Why Brainstorming Doesn't Work

Many college students do brainstorming daily, if not occasionally. It dominates student life whether it be related to student activism, student organizations, student government, or simply deciding where to grab lunch with friends.

The goal to generate the most ideas as possible cares for quantity over quality, but brainstorming is at times counterproductive in producing the results we want to see.

We’ve all seen the problems first hand.

Either one or two people dominate the entire conversation while the more reserved individuals don’t contribute. Or the more problematic scenario where the most obvious ideas get thrown out first and the rest of the conversation becomes fixated around that single unoriginal idea.

pixabay.com

To put it simply, the process of brainstorming is biased towards the initial ideas which dominates the rest of the discussion.

Two professors at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University accurately characterized this as “anchoring.” But what if I told you that there is another way that is more efficient and better than brainstorming? To address these stifling tendencies that we students usually fall into, the concept of brainwriting (not brainstorming) came into being.

The premise of brainwriting is simple. You write first, then discuss or share in a larger group.

The thinking behind this process is that the creation of ideas is a separate process than the sharing of ideas. This ensures more uniform participation from all members and help cultivate more diverse ideas when it comes to the latter part of the process.

How members individually generate ideas in writing enhances discussion. The differences in how people formulate their response will further build and edit the ideas as one shares them.

pixabay.com

When repetitive ideas do get shared by multiple individuals, it is more productive in brainwriting. Certain variations in details can be merged to create a more innovative evolved idea. Brainwriting allows the thinking process to be done first without influence of other students. It prevents others from passing judgment on ideas too soon.

This is highly useful in all matters of student collaboration and can be tailored to the number of individuals participating as well. In larger groups, students can post all their ideas on a board for the entire group to see or if in a smaller group, they may do a quick debriefing of all the ideas generated. From then on, the following discussion is more so focused on prioritizing, clarifying, editing, or merging ideas together.

All students want to get the most out of group ideas and collaborative learning but if we’re using inefficient strategies, we’ll never succeed in generating the ideas we strive for nor be able to fully practice the value of group participation.

It’s time to ditch the usual brainstorming we have adapted to and try a new method: brainwriting.