[parentheses]

this article has a clickbait title and religiously abides by it when the discussion is much more nuanced. brainstorming is also not just about idea generation. it is a great way of investing the group in ideas that get picked - so it can be treated as a form of consensus seeking theater. this is why measuring the “performance” of brainstorming is largely a fool’s errand.

why does brainstorming often fail to generate new ideas? any time there is a sufficiently complex calculus involved in solving a problem, solution generation involves understanding that calculus. a brainstorm session must include people that understand the problem and solution spaces well. otherwise, the brainstorming is often useless.

almost all brainstorming sessions i have seen ignore this concept and result in no useful generation and a lot of wasted time.