You Can Do Better Than Brainstorming

“Why are we all here?” asked Dan, the CMO of the multinational pharmaceutical

company for which I was consulting. We all looked at one another—marketers, creatives, strategists, and brand managers. Then Dan looked at me, expecting a response, and then everyone looked at me.

“To conceive an impactful marketing idea for the product launch,” I said. 

“Yes! Start brainstorming. Take it from here, Robin,” Dan said and left the room. I did take over but we did not brainstorm.

During the first half of the twentieth century, advertising executive Alex Osborn (BBDO) introduced the brainstorming technique in his books, Your Creative Power: How to Use Imagination and Applied imagination: principles and procedures of creative thinking. Brainstorming persists in popularity and is even incorporated into other processes, for example, design thinking, which encourages you to focus on the people you’re aiming at, or IDEO’s innovation process, though IDEO modified Osborn’s original rules.

For teams who employ brainstorming as their main ideation tool, there are pronounced barriers to conceiving good ideas. For example, people tend to be apprehensive fearing others’ evaluations of their proposed ideas and of being silently judged (according to the rules, no judgements are to be said aloud); brainstorming raises the bar of mediocrity because results tend to favor a median, diluting the more creative suggestions; and, due to the nature of group consensus, often the result is a poor idea. Research indicates that brainstorming in a group results in poorer ideas than when the same number of individuals work alone. 

There are other concerns as to why brainstorming should not be your go-to ideation tool. Think about the average makeup of a team. Is everyone equally astute or imaginative? Has an inclusive and diverse group been assembled? (Inclusive and diverse groups offer different points of view, which is always optimal.) Does the group interact well? Does the group persist when presented with a challenging problem? Does everyone feel comfortable contributing? Often extroverts dominate or a “destroyer” diverts or steamrolls others. Of course, if you have a team of creative professionals, brainstorming is more likely to work; but that more often is not the case. On Twitter, designer, educator, and creative director Brian Collins, tweeted: “Design Rules 49: No trained creative person will ever ask for a group ‘brainstorming’ session. Non-creative people will all the time. Watch.” 

Back to my gig working for Dan and the ideation method I employed to lead my team – the Three Gs ideation, my new framework found in The New Art of Ideas Unlock Your Creative Potential:

 Goal—What you want to achieve

Gap—The underdeveloped area or void that your idea fills or addresses

Gain—The overall benefits of your idea for individuals, society, creatures, the planet, or business

People tend to think of a goal as the idea itself. It is not. A goal is only one entry point into producing a fully-formed idea. And it’s only one entry point into the fluid Three Gs framework.

Some people start ideation by noticing a gap, which is a missing piece that addresses a need—an area not yet explored or underexplored, a question not yet asked, or a population not addressed or underserved. A gap can occur in any discipline; in any form; for any population or population sample of any size, type, or location; for any system, in any situation, in any location, and for any conditions.

Whether your goal is to design a new device or structure, write a story, create a digital game, a generative language, sell more product, open a restaurant, build a crowd-sourced furniture delivery app, build a better whatsit, determine if your goal will fill a gap and if there is a gain for people or our planet. I advocate thinking of gains as the triple bottom line sustainability framework: people, planet, and profit.

If you find brainstorming frustrating, leading to mediocre ideas or even so-last-century, then try The Three Gs, which leads to worthwhile ideas that are beneficial. We can democratize creativity but if that leads to poor ideas, well…you can do better.

Written by Robin Landa.
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