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I think sometimes you can strike gold with a good brainstorming session, but it is a rare occurrence. But I do agree forcing out ideas without much thought and
by DigitalSea 13y ago
I think sometimes you can strike gold with a good brainstorming session, but it is a rare occurrence. But I do agree forcing out ideas without much thought and in usually limited amounts of time can result in some horribly uncreative ideas.
You can't force an idea, they just come and history has proven you come up with creative solutions and ideas to things when you try and fail, sometimes hundreds and thousands of times.
Do you think Thomas Edison invented the light-bulb right away? He failed multiple times, he didn't succeed the first time he created something. In-fact, I am fairly certain although nobody knows the exact figure, but it was over 1000 attempts. The difference between a good idea and a bad one is experimentation and the execution of said idea.
Once you have the initial idea, it never hurts to have a post-idea brainstorm to help further refine the idea. Conception should be natural, but getting multiple people involved to refine the core idea I think is still a great way to help a great idea even better as you get more than one angle you should approach it from. Don't be confused here, this is a different kind of brainstorm, not an ideation brainstorm like the article touches upon.
Great article that I think some companies who insist on brainstorming should read before they decide to pull an all day brainstorming session that will ultimately result in most likely nothing substantial or worthwhile.
- Ygg2 13y agoThomas Edison didn't invent lightbulb, per se. He improved existing designs to make it usable.
- zimpenfish 13y agoHe did a lot of "improving" "existing designs". Although nowadays we call it "being a filthy thieving bastard".
- Ygg2 13y agoBasically he was a more dastardly Steve Jobs.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoNo, just a regular Steve Jobs.
- Ygg2 13y agoI'll be honest, I said dastardly merely because I see Thomas Alva Edison twirling his mustache.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoHe had a mustache? I learn something all the time on HN :) Indeed Alva was a first-class bastard. But that's what it took to be successful in the gilded age I guess.
- Ygg2 13y agoNo, I took some artistic liberties. But he should have :P
- ljf 13y agoExactly this. While at the BBC I took part and ran hundreds of brainstorming sessions, the output of which went on to become successful TV shows, websites, games and brands. That said this wasn't just a group blindly attending ideas seasons, nor were the outputs slavishly adhered to. People would take time to prepare for the session, not by coming prepared with answers, but by learning the topic we were going to debate and the audience. Then post brainstorming we continued to deconstruct and develop the ideas, making sure that no one was precious about how ideas developed. Brain storming is great for looking at the problem from lots of angles quickly. The effort to turn it into a proper feature should still be a more singular task.
- ChrisGaudreau 13y agoAs Nikola Tesla said: "If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor."