Alex Osborn

Advertising executive (the “O” in BBDO) who coined the term brainstorming and wrote Applied Imagination (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), the book Scott Berkun calls the “excellent” origin of the business-creativity industry — since “abused and bastardized.” Osborn’s actual method, recovered in The Myths of Innovation, has two halves: three sequential stages of work — fact finding, idea finding, solution finding (see Disney’s Three Rooms) — and four idea-finding rules: produce as many ideas as possible, produce ideas as wild as possible, build on each other’s ideas, and avoid passing judgment. See Brainstorming.

Where this appears

• The Myths of Innovation