Brainstorming in New BusinessWeek

The Inside Innovation section of the new BusinessWeek has a pair of stories that are based on the research that Andew Hargadon and I did on brainstorming in the 1990s, and on what I've learned about how to use brainstorms since then, both from academic research and from working with teams that do creative work. The first story is called The Truth About Brainstorming and the second is Eight Rules to Brilliant Brainstorming.

As an academic, headlines that claim to be about truth and brilliance make me a bit nervous, as I am trained to make more measured claims. But Ithink they did a great job of capturing my view of brainstorming research and practice.

Comments

[dblwyo]

That's encouraging. For what it's worth your rules are in-line with my experiences. To wit brainstorming is hard but extremely useful when well done but usually is not. It requires openness, knowledge, a lack of fear, preferably x-functional participants and skilled facilitation.

That experiences is based on 25+ years of product design and development from a major logisics company's 3PL business to a major computer company's e-Business strategy as well as numerous 'small' efforts and engagements.

One thing that would be worth looking into is some sort of group decision support tool, like IBM's old Team Focus. Properly structured you can get months of results from days of input. More later if desired.

Dave Livingston
Llinlithgow Associates