Chapter Eight: Supercharged Ideation

You’ve identified a clear customer need, pain point, or desire—your target opportunity—and it’s finally time to jump into the solution space. Where do you start? For many, the answer is brainstorming. Now, odds are you just had one of two reactions when you read that. Either you conjured an image of a lively group standing before a wall of multi-colored stickies, laughing, sharing ideas, essentially having fun. Or you conjured an image of a windowless conference room with a few people shouting out ideas and one person scribing at the whiteboard while everyone else looks bored.

At some companies, brainstorming is defined as the be-all-end-all, the panacea from which all good ideas emerge. For others, it’s the epitome of a Dilbert comic—a complete waste of everyone’s time. In the first case, participants argue it’s the most effective tool in their toolbox and is responsible for all of their creative success. In the second case, participants are skeptical that any good could come of this exercise. What’s going on here? Why is brainstorming so polarizing? Does it work? Why or why not? In this chapter, we’ll tackle all of these questions and much more.