A brief history of brainstorming: it was intended to allow for deliberate and collaborative ideation. Since this activity is linked to innovation, the whole brainstorming process is reinvented through iterations and deviates from its initial concept. It’s not an issue as long as you get the desired outcomes, but most teams aren’t fully utilizing this technique. This is due to the fact that adopting brainstorming as a general idea-generating method without adequate preparation wastes a lot of time and energy and produces disappointing results.
If you were a participant in a brainstorming session back in the day, you would frequently find yourself in a packed room with individuals randomly screaming out ideas, a handful of intense debates, and a group of silent participants. Worse, in some situations, this is still happening today. Sticky notes are sometimes given around, allowing participants to take a few seconds of silence before writing down their thoughts and ideas, which is a significant improvement in the way these sessions are run. You also avoided having to wait in line for your suggestion to be put down on a whiteboard and maybe becoming confused. Today, with or without actual gatherings, modern technology has made it simpler for brainstorming to work with ideas produced independently, simultaneously, and remotely.
That was a quick timeline of how brainstorming sessions are usually conducted, since its inventor, Alex Osborn, began developing methods for creative problem-solving. He presented brainstorming in various publications, as he intended for it to be used in the context of a Creative Problem-Solving method (CPS). The approach emphasizes the significance of the basic introduction to the problem and preliminary research on the topic, and what happens after discovering solutions. The follow-up phase is also the one at which brainstorming is most commonly used. Osborn also stated that brainstorming sessions should focus on a single issue. He believed that sessions that addressed several questions were wasteful.
Thanks to advances in technology and software development, there are methods for your team to participate in remote brainstorming sessions without sacrificing the quality or number of ideas gathered. Innovation Cloud is a cutting-edge software system designed to support and encourage idea discovery. If you are unable or unwilling to perform brainstorming the old way, request a demo and find out more about our offer.
