Why Brainstorming Doesn’t Work
Graham am Montag, den 30. November 2009
Brainstorming is probably the most widely used method for generating ideas in the world today. However, almost always, it is either very inefficient or doesn’t yield any useful results at all. The success rate (the proportion of ideas produced that are classified as “good”) of brainstorming sessions is variously quoted as being between 0.1% and 1%. In one article which appeared in the German magazine Brand Eins, an ideation workshop yielded only one or two good ideas out of a total of 1500! Not surprisingly, Brainstorming has developed a bad reputation, and the announcement of a corporate “creative workshop” is often met with scepticism and resistance.
So why don’t Brainstorming and its many variants work? The reason is simple: because they don’t provide the participants with any means to overcome their mental obstacles to generating new ideas. Without such help, participants can only (re)produce the ideas that they already had in their heads anyway before they entered the room.
