8

The Brainstorming Myth

When most organizations need to unleash creativity, they follow largely the same formula: assemble a team of people, put them in a room with whiteboard markers or sticky notes, and tell them to spit out as many ideas as they can. In short, they brainstorm. Or rather they engage in what they think is brainstorming. They believe in the Brainstorming Myth. The myth tells them that a great idea is all they need to produce innovation, and that by generating as many ideas as possible, they will find a single notion that they can bet their new project on. Once they get together and throw out ideas, they can sift through the pile and find that one, fully formed idea that's ready to display to the world. After that, they're done. ...

Get The Myths of Creativity: The Truth About How Innovative Companies and People Generate Great Ideas now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.