DISQUS

I dispute the Wikipedia blurb entirely. Academic researchers have indeed found evidence that brainstorming, if done by trained people, works. Read Puccio, Firestein et all for the hard evidence.

Idea generation techniques have evolved way beyond the brainstorming sessions that folks experienced a few years ago; clearly though the new tools and techniques are not yet widespread and many organizations still do crap brainstorming. As a facilitator of brainstorming what I find is that organizations that don't do it frequently, don't do it well. And if you practice breaking all the rules along the way, it's crap practice and it won't improve your results.

Long format sessions can work, but they require that a lot of work be done before people get to the room (or virtual session). The biggest mistakes people make is to brainstorm without doing research first, without framing the challenge carefully, and without allowing time for incubation. If you don't do those things you will indeed have poor results, but don't blame it on the technique, blame it on how the technique is executed.

Creativity is poorly defined. To most, it means "artistic" or inventive. This leaves out problem solving and decision making, which in reality creativity encompasses.

You are quite right, creativity is a buzzword, and innovation is usually what organizations want. Innovation is a buzzword as well! And...you can't have one without the other.

I believe creativity is a foundational piece for innovation. Mel Rhodes defined organizational creativity with his Four P's of Process, Product, People and Press (which is really culture). For an organization to be holistically innovative, they had better be minding those P's as that's where innovation comes from.

The value of an idea often emerges over time. What seems odd now might later seem to be brilliant. What occurs to me as i read your post is that above all else, one should write down every idea they have. Keep a notebook, write them down, and review them now and again. This simple practice alone can make a person dramatically more effective as a creative person.

I take your point. On the other hand there really is no excuse for putting the ad up in the first place. Good market research would have told them the ad wouldn't fly. Why didn't they test this ad with consumers? It's not just a case of people not getting the tongue in cheek aspect, it's a case study of what can go wrong when you don't really listen to your consumer. This is not just an Ad that missed a bit, it's an add that does damage to their brand.