What is brainstorming

Brainstorming is the thinking technique that is often used in the initial phases of a project.

Unlike other more structured techniques, brainstorming tends to give maximum freedom to participants who can let go and bring out all ideas related to a certain topic.

Applications and characteristics of brainstorming

Brainstorming (literally brain storm) was born in 1957 from the idea of the advertiser Alex Faickney Osborn who theorized it. We are talking about a technique that tends to create relationships and associations of ideas to generate new ones and structure a project.

Brainstorming takes place in this way:

• It is done in a group.
• There is a moderator who presents a main initial topic.
• The participants begin to freely express their own ideas, which connect to each other without any priority or hierarchy.
• The moderator writes everything down on a board or a similar support.

Once the quantitative or divergent phase is completed, there is a selection process where ideas are qualitatively evaluated (convergent phase).

According to Osborn, the characteristics of good brainstorming are:

• Absolute freedom of thought for the participants.
• Ideas of the participants are neither judged nor criticized.
• The instinctiveness of the participants and the quantity of ideas, even when interconnected, are valued.

Difference between brainstorming and the six thinking hats technique

The first, as mentioned, is a flow of ideas that gradually tend to be refined and selected in order to move forward with the project. In brainstorming, there is absolute freedom of thought. In the six thinking hats technique, however, the concept must be analyzed according to standard factors and, nevertheless, the creation of ideas and thoughts is more structured and "limited" within a defined (but not too narrow) analytical framework.

Ultimately, brainstorming is an extremely useful technique for generating free ideas that can prove to be winning and very effective.