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He's created a straw man.  brainstorming as in "every idea is allowed, criticism is not" is a slice of the ideation process.  I don't think anyone would claim that it is the most productive slice.  It always feels more like limbering up, helping to encourage those who are not comfortable expressing themselves in front of others (particularly in front of others of higher stature in the formal or informal hierarchies we live and work in).  In the kick off meeting for a project, if there are 15 people in the room, 1.5 hours are given for people to share their background and work maybe the same amount for the project team to present the project as it is currently conceived, and the same amount for "blue sky" thinking.  Typically, that group never meets again, but rather sub groups meet.  Powerful ideas expressed during the kickoff might carry over, but for the most part, that 1.5 hours devoted to blue sky unconstrained thinking is a tiny fraction of the work that goes into the project.  

I've never heard anyone who is involved with creative work suggest that brainstorming without critical back and forth is the basis for their development process, no matter the product.

I have become kind of allergic to the gurus of creativity and innovation.  I don't think that they are actual characteristics of people and I don't think that there is a systematic way to cultivate them.  I don't even think there is a useful way to define creativity or innovation, and I am pretty sure we don't know how to encourage those characteristics in school kids (not that it isn't worth trying).  Things like citation networks or patents in no way describe individual creativity.  Hell, artists and musicians don't even figure into those metrics.  Artists with lots of shows and musicians with lots of hits do not correlate in any useful way with innovation or creativity as I can understand it.   Some are sure that creativity is heightened by constraints (basho haiku anyone?) or only can be achieved in unfettered freedom (william blake amazing ravings)

I mean, what shared characteristics or circumstances can you assemble of richard feynman, steven jobs, miles davis, and mark morris (OK 3/4 spent the most creative parts of their lives in NYC and 3/4 lived for a good chunk of time in CA, but you get the point, pick any 4 people you consider to be most creative)

I guess creativity is like Justice Stewart's famous definition of pornography "I know it when I see it."

Eric

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