I never thought to ask whether there were formal research results supporting the practice of spirited but collegial debate for developing creative results. I’ve seen it work so much that it has become second nature, and I had really lost track of the fact that many people aren’t aware of it. It’s nice to see that a wide variety of research supports this practice!

Brainstorming Doesn’t Really Work : The New Yorker

Curtis Olson February 22, 2012 14:53

Interesting to think about it. I too was brought up being taught “brain storming”. I still think there can be some value to free flow of ideas and doing what ever is possible to unleash creativity.

I worked for some “human factors” people a few years ago – they were psychology people and were very good at scientifically determining which interface was the best, or most effective, or optimized some design goal.

But their work could only determine the best choice from the options presented. They had no way to derive the actual optimal solution. Somewhere some creative people have to think up creative solutions.

Definitely these need to be evaluated critically, but I wouldn’t throw out brainstorming completely if it could be a tool to unleash people’s creative thinking.

Imported from Google+ — content and formatting may not be reliable