Crowdstorm: The Future of Innovation, Ideas, and Problem Solving

Introduction

Properly organized and run, a group can be a gold-mine of ideas.

—Alex Osborn

Alex Osborn loved ideas. His ideas helped to propel his advertising agency, BBDO, to become one of the most innovative advertising firms in the United States. In 1948, he revealed the secret to a process for coming up with new ideas and innovations in his book, Your Creative Power: How to Use Your Imagination.1

One of the chapters, “How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas,” introduced a process for soliciting many ideas from groups of people. Osborn called the process brainstorming. He described how BBDO used the process to generate more and better ideas. These ideas were at the heart of the advertising agencies’ success. Many decades later, brainstorming is as popular as ever. Need new marketing ideas? Engineering problem not solved? Wondering how to win that new deal? No matter the industry or domain, you have likely participated in brainstorming sessions.

Since its introduction, the brainstorming process has been the subject of various studies and critiques, and the process has evolved. For example, Osborn believed that people should delay feedback—people were encouraged to accept all ideas. However, research suggests that debating ideas can yield better quality ideas. Similarly, while Osborn focused on everyone generating ideas together, research suggests that we are better off producing ideas independently, before getting together.2

While Osborn made brainstorming famous, he also introduced ...