Creative reflections on brainstorming

Abstract

Brainstorming is the default method of idea-generation in organisations, and is widely applied in higher education by students, academics and support staff. Its popularity is mainly attributable to an illusory belief that groups working together are more productive than individuals working apart. Shared responsibility, the need for collaboration and the social dimension to work also sustains the popularity of brainstorming. To add further insight to the numerous studies that have been demonstrated the inefficiencies of brainstorming, this paper describes preliminary results on participants' self-reflection during a brainstorm. Recommendations are made for improving the productivity of group brainstorms.

Developing an ideation method to be used in cross-functional inter-organizational teams by means of action design research

“…They found that real teams in several of the ideation conditions generated a larger number of ideas than equivalent nominal groups (Linsey and Becker 2010), which is a very interesting finding, since the extensive research on brainstorming in the field of psychology unambiguously shows that verbally interactive group work decreases the amount of ideas compared to the amount obtained through nominal groups (e.g. Mullen et al 1991;Byron 2012). Using ideation methods in an optimal way clearly has a great potential to increase the number of ideas which a team can contribute during concept generation.…”

“…killing plant life using nuclear radiation or introducing animals that Gallery like water to address insufficient drainage at turnouts) than previous ideas. It has been reported in the literature that, when "the rate of suggested ideas has diminished almost to a standstill", more intriguing and unusual ideas start to appear, but only a few people contribute then and most people would prefer to do something else (Byron 2012). It could therefore be argued that with OKMv2 this point in time was reached, which did not happen during the other tests, and therefore the topic dealt with during OKMv2 was more exhausted.…”

Creative activities and action learning

“…Byron (2012) points to a number of studies which suggest that the method leads to 'productivity losses' rather than gains in terms of the quality and quantity of ideas generated (Byron 2012). He argues that in order to improve the effectiveness of group, brainstorming participants need to have a real stake in the problem being considered and that a 'trained facilitator' should lead the session (Byron 2012, 208).…”

Reflections on ‘creative’ action learning in business education: some issues in its theory and practice

“…The rules we follow are (1) deferment of judgment, (2) quantity (of ideas) breeds quality, (3) combination of ideas and building on ideas is encouraged and (4) to encourage the generation of 'wild' ideas. Byron (2012) has pointed to the mis-use of brainstorming in many contexts and its consequent limited success in terms of productivity. To counter this, Byron suggests a number of improvements, including brainwriting which involves writing ideas down on an individual basis whilst participating in a group brainstorming session, and the involvement of an experienced facilitator (Byron 2012, 209Á211).…”