Definition and beginning of brainstorming and the evolution of its concept
Definition and beginning of brainstorming and the evolution of its concept
Definition of brainstorming
Brainstorming can be defined as the process of creating a huge amount of ideas produced through an organized process with clear rules, and finding and codifying these ideas is associated with making the mind open without any restrictions limiting the unleashing of its ability to think. Brainstorming is a way to devise or even arrange ideas when a person feels unable to find new creative ideas or lacks the inspiration to come up with such ideas, and is not considered a storm. Mentality is a way to find not only new ideas, it is one of the unconventional ways in which man can find specialized points indicating the general subject he thinks about, this scientific method can be followed when the human mind contains many ideas that he wishes to narrow down and customize more and more, or even rearrange them to appear usefully, or even find a common relationship between these ideas in a way that allows the person to begin properly planning the task he is thinking about.
The beginning of brainstorming
The beginnings of brainstorming date back to the aftermath of World War I, after the war ended and in New York City, what is known as BBDO was created, which refers to its four founders: Patten, Barton, Durstein, Osborne, an advertising company. The company began to work and prosper until 1939, where its profits began to decline gradually, leading to the withdrawal of one of its four founders, Roy Durstein, who set up his own advertising company, and at this critical stage in the life of the company appeared Alex Osborne, one of its first founders, known for his great ambition and passion for creative thinking, where he developed a way of thinking to encourage his employees to present creative ideas to contribute to the company's progress and raise it, and in 1942 Osborne wrote a book "How Osborne" To Think Up, which served as the gateway and introduction to what was later introduced by Osborne.
As a result of his efforts to create creative ideas for his employees, his company became the second largest advertising company in the United States in 1951, with an estimated profit of $100 million, and in 1953 Osborne presented a book entitled Applied Imagination, in which he presented brainstorming operations while giving his company an example of the effectiveness and benefits of these operations.
Osborne felt that brainstorming groups should include five to twelve people, including members with varying experiences, but this did not show its effectiveness in his company's brainstorming sessions, and Osborne noted that members of the group should be aware and sufficiently aware of the problem to be solved during these sessions, in addition to the need to train them in the rules and techniques of brainstorming sessions before they start, as he noted. As a result of the company's 401 meetings, nearly 34,000 new ideas were reached, and 2,000 ideas were selected that were classified as of high quality and could be invested, which were held in a special atmosphere aimed at promoting creativity.
The evolution of the concept of brainstorming
Brainstorming was widespread in many U.S. companies after BBDO's success, and in 1958 Donald Taylor at Yale University conducted a study comparing the effectiveness of group brainstorming to the use of brainstorming for each individual person, to show what is known as individual brainstorming, but this study contained many flaws that emerged as a result of osborne's non-compliance with mass brainstorming, such as the small number of people in the groups on which it was founded. That study, and the lack of professional experience in the problems that were raised, and subsequently several studies emerged comparing both the effectiveness of group and individual brainstorming sessions, based on the previous Yale study, which led to the conclusion that individual brainstorming is more effective than collective, and new opinions emerged that addressed the change in the focus on quantity developed by Osborne, and turned to focusing on producing quality ideas regardless about its quantity, and these opinions led to the emergence of a school of thought that considers individual brainstorming to be better than collective, this led to a different definition of both collective brainstorming and individual brainstorming.
As a result of these new opinions and schools of thought, the popularity of collective brainstorming in academia has begun to decline, but studies have continued, and some convergences have emerged in both Osborne and Yill doctrines, where Osborne recommended the use of individual brainstorming before and after group brainstorming sessions, and this is evident through everyone in the group trying to understand and think about the problem before the brainstorming process begins, and through the role of the person in charge of the company to revise ideas and select the good from them after the end of the process of brainstorming. Brainstorming.
In 1998, Scott G. Isaksen, founder of the New York-based Creative Problem Solving Group, reviewed the top 50 studies created between 1958 and 1988 for brainstorming, showing that the researchers who prepared the studies did not adhere to Osborne's brainstorming rules, which led to a review by many researchers of Osborne's brainstorming method, and in the present day it has become Brainstorming techniques are of great interest to companies and organizations that seek to deliver everything that is innovative.
