Brainstorming – Definition

Brainstorming is a divergent ideation technique in which participants deliberately separate idea generation from evaluation to maximize fluency (quantity and breadth of candidate ideas), typically under explicit process rules (for example, defer judgment, pursue quantity, welcome unusual ideas, combine/build on ideas).

Evolution of brainstorming

Origins: a codified group ideation procedure (1950s)

Brainstorming entered the management and creativity canon through Osborn’s formulation, which framed creativity as improvable through disciplined procedure. In Applied Imagination, Osborn formalized brainstorming as a group method designed to increase idea output by suppressing premature evaluation and encouraging associative combination of partial ideas into stronger candidates. This work provided an influential “operational definition” that made brainstorming portable across organizational contexts: a recognizable set of rules, a time-bounded session format, and a clear separation between divergence (generate) and convergence (judge).

A sociological reframing: from “creative genius” to “managed creativity” (1950s–1960s)

While early discourse emphasized creativity as a desirable output, later scholarship has clarified how brainstorming also functioned as a creativity-management instrument—a way to rationalize and govern creative work in organizations. Chamblay’s historical analysis traces brainstorming’s invention and diffusion as part of a broader transformation in which creativity shifted from being associated with exceptional individuals to becoming a competence to be cultivated, measured, and mobilized for organizational performance.

The empirical correction: group “productivity loss” (1980s–1990s)

From the 1980s onward, social-psychological experimentation challenged the assumption that face-to-face group brainstorming reliably outperforms individuals. Diehl and Stroebe demonstrated that interactive groups frequently produce fewer ideas than pooled individuals (nominal groups), attributing this to mechanisms such as production blocking (turn-taking constrains parallel thought), evaluation apprehension (fear of negative judgment), and motivation losses (e.g., free riding).
A subsequent meta-analysis integrated this evidence, consolidating “productivity loss” as a robust phenomenon and clarifying moderators (e.g., group size, task/setting factors) that affect when losses are larger or smaller.
This research phase is a key inflection point in brainstorming’s evolution: it shifted the field from “brainstorming as a universal best practice” to “brainstorming as a design problem,” where format and facilitation must mitigate predictable group-process constraints.

Contextual and organizational value beyond idea counts (1990s)

In parallel, organizational research argued that laboratory metrics (idea counts, novelty ratings) capture only part of why organizations keep using brainstorming. Sutton and Hargadon’s qualitative study in a product design firm showed brainstorming can be effective as an organizing practice—supporting coordination, shared understanding, and ongoing design work—even when it is not maximally efficient at raw idea generation.
This broadened the concept of “effectiveness”: brainstorming’s value may include cognitive outputs (ideas) and socio-organizational outputs (alignment, momentum, memory, legitimacy of decisions).

Digital-era evolution: electronic and hybrid brainstorming (2020s)

With distributed work and collaboration platforms, brainstorming has increasingly been operationalized through electronic brainstorming (EBS)—systems that enable parallel input, reduce turn-taking constraints, and support structured capture and recombination. Maaravi and colleagues synthesize the EBS literature and propose an integrative model, positioning EBS as a prevalent contemporary platform for ideation and offering guidance that directly reflects earlier findings on blocking and evaluation pressures.
A further development is hybrid brainstorming, which intentionally sequences individual and group phases to combine the benefits of solitary generation (reduced blocking/apprehension) with group recombination (cross-fertilization). Farrokhnia et al. examine computer-supported scaffolds (e.g., prompts, cognitive group awareness) to improve idea quality in hybrid sessions—an explicit continuation of the “design brainstorming to counter known losses” trajectory.

Current frontier: measurement of group dynamics and AI-augmented ideation (mid-2020s)

Recent work extends brainstorming research into neurocognitive and computational directions. Pick et al. investigate “interbrain coupling” during group brainstorming discussions, illustrating how contemporary research increasingly targets interaction dynamics rather than only end-of-session idea tallies.

Concurrently, brainstorming is evolving into AI-augmented ideation, where participants are exposed to or collaborate with generative models. Memmert et al. study how exposure to AI ideas affects brainstorming performance and cognitive load, explicitly connecting classic group mechanisms (stimulation, loafing, inertia) to human–AI settings.

At the collective level, Ashkinaze et al. examine how exposure to AI-generated ideas shapes the evolution of human ideas in a large dynamic experiment, reporting effects on collective diversity and the rate of change of idea space, an explicitly evolutionary framing of ideation.

Timeline

• 1953 — Osborn codifies brainstorming as a rule-governed, divergence-first ideation technique.
• 1987 — Experimental evidence formalizes “productivity loss” in interactive brainstorming groups; mechanisms such as production blocking and evaluation apprehension are articulated.
• 1991 — Meta-analytic integration consolidates productivity-loss effects and moderators.
• 1996 — Organizational research expands “effectiveness” to include coordination and social functions in real firms.
• 2021 — EBS is synthesized as a major contemporary branch; integrative guidance emphasizes design choices aligned with known group-process constraints.
• 2024 — Peer-reviewed historiography reinterprets brainstorming as a foundational creativity-management instrument; neurocognitive studies examine interaction dynamics in group brainstorming.
• 2025 — Hybrid brainstorming scaffolds are empirically tested; AI-augmented brainstorming is studied both at individual and cultural-evolution (collective) levels.

References

Ashkinaze, J., Mendelsohn, J., Li, Q., Budak, C., & Gilbert, E. (2025). How AI ideas affect the creativity, diversity, and evolution of human ideas: Evidence from a large, dynamic experiment. In Proceedings of the ACM Collective Intelligence Conference (CI ’25) (pp. 198–213). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715928.3737481

Chamblay, É. (2024). L’invention du brainstorming aux États-Unis : Sociogenèse du premier instrument de gestion de la créativité. Sociologie du travail, 66(4). https://doi.org/10.4000/12zig

Diehl, M., & Stroebe, W. (1987). Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: Toward the solution of a riddle. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(3), 497–509. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.53.3.497

Farrokhnia, M., Noroozi, O., Baggen, Y., Biemans, H., & Weinberger, A. (2025). Improving hybrid brainstorming outcomes with computer-supported scaffolds: Prompts and cognitive group awareness. Computers & Education, 227, 105229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2024.105229

Maaravi, Y., Heller, B., Shoham, Y., Mohar, S., & Deutsch, B. (2021). Ideation in the digital age: Literature review and integrative model for electronic brainstorming. Review of Managerial Science, 15, 1431–1464. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-020-00400-5

Memmert, L., Cvetkovic, I., Tavanapour, N., & Bittner, E. (2025). Brainstorming with a generative language model: Effect of exposure to AI ideas on brainstorming performance and cognitive load. Business & Information Systems Engineering. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-025-00974-y

Mullen, B., Johnson, C., & Salas, E. (1991). Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: A meta-analytic integration. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 12(1), 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15324834basp1201_1

Osborn, A. F. (1953). Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative thinking. Scribner.

Pick, H., Fahoum, N., Zoabi, D., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. (2024). Brainstorming: Interbrain coupling in groups forms the basis of group creativity. Communications Biology, 7(1), 911. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06614-7

Sutton, R. I., & Hargadon, A. (1996). Brainstorming groups in context: Effectiveness in a product design firm. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(4), 685–718. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393872