Deep Brainstorming

topic

Deep brainstorming is the structured divergent thinking practice of generating the largest possible number of ideas around a creative challenge before evaluating any of them — deferring judgment completely during the generative phase to prevent the evaluative inhibition that terminates idea generation before the most original ideas (which consistently require more generative time to reach) have been produced. True deep brainstorming extends past the first wave of obvious ideas into the subsequent waves of less obvious, more original, and more potentially productive ideas that only sustained generative effort reveals.

Role

Deep brainstorming properly practiced — with genuine deferred judgment, extended time beyond obvious ideas, explicit quantity targets that push past the comfortable stopping point, and permission for wild or impractical ideas — consistently produces more and more original creative output than the inhibited brainstorming that most organizations practice. The research on idea quality and idea quantity shows that the proportion of high-quality ideas within a brainstormed set remains approximately constant regardless of total quantity — meaning that more ideas always produces more good ideas, and that the session that generates 100 ideas will contain roughly twice as many good ideas as the session that generates 50, making the quantity target a quality strategy.

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