Big bad brainstorming

Brainstorming's reputation has taken a knock recently, with research and productivity experts suggesting that, as a group technique for thinking up ideas, brainstorming is ineffective. Individual brainstorming (brainwriting), on the other hand, is mostly seen as effective.

Since Alex Osborn introduced the concept to the world in 1953, brainstorming had gained enormous popularity, so evidently it must work at least sometimes. Can we solve this paradox?

A leading creativity researcher, Scott G Isaksen, and teammate John P Gaulin, note that the term 'brainstorming'

… has been used to describe everything from a heated debate to a group discussion, or even an excuse to dump work on someone else. The abuse of the term brainstorming has led to a general misunderstanding of its purpose and most effective use. (Emphasis mine.)

So what is brainstorming, then?

Osborn set four guidelines for successful brainstorming:

1. No one must judge or criticize another's ideas. The time to evaluate, discard, modify, or adopt ideas is after the brainstorming session.
2. All ideas should be welcomed, without judgement. The wild and crazy ideas should be as welcome as the practical ones: once the ideas are evaluated, what had seemed crazy might carry the seed of an effective solution.
3. The purpose of a brainstorming session is to think of as many ideas as possible. The more ideas, the likelier that an excellent solution will be among them.
4. Group members should be encouraged to let others' ideas inspire them, modifying or combining ideas.

Besides these guidelines, Osborn recommended that

• brainstorming groups should consist of a leader, assistant leader, five experienced "core" members, and five guests. The "guests" should vary for every session, to avoid the rigidity that might come with too much familiarity,
• the leader of the group should be trained in brainstorming, and
• the members of the group should be roughly the same rank, so all could feel free to suggest ideas.

Finally, Osborn pointed out that group brainstorming is not a substitute for individual brainstorming, but a supplement:

Group brainstorming serves solely as a supplemental source--a means of generating a maximum number of potentially usable ideas in a minimum of time.

Re-examining the research

Isaksen and Gaulin write that most research on brainstorming focus only on the four guidelines, disregarding Osborn's other recommendations.

They decided to investigate the effectiveness of various group compositions, including groups that followed both Osborn's guidelines and his recommendations.

They set up nine groups of people, with each group receiving different instructions for coming up with ideas about how to handle junk mail.

1. The first group was asked to discuss the problem only.
2. The second group was also a discussion group; they were asked to come up with 5 to 7 ideas.
3. The third discussion group was asked to produce at least 20 ideas.
4. The fourth, fifth, and sixth groups were brainwriting groups: members of all three groups brainstormed by themselves, then shared the results with the rest of the group. Group 4 included a facilitator who helped generate ideas.
5. In Group 5, the second brainwriting group, a facilitator explained the technique and helped stimulate ideas, but did not help generate ideas.
6. Group 6 brainstormed individually, but followed the guidelines for brainstorming.
7. Group 7 worked as a group, following Osborn's guidelines. This method resembles the group compisition used in most research into brainstorming.
8. Group 8 resembled Group 7, but included a trained facilitator. The facilitator used some idea stimulators to help the group generate ideas. The group members could also scribble ideas on sticky notes so they will remember them; this way, no idea could "disappear" while the person waited for a chance to speak. The ideas were written on a flipchart so that all the ideas were in view. This helped participants deliberately use each other's ideas to build on, improve, or combine.
9. The last group followed the same instructions as Group 8, but also included a "client"—a group member who "owned" and could clarify the problem, and answer questions.

And the winner is …

As predicted by existing research, brainwriting (individual generation) was the most effective. Group 4 produced the most ideas: 332.

Brainwriting with a facilitator who did not participate (Group 5) generated only 193 ideas.

Group brainstorming, done according to Osborn's recommendations, did not fare too badly. Group 9—brainstorming with a trained facilitator and a "client"—took third place with 190 ideas. This result is close to that of Group 5, indicating that group brainstorming, following Osborn's guidelines and recommendations, is as effective as brainwriting.

Group 8, brainstorming according to Osborn's guidelines, but without a "client," generated 132 ideas.

These four groups were the most successful. The remaining groups scored significantly fewer ideas, ranging from 7 to 58.

What is noteworthy is that each of the most prolific groups included a trained facilitator. Brainstorming without a trained facilitator (Group 7), even while following Osborn's guidelines, generated only 25 ideas.

Conclusion

Individual brainstorming is clearly a winner. However, there are times when group brainstorming is more appropriate, such as when you want to generate group enthusiasm and a sense of 'ownership' of the problem. In which case you should note that …

… brainstorming without a trained facilitator is not effective.

Even Group 1, who only discussed the problem, came up with more ideas that Group 7: 25 versus 29 ideas.

And another interesting result …

If you instruct yourself or a brainstorming group to come up with a specific quota of ideas, you will probably reach, but not exceed by much, your target.

The groups who were told how many ideas to produce (Groups 2 and 3), obediently produced that many ideas. Group 2 produced exactly 7 ideas, as they were instructed, and Group 3, requested to produce at least 20 ideas, settled on 21.

It does not pay to underestimate creative potential!

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Sources:

Osborn, A. F. (1953). Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative problem-solving. New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Isaksen, S. G., & Gaulin, J. P. (2005). A re-examination of brainstorming research: Implications for research and practice. The Gifted Child Quarterly, 49(4), 315–329.