You pretty much can come up with your own ideas all day long (though it is true we often are too busy doing something to take any time to think but that is a time management choice). Brainstorming is about creating an opportunity to bring new ideas …

Yet, there are ways to around this problem.

I have found that using a methodology called wildstorming helps with the process and build a stronger team. Wildstorming is the radical cousin of traditional brainstorming, as it turns the process upside-down and inside-out, where strange and bizarre concepts are the rule.

During a wildstorm session, team members suggest absolutely crazy solutions to the core issue which is being examined. Wildstorms are a great place to ponder ideas that are true overkill or prohibitively expensive. Wildstorm answers can deny physics and logic; they can be weird, fanciful, or even illegal.

The remedies discovered during a wildstorming session themselves would probably never be implemented; nevertheless, wildstorms do lead to creative insights on the causes and effects of the core problem. The end result is novel breakthrough solutions.

The best practices for conducting a wildstorm are outlined at http://www.wildstorming.com

Ed

The key rule:

“There is one rule in this room: No nos. You may not contradict, dispute, or disagree with the things you hear here. I am going to enforce this rule with my M&Ms. When I hear you contradict, dispute or disagree, I am going to pelt you with one or several M&Ms depending on the severity your offense.””

Scott, thanks for dropping by, and your kind words on the LV talk, this will be the challenge for NewsCorp: how to manage something that resists managing, something where the consumers are the producers, something where cool comes from within not without. Not an impossible challenge, but a relatively novel and difficult one. Thanks, Grant

Mr. McCracken,
I recently had the pleasure of attending your lecture at the ULI Conference in Las Vegas this past week.

First of all let me say thank you for coming to the event, your piece was by far the most entertaining, if not the most informative.

Second, please allow me to ask a belated question. I was intrigued by the discussions on trends, and how because of nimble venture capital, there has been an explosion of change less controlled by traditional “gate keepers.” As we discussed a couple case studies like Snapple, I couldn’t help but think of the recent sky-rocket-like rise of Myspace.com. I am 25, and three years ago I had never heard of myspace, or even new that I had such personal real estate waiting for me on the web – and what seemed like over-night, “everyone” had a myspace page. After reviewing a couple pages, I realized that displaying what amounted to some people’s whole lives on-line, was simply beyond my current accepted levels of exhibitionism. Setting aside the great anthropological topic that could be done on such a site, I actually do have a question.

Myspace.com recently sold for $580 million to News Corp. With 16 million monthly users, it might seem to many like a sound market decision…however, wouldn’t it be more sound to assume that because the popularity of the site was/is driven by a teen demographic – a very fickle, self-gratifying demographic – myspace.com might be very soon, very “uncool?”

If so, I can’t help but be cynical that actually predicting such phenomena becomes almost impossible, and investing in such “fads” becomes a gamble, and not calculated risk.

Methinks the problem here arises from the nature of traditional academia in the arts and humanities, in which research is undertaken by individuals, and only rarely by teams. Traditional journalism shares this feature, so members of both professions hold weirdly inaccurate views of the nature and source of creativity in business.

Even the research teams which do exist in academia are usually voluntary, self-selected and with no penalties for premature exit or collapse. I know of no company which operates teams in this way.