“It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one”

Alex Osborn

Chuva de ideias in Portuguese, Ransú smaointe in Irish, Idée de génie in French and Idea genial in Spanish; all of these mean the same thing. Lost? Two words: ‘brain’ and ‘storming’. 

Together, they make up the first step to every creative goal, BRAINSTORMING! That’s right, we are going to understand the who, what and why of brainstorming and how it plays a crucial part in our professional and maybe even our personal lives!

Remember in school, we would get projects to work on, but it was all too overwhelming, leaving us lost and disoriented? But, as soon as we went to our friends to ideate, plan and delegate, everything just felt so easy. In Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, brainstorming is defined as, “a group problem-solving technique that involves the spontaneous contribution of ideas from all members of the group; the mulling over ideas by one or more individuals in an attempt to devise or find a solution to a problem”. Now that is brainstorming in a nutshell, but let’s not stop just yet!

Before we jump any further, let’s travel back in time for a little history lesson, shall we?

In the year 1919, Alex F. Osborn, an ambitious man in New York was trying to save his dying advertising agency and came up with the concept of ‘thinking up’ to push and encourage his employees. This later resulted in the huge success of his agency, making it one of the best of its time. According to Osborne’s design of brainstorming, the process involved creative thinking, incubation, intimation, illumination and verification. It’s like each of us are magicians and each step is a spell bringing you closer and closer to creating magic in the creative world. Cool right? Osborne then went on to coin the word ‘brainstorming’ in a book he published in 1953, titled Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking.

Fun fact: Bill Gates, creator of Microsoft, put a spin on brainstorming. His method of brainstorming involved a suggestion box, where employees would put in their ideas. He would take a week off twice a year, which he would refer to as “Think Week,” during which he would go through stacks of paper and mark each one separately, then combine the best ideas to come up with his own. That sounds like a ‘thinkfastic’ idea to me.

Let’s talk about the advantages of brainstorming. It encourages enhanced communication among team members through open discussion and ideation. It acts like a bubble, giving everyone a safe space to speak and to be heard; this eventually leads to better understanding in the workspace. It builds strong team effort and collaboration when team members are engaged in a creative process. They generate ideas together, taking inspiration from each of their unique perspectives.

The primary goal of brainstorming is to come up with a bucket of ideas regardless of their initial quantity. This abundance of ideas provides a pool of wild and unconventional concepts from which the best options, while keeping in mind the feasibility, can be selected and refined. Finally, the core of brainstorming, which is problem-solving. Brainstorming has been structured in a way to tackle complex problems – it helps break down the problem into comprehensible components and allows each team member to collaboratively explore potential solutions, leading to more effective problem-solving outcomes.

Now that I have bored you on the subject, allow me to share this last thought with you. The brain is a part of us that thinks, but sometimes it can go silent. So let the storms of passion and creativity take over you, don’t hold back. If you still can’t do any of this, let me ask you one last question:

When is your next brainstorm due?