The confused state of "brainstorming."

pieces

Why do people who do brainstorming for a living claim that brainstorming sucks? What is "brainstorming" how bad does it suck? If you ask a lot of people who conduct brainstorming activities for a living what they do, they probably won't call it brainstorming. They'll call it Eureka!IdeaEngineering, Merwyn Concept Research, TRIZ, Synectics, Creative Aerobics, or any number of other weird names or acronyms. There are many different commercial and proprietary brands of brainstorming. Only they won't call themselves "brainstorming." If you try to call what they do "brainstorming," they'll probably get a little defensive and point out how what they do is different from and much better than "brainstorming." In fact, one of the best brainstorming facilitators I've run into, an Australian gent named Ian Gee who has invented a brilliant process for generating a wide variety of marketing ideas called "Big Day Out," spends the first 15 minutes of his brainstorming groups explaining how brainstorming really sucks and how the brainstorming activity he is about to put you through is not really brainstorming. In the parlance of marketing and advertising, "brainstorming" has a serious branding problem. I have come to the view that "brainstorming" is best thought of as a very broad and generic category for many different human creativity and problem-solving efforts and activities. THAT'S HOW MOST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD USE THE TERM. Brainstorming professionals, however, have been trying to define "brainstorming" much more narrowly--as being a very specific and somehow outdated activity (e.g., how Alex Osborne ran his brainstorming groups). This has been going on for nearly two decades now...and it has never worked. The well-established everyday view that brainstorming is a broad intention (i.e., "let's brainstorm some ideas") more than it is a particular method persits and grows. I know this is true. I've even tried it myself: I spent money and time to official register "Creative Aerobics" as a legal trademark for my own particular style/activities of brainstorming. I could completely refrain from using the word brainstorming, or I could spend time pointing out how Creative Aerobics was better much better (or more advanced or powerful) than "regular brainstorming." I could repeat the branding label "creative aerobics" over and over throughout a two-day long creativity workshop...and people still walked away thinking "that was (or wasn't) a good brainstorming session." So why have professional brainstorming facilitators fought so long and so hard (and so uncreatively!) against applying the label "brainstorming" to what they do? There are two main reasons. First, most people (at least in the business world that I've worked in) are pretty cynical about "brainstorming" and "brainstorming meetings." Most people--and especially people who are paid to be creative for a living (like writers and art directors working in advertising)--think brainstorming meetings suck. That brainstorming meetings are usually lame, that they don't really work (i.e., they don't produce a lot of really good, creative ideas), and even when they do, the ideas never have an effect (i.e., they don't get implemented, they get rejected by the system. The second reason why professional brainstorming facilitators avoid calling what they do "brainstorming" is because of the desire to brand their own variant of brainstorming as being a unique and proprietary process. Counter-positioning Creative Aerobics as being different than mere brainstorming tries to accomplish both goals: avoid that fact that most people have had prior sucky brainstorming experiences and help them believe that this is going to be a lot better. Trouble is, it doesn't work. Even if you mange to deliver a fabulous brainstorming session that generates an enormous amount and quality of creative ideas and insights, people walk away thinking "that was a good brainstorming session...that's how a good brainstorming session should be conducted." The brainstorming category still sucks, but you've managed to create a little beachhead for the idea that there can be "good brainstorming meetings." I am now happy to surrender to this. I am happy to live with this. I just wish my other brainstorming colleagues would quit fighting the losing and sometimes bizarre fight of denying that what they do falls under the umbrella of "brainstorming." I should also like to point out that just like there are branding-happy, trademarking-crazy, intellectual-property-claiming people in almost any professional area or endeavor, professional brainstorming and creativity facilitation has them, too. The biggest example of this in the world of brainstorming is Doug "Patent Pending" Hall. Doug PP Hall is one of the world's leading practitioners and professional experts in creative business problem-solving. He's authored more than four great books on creativity and creative problem solving. He's also a trademarking and patent freak. He trademarks just about everything. Create a variant of a standard brainstorming technique--brand it and trademark it. Use research to assess the value of your brainstorming activities--brand it and trademark it. In fact, I won't be surprised if Doug Hall develops a system or process for branding and trademarking his stuff, that he'll run out and brand and trademark that process. It's remind me of the old joke that Microsoft was trying to figure out how it could copyright the word "the." I should not like to point out, however, that Doug Hall is a lot wealthier and a lot more successful than I have been. So maybe I should be following him instead of criticizing him. I do worry, however, that branding and trademarking every little brainstorming activity (and every personally different approach to running brainstorming meetings) contributes to the general cynicism about "brainstorming" and the suspicion that it is prone to hoakiness and puffery. I say this having committed these crimes myself. I still call my brainstorming approach "creative aerobics", I call the brainstorming activities I use names I like, and I call them "creative thinking activities" more frequently than I all them "brainstorming" activities. I guess I'll have to cling to the fact that I'm not as hoaky, puffed-up, or overboard with all of this as many others are. Am I?