It’s a familiar ritual in offices across the world: Wipe down the whiteboard; line up the water bottles; break out the markers and multi-colored Post-It notes. It’s time for a brainstorm.
These judgment-free, popcorn-like ideas jams are so ubiquitous in business today that it’s hard to imagine a time when they weren’t the norm. But the concept of “brainstorming” only became popular in the late 1930s, when Alex Osborn of the New York City-based advertising giant BBDO brought his team together to think up new ad campaigns to win back clients lost during the Great Depression.
