[gls2ro]

For anyone planning to organise brainstorms I really recommend reading "Applied Imagination" written by Alex Osborn.

It is a book from 1953 which introduced the idea of brainstorming. From it one can really grasp the original intention of the brainstorming technique, why it works and how it works.

Here are two things that most of the people organising brainstorming are missing and he recommends in the book:

1. Profile of the participant: should be a self-starter and should have experience with the matter/area related to the brainstorming subject.

2. Send a one-page background and invitation memo to participants describing the task to be solved with some example of the type of ideas desired.

If I remember correctly the last point should happen with enough time before the meeting so that everybody had time to read it as most theories about creativity assess the need to spend time outside the task to allow the brain to generate new idea.