As Keith Sawyer demonstrates in Group Genius, his influential book on creativity, the process of brainstorming, at least as it’s been practiced since its creation in the 1950s by advertising icon Alex Osborn (the “O” in the Madison Avenue firm of BBDO), has been a better marketing success than business tool. “Brainstorming is the most popular creativity technique of all time,” Sawyer argues. “There’s just one problem: It doesn’t work as advertised. . . . Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.” In fact, Sawyer warns, “In many organizations, the group ends up being dumber than the individual members.”
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