The usual wisdom says we are most creative when working in groups that avoid criticism. This is wrong: His book … was published in 1948. … Osborn’s most celebrated idea was … the essential rules of a successful brainstorming session. The single most important … was the absence of criticism and negative feedback. … Brainstorming was an immediate hit and Osborn became a popular business guru. …
As the author states, there are many reasons uncritical brainstorming is nurtured as an idea, despite its ongoing failure. It conforms not only to our idealist, 'non-competitive' natures, but also our current cultural memes. It is also reinforced by consultants and 'creativity gurus' who command huge fees who have purportedly 'discovered' the secret to the process. Most often, these sessions are a waste of time.
This is not to celebrate an egoist approach either. But after at least a thousand business and product development projects, I find the most productive approach is to give 1 or 2 highly engaged folks (NOT at the top of the hierarchy) complete authority to come up with the initial idea including goal definition and suggested future direction, and allow them to consult whoever they wish as they do so.
After the initial idea is laid out, a group can offer marginal value.
The other rationale behind deferring criticism would be less pertinent discursions are less likely making it a time saving feature. Anyone attending organization meetings knows how often this occurs. This would occur mostly between insiders which these subjects are unlikely to be.
Hats off for pointing out the unproven benefits of creativity for Broadway. But then I'm surprised you didn't discuss the possibility that perhaps groupthink is good (even in "near-mode") precisely because creativity is overrated.
Judging from wikipedia's description, it seems like brainstorming theory says we should generate the largest possible initial idea set (with perhaps lower average idea quality) by withholding criticism until later. But in this case people generated larger numbers (not just higher quality) of ideas when they were told to criticize.
If we generate more ideas when we're critical, it doesn't make sense to withhold criticism during the generation phase.
Obviously the point of brainstorming is that you do generation and criticism as separate passes instead of mixing them, not that you skip the criticism stage. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing where this was made clear to the brainstorming study groups; is it possible it might not have been? If not, then of course the miracle would be that they produced any useful output at all; it would trivially follow that their performance would be inferior to that of an uninstructed group or individual.
Not sure of how good a test that is. Companies and organizations have hierarchies and no criticism is to reduce deference and discomfort. Among equals with no other relationship these should not occur.
Perhaps it's an overgeneralization from the single-person case, where it seems to be the case that a writer should separate in time the production of ideas from the editing of the text. This is extended to say that the production and criticism of ideas should be separate, and then further overgeneralized to where criticism harms even when its source is other people. This is supported by the fact that the self-help industry thoroughly muddles the three issues.
This is a good point.
As the author states, there are many reasons uncritical brainstorming is nurtured as an idea, despite its ongoing failure. It conforms not only to our idealist, 'non-competitive' natures, but also our current cultural memes. It is also reinforced by consultants and 'creativity gurus' who command huge fees who have purportedly 'discovered' the secret to the process. Most often, these sessions are a waste of time.
This is not to celebrate an egoist approach either. But after at least a thousand business and product development projects, I find the most productive approach is to give 1 or 2 highly engaged folks (NOT at the top of the hierarchy) complete authority to come up with the initial idea including goal definition and suggested future direction, and allow them to consult whoever they wish as they do so.
After the initial idea is laid out, a group can offer marginal value.
The other rationale behind deferring criticism would be less pertinent discursions are less likely making it a time saving feature. Anyone attending organization meetings knows how often this occurs. This would occur mostly between insiders which these subjects are unlikely to be.
Fair enough, then that is indeed a case against brainstorming.
Hats off for pointing out the unproven benefits of creativity for Broadway. But then I'm surprised you didn't discuss the possibility that perhaps groupthink is good (even in "near-mode") precisely because creativity is overrated.
Judging from wikipedia's description, it seems like brainstorming theory says we should generate the largest possible initial idea set (with perhaps lower average idea quality) by withholding criticism until later. But in this case people generated larger numbers (not just higher quality) of ideas when they were told to criticize.
If we generate more ideas when we're critical, it doesn't make sense to withhold criticism during the generation phase.
Obviously the point of brainstorming is that you do generation and criticism as separate passes instead of mixing them, not that you skip the criticism stage. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing where this was made clear to the brainstorming study groups; is it possible it might not have been? If not, then of course the miracle would be that they produced any useful output at all; it would trivially follow that their performance would be inferior to that of an uninstructed group or individual.
Not sure of how good a test that is. Companies and organizations have hierarchies and no criticism is to reduce deference and discomfort. Among equals with no other relationship these should not occur.
Perhaps it's an overgeneralization from the single-person case, where it seems to be the case that a writer should separate in time the production of ideas from the editing of the text. This is extended to say that the production and criticism of ideas should be separate, and then further overgeneralized to where criticism harms even when its source is other people. This is supported by the fact that the self-help industry thoroughly muddles the three issues.