and going for quantity is necessary for creative thinking, this is not sufficient. Edward de Bono likens brainstorming to the situation of a man, tied up with ropes, in a room with a violin. In this condition, the man obviously cannot play the violin. But, if we cut the ropes, will the man be able to play? Not necessarily. Cutting the ropes removes a constraint, but if the man has no skill or experience with the violin, he is still unable to play.

Second, as practiced today, brainstorming sessions naively assume that no prior preparation is needed. It is naive to assume that brilliant, never-before-thought-of ideas will suddenly burst forth from a group of people assembled to brainstorm for an hour. While this certainly can happen, the question remains: should we expect it to happen regularly? Of course not.

Third, brainstorming exhorts us to creativity, but fails to tell us how to achieve it. The rules of brainstorming tell us to free wheel, go for quantity, and build on the ideas of others. But this tells us nothing about how to get novel ideas in the first place. With brainstorming, the assumption is that the creative ideas are there already, locked in the mind; we just need to let them out.

Fourth, as practiced today, brainstorming sessions rarely do an effective job of harvesting the rich set of ideas that are generated. The usual experience in a brainstorming session is that we fill multiple easel pages with ideas, and then vote on or otherwise select only one or two of the ideas to develop. In most brainstorming sessions, nothing is ever done with the many ideas that fail to make the cut. We can do better.

Brainstorming is not a bad tool; it is just weak by itself. Consider the rules of brainstorming as minimal conditions and logistical details only. We can now supplement our practice of brainstorming with more powerful techniques for directly stimulating the imagination.

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