Brainstorming: good or bad?

There's a bit of discussion going on at one of my favourite blogs, Adliterate, on the subject of brainstorming -- an important part of the "Fuzzy Front End" of innovation.



There seems to be two emerging points of view:

1) those who assume that certain people cannot ever come up with a great idea. For these folks, brainstorms are a waste of time, and

2) those who believe that brainstorm sessions are useful, if handled correctly.

I tend to agree with the second of these two camps. It's a bit pretentious to think that only the "pros" and industry insiders can come up with anything half decent, don't you think? There are numerous examples of how so-called experts got it way wrong (e.g. the know-it-all that rejected the Harry Potter idea for one. Even the Beatles were told they sucked for crying out loud).

That said, brainstorms can't be a free-for-all: this is the lunatics-taking-over-the-asylum method. Brainstorming sessions need to be handled with discipline; and any ideas that are forwarded/captured need to be filtered out pretty quickly. But what, or who, is the filter? And what are the criteria for filtering out these ideas? In a small firm, the head honcho will essentially be the filter: she'll basically say: "That's a goer," or "What a daft idea that is. Are you on something?" At the end of the day, she takes responsibility and makes a decision. It's her head on the block. There's action as opposed to hand holding, group hugs and waiting around for agreement.

In larger firms that span across numerous country-markets/cultures, things can get even more messy. Here, there needs to be a written document that guides what a firm will and will not do. In terms of innovation management, this is the firm's innovation strategy document. Many authors have argued that an innovation strategy (or product strategy) is an essential ingredient of successful innovation management (e.g. Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1995, 1997; Hultink, Griffen, Hart and Robben 1997). In the larger firm, all the ideas can be viewed against this document. This is the proxy boss.

The thread is onging so check out the Adliterate blog. It's a stormer if you are in any way interested in advertising, branding and business in general.

Shifting perspectives

Who do you think uttered the following?

"The new people were strange, violent and hard to understand. Occasionally, some were captured, and if they survived and learnt your language, they might confide something of their customs and beliefs. Mostly, though, you could only watch what they did, or try making sense of them from their tools and artifacts. You might see them coming ashore from one of their floating islands, or drinking blood. Sometimes, when you killed one of them, or if a floating island smashed against the rocks, axes of a hard, mysterious material were left behind, or thin medallions of metal you could use as jewelry. Strangest of all, was when these white, hairy, stinking people erected a piece of wood, with another set across it, and then fixed on this construction the image of a bleeding, tortured man."

The above quote was taken from Facing East from Indian Country, by Daniel K. Richter. The quote represents a view of America's history from those that were already there before the first Europeans arrived.



Asking a few random customers to write a similar utterance about a firm's product offering could provide some amazing insights -- or surprises.