Brainstorming has had a huge influence on modern work.
Many teams still assume that if you put smart people in a room, ask them to suspend judgement and generate lots of ideas, the best solutions will emerge.
But the research on classic spoken brainstorming has long been less flattering than its reputation. People often generate more ideas, and sometimes more original ones, when they think on their own first and then combine their ideas later. One reason is ‘production blocking’ – in a live discussion, only one person can speak at a time, so other thoughts get delayed, diluted or lost.
Continue reading Better than brainstorming: how Scrum teams should generate ideas