Brainstorm participants are exposed to a factual or informational description of brainstorming principles and guidelines communicated with neutral affective behavior under the "instruction" condition and to inspirational prose consistent with the thematic analysis of Osborn's (1963) work and delivered with activated pleasant affective behavior (i.e., enthusiasm) under the "inspirational" condition.
It is assumed that a marketing executive and brainstorm coach such as Osborn, who emphasized the importance of enthusiasm during brainstorm sessions (Osborn, 1963), was well versed in the art of emotional expressivity.
These group members experience complete immersion in the ideagenerating task and lose track of time as they solely focus on the brainstorm question, each other's responses, and the progression of ideas.
To the extent that (i) total fluency exhibits a strong positive correlation with both persistent flexibility, which measures the number of categories evoked during the entire brainstorm session, and within-category fluency, which measures the average number of ideas per category evoked (Nijstad et al., 2010); (ii) Osborn (1963) insists on the values of effort and self-confidence as key contributors to creative fluency and quality; (iii) Osborn (1963) engages in verbal persuasion to boost participants' self-efficacy; and (iv) effort and persistence is a derivative of self-efficacy, the following is proposed:
Moreover, research on both individuals and groups provided evidence for quality benefits obtained during extended time and effort invested on a brainstorm topic, since higher-quality ideas tend to occur toward the end of the session (Parnes, 1961; Basadur and Thompson, 1986).
None of the studies in question integrate the creative problem-solving process or brainstorming as part of an individual's daily activities; even Basadur and Thompson's (1986) field study involved exposing untrained participants for several hours to the brainstorm technique before allowing them to brainstorm individually and in groups for only 5-10 minutes as demanded by the experimenter.
We met with team members about once every two weeks, attended design meetings (including brainstorms), and were given sketches, reports, and videotapes, which were sometimes produced in or inspired by brainstorms.
We also participated in three brainstorms about IDEO's design process.
We gathered other materials produced by and about IDEO including a Methodology Handbook for engineers (with nine pages about "brainstormers"), four additional brainstorming reports, sketches of prototypes, a Harvard case about a keyboard support that resulted partly from IDEO brainstorms (Leonard-Barton, 1995), and a magazine story about a brainstorming session in which a bicycle commuter cup was designed so the reporter could pedal without spilling her coffee (O'Brien, 1995).
We distributed a short survey to engineers in the Palo Alto office about participating in and leading brainstorms at IDEO.
Brainstorms last 45 to 120 minutes and are attended by 3 to 10 participants; broad brainstorms last longer and have more participants.