Should brainstorming be a daily process?
Group think, brainstorming, crowd sourcing, all are very popular methods for launching great ideas. I am not certain of the payoff. In my experience there seems to be a lot of thoughts bantered about and concepts shared but little work actually accomplished.
Sounding boards resonates more with me. I find it desirable to talk to other people, I often go to strictly talk with an individual and say “Look, I think there has to be something here. Here’s what I think I see”…and then begin to talk back and forth.
I recommend that you pick capable people, when choosing sounding boards. You want to get people to listen who are willing to do more than just say “yes, yes, yes” when you give out an idea. What you want is to get “critical mass” in action, this means that you get people who are actively engaged and saying stuff like, “Yes that reminds me of so and so”…or “Have you thought about this or this?”. When you get lots of stuff going, you have critical mass. When you talk you want more than just nice people saying “oh yea” and leave it at that, you need to find people who will stimulate you right back. These “yes” guys fill the whole space and they contribute nothing, they absorb ideas and the new ideas just die away instead of echoing on.
Yes, I find it necessary to talk to people. I talk to people and ask questions when I think they can answer me and give me clues that I do not know about. I go out and look. I think people with closed doors fail to do this so they fail to get their ideas sharpened.
You might also consider the fact that brainstorming with your colleagues doesn’t really force you to decode your message or your ideas sufficiently. You will benefit if someone from another tradition confronts you with the claim that some of your terms and communication processes are meaningless to the general population, or more specifically, to the people you most want to influence.
