So you see no value in setting aside all other distractions (ringing phones, email pings etc) and letting your brain work freely on a problem for 30 mins?
You ought to try it sometime - you’ll be pleasantly suprised how well it works.
I work for the UK civil service and I use “thought-showering” rather than “brainstorming”, but mainly 'cos I know it pisses off uptight gimps who object to anything “Politically Correct”.
For those who object to all this “PC madness” maybe we should re-name our Disabled Children’s Service to “Crippled Kids Unit”? :rolleyes:
There is no need for a special term in any case. Either your working on your own, in a group or in a meeting. Calling it a brainstorming or a thought-showering is just some stupid term for a meeting.
And you do realize that a shower is much weaker than a storm so a thought-shower is a much weaker term. It is like saying, think about a problem but only lightly.
Brainstorm. I was mildly aware it was occasionally used previously for epilepsy as I ran across it in a book a number of years ago.
I had always thought of brainstorming to be somewhat derivative of BARN storming…
You know, thinking out of the box in the manner of the between the wars pilots who had an airplane and basically did all sorts of things to make aliving and pay for them to fly, like selling rides, selling insect fogging and crop dusting, getting together an impromptu flying circus to make cash at a local fairgrounds…delivering mail and packages…stuff that wasn’t a day to day 9-5 job. Definitely ‘out of the box’ behavior.
Barnstorming is the origins of todays ‘fly ins’ where people with small planes decide to meet somewhere for a BBQ/hangout session…sort of like people with RVs get into clubs where they all go to different campgrounds for a BBQ and weekend of camping, or businessmen who own motorcycles joinging a ‘bike gang’ and being ‘weekend warriors’
You’re missing the point of brain-storming. It’s a session where everybody contributes all ideas, which can subsequently be filtered. The principle is that in other situations, people are always thinking, and don’t say most of the things they think of. However, there’s times where these unsaid thoughts are the missed opportunities - better to all say everything, all sound a bit silly, but get a good result at the end.