[jvanderbot]

Yes, the article almost perfectly misses the point of brainstorming. The studies quoted were for groups solving puzzles, not groups designing tools or products. Puzzles have solutions, products can be entirely abandoned.

Almost zero of the brainstorming meetings I've ever attended were of the kind "How do we solve the well-defined problem X", and were almost exclusively of the kind "What do we want to do in the area of <subject>?" or "Can we agree on needs to be solved, and deal out problems to individuals?".

[laserbeam]

It's actually unclear what type of puzzles we are talking about. One paragraph later mentions a jury judging puzzle solutions and creativity. We could be talking about open ended puzzles. Think "the marshmallow callenge", LEGO building challenges, or Zachtronics style puzzle games (programming puzzles where you can optimize as much as you want, and the game scores you on multiple competing metrics such as code size and cpu cycles used). It's totally possible to measure creative thinking using open ended puzzles where there's more than one solution, or where trade-offs matter. That mention of a jury judging solutions suggests open ended puzzles are employed here.

[blowski]

Those with enough experience can anecdotally measure the success of brainstorming on projects where they've used it. I'd contribute the un-revolutionary idea that brainstorming works well for some teams trying to solve some problems. The trick is knowing when to use it, not to use it all the time, or rule it out entirely.

[rdtwo]

Yeah we usually brainstorm to figure out an solution that can integrate multiple groups. You can’t decide these kinds of issues solo