Formal Brainstorming Has a 0% Success Rate

We tried hard – boy we really wanted brainstorming to work! We scheduled “brainstorm meetings”, and “powwows”, we tried different color markers on whiteboards and oversized post-it notes, we even used motivational phrases like “blue sky” to help with our “out of the box thinking.” But in the end, out of all the games we created, not a single one was the result of sitting down as a group for a brainstorm session.

Why not? This was all very shocking to us, but after much investigation, it appears that you just cannot schedule creativity. You cannot say, “Hey everybody let’s meet for a brainstormer at 4:15, and by 5:00 we’ll have 4 kick-ass game ideas ready to hit the ground running!”

This seems like a deeply shocking result but one I’ve had a sneaking suspicion of all along. Certain things are great for brainstorming sessions but it’s not the magic tool for everything and a lot of useless wheel spinning can occur.

Related posts:

1. The tribulations of success
2. The rate limiter on innovation
3. Oct 27th (day 15): The halfway mark