Fundamentally, the situation is that of a small team engaged in the process of problem solving in a commercial setting.
Brainstorming is an approach to collaborative idea generation. Its proponents emphasise the benefits of high levels in novelty, quantity, diversity, unusualness and imaginativeness of the identified solutions. (Finke and Bettle 1996)
The term “brainstorming” and its methodology were introduced by Alex Osborn in 1956. It is defined as a set of objectives, which a small team (ideally seven people or less) should observe as they take turns in a loosely organised and casual in nature meeting. These are: Defer judgement. Encourage wild ideas. Build on the ideas of others. Go for quantity. One conversation at a time. Be visual. The last two guidelines have in time been appended to Osborn's concept and countless other variations have been proposed since, including an anonymised computer based version, but these are beyond the intended scope of this post.
If you are not convinced you aren't alone and parodies aside, I'll attempt to outline some of the criticisms of brainstorming with a notion of “harnessing” the intended benefits of crowd based creative power through a conscious realisation of its likely pitfalls.
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no such thing as bad ideas?
The main objective of brainstorming is the generation of multiple ideas in an unstructured manner looking at problems from different perspectives and allowing possible solutions to emerge in a natural and unconstrained way. However, typically it is employed to solve particular problems, rather than a means of exploring new possibilities. Additionally, as a result of conformance it tends to result in “groupthink”, which all too often, leads to adoption of low value, impractical or unrealistic solutions. (Finke and Bettle 1996)
The assumed openness to elicit untested ideas and explore a wide range of possibilities is implied by the prescribed freedom from critical comments and evaluation. In my opinion, this can be a weakness in the process. In brainstorm speak this is called: a “no bad ideas” environment. The rationale behind this prescription is: that there isn't a greater killer of invention than comments like “that won't scale” from one's peers. (Bernard and Summers 2010) Perhaps remarks like “that won't scale” should be acknowledged by all parties as a contextual fact in the consideration of the proposed idea. Terminating the exploration due to a single constraint would be premature, but I hate the thought that the above mentioned vocal person would be later assigned to deliver the execution of the flawed concept against her or his judgement, simply because the team committed to develop it further without hearing their expert opinion.
This guideline (defer judgement) is most commonly broken in real life and I may be encouraging it further, but being exposed to or rather supported by the breadth of a collective team expertise, is a well recognised strength in collaboration.
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everyone can be creative
The assumption is that; given the right environment, an incubator with all the right conditions to stimulate ideation and making it fun - props, toys, drinks and snacks, a clearly stated free from constraints attitude - “no bad ideas”, a means to capture the ideas - whiteboard, pens and paper, cameras, voice recording etc., when every member in the group shares their inspirations given an equal chance, an invention is likely to emerge spontaneously. This idealistic view is widely accepted, but is it a realistic and reliable path to generate creative work?
Going by my experience, I can only say: sometimes and not very often. As an exclusive approach it simply represents a try-hard design utopia, if not a means to undermine the importance of roles traditionally defined as creative. After all, not everyone fixes their own car or builds their dream kitchens hands-on. Skills are a combination of both, the learnt technique and an inherent intuition we have for the subject of work we pursue, hence the expectations placed on brainstorming may actually be somewhat naive.
First, a number of personality issues quite at odds with brainstorming need to be considered; Pulling raw ideas out of one's head and expressing them for the benefit of the team might encounter some barriers, after all not everyone is an extrovert. Then we need to think outside of the box, when most people feel more comfortable with low risk regular routines. And finally, the sudden impulse/flash of creative insight is recognised as strongly associated with intrinsic motivation, which by definition is the opposite of the more common extrinsic motivation based on set goals, scores/gains and the recognition of value by others.
Further, we have the issues of productivity and tangible value outcomes, which need to be addressed. If the un-primed ideas actually flow, will other members of the team really be challenged to take ownership of the implied potential of this creativity or simply idle awaiting their turn or worse - freeze with apprehension of their own defeat. Rather than perceiving it as an opportunity to express their own ideas and views, many people feel quite confronted by the notion of addressing their peers. The 'productivity loss' relative to working individually, is well documented by various studies; evaluation apprehension despite the prescribed rule, social loafing as a result of shared responsibility and limitations of short-term memory resulting in forgetting one's inspirations while others express their own - to name just a few. (Finke et al 1992) The evidence of cop-out contributions by employees expected to come up with individual pursuits towards the common good is abundant and YouTube is a great beneficiary of those.
There is more, just look at various cultural values ingrained through education and life experience at large. For example, Confucius philosophy with deep influence on the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese cultures, fosters hierarchies of mastery and a great regard for traditions, the past and its wisdom. This has a profound impact on the individuals' concept of professional practice, knowledge and its masters entrusted with responsibilities. In many ways, these principles are at odds with the notion of informally guessing or stumbling upon solutions, which brainstorming embraces at its core. Of course this doesn't stop Asian people from being good brain-stormers, but it certainly undermines the sense of respect and trust in the adopted results.
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can we fix it and should we try to?
Apart from providing an aspect of fun at work, brainstorming gives us a personal voice. At a time when social culture at large strays further and further from stereotypes, the work environment suffers from a 'job hat' syndrome and the hat appears to be worn ever tighter. Therefore a personal voice is an increasingly important asset, a forum with an attentive audience is valuable in terms of feeling involved, empowered and responsible for reaching high level objectives.
Above all, brainstorming offers a means to suspend the routine approach to tasks and one's reliance on expert insight and instead, act in a freer or fresher manner. This indeed, is where we may discover the genius inventor within us.
Problem solving based on specialised expert insight provides a high level of confidence in both, productivity and predictability of results. In other words, if a problem is trivial and the desired outcomes are well known in advance, there is no need to embark on discovering anything new and a craft-like approach will be the best fit for the job. However, an expectation of disruptive outcomes or invention calls for maximum spontaneity in the creative process, proverbial “thinking outside the box” in order to reach optimal results. I feel that non-routine thinking presents a significant enough value in design to dedicate my next post "brainstorming primed for invention" to an attempt at making brainstorming really “work” in creative pursuits.
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Ronald A. Finke and Jonathan Bettle, 1996, “Chaotic cognition: Principles and Applications”.
Alex F. Osborn, 1956, “Applied Imagination”.
Chris Bernard and Sara Summers, 2010, “Dynamic Prototyping with Sketchflow in Expression Blend”.
Ronald A. Finke, Thomas B. Ward and Steven M. Smith, 1992, “Creative Cognition: Theory, Research and Applications”.
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