> the variation of first having everyone brainstorm alone, then combining and grouping the outcomes This. A thousand times this. I find the biggest common iss

> the variation of first having everyone brainstorm alone, then combining and grouping the outcomes This. A thousand times this. I find the biggest common issue with brainstorming is that you end up with an incoherent amalgamation of things that people think are individually important. People have a hard time evaluating options unless they are part of a coherent whole. Brainstorming beforehand, alone, allows them to figure out what's important and then imagine a coherent story around that thought. Otherwise you end up with solutions that technically contain individual important details but make no coherent sense as a whole. It's like saying "well, Suzie like dragons and Jimmy like potatoes so we put them together in a story." If Suzie had brainstormed before she could propose a backstory and context that the group finds more compelling than Jimmy's context about potatoes and they could have a more fruitful discussion than "I don't like potatoes," or "Dragons are dangerous." Edit: Now that I think about it, this might be at the core of what the article describes as the optimum collaborative environment for innovating - people who exist separately and have their own coherent problems and solutions to worry about such that when combined they lead to even more innovative solutions for problems they didn't initially realize had any overlap.