“Brainstorming doesn’t work”?

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/DrAfter123

I recently wrote a post titled “Thoughts on ideas, brainstorming, facilitation, and crowdsourcing“.  In that I wrote “I love brainstorming”. And I still do (for the reasons given in that last post).

Interestingly however, since writing that post, I’ve come across a number of opponents to brainstorming, most recently with the recommendation to search for “brainstorming doesn’t work” in Google – in true Google style, there are “About 7,030,000 results (0.21 seconds)”. In contrast, Googling “benefits of brainstorming” yields only about 4,200,000 results …

So what’s wrong?

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Are enough people benefiting from your performances?

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/podgorsek

There are already many great performances that are recorded and available on the web that will improve the lives of many (enjoyment, education, informative, etc.). Live performances that are great, but are not recorded or shared, will however most likely not be remembered – the presenter will not achieve the reputation or legacy that they are potentially capable of, and the potential maximum audience that that could have benefited from hearing/seeing the performance (and enjoying it, or learning from it) won’t have done so.

It frustrates me that ‘great’ training performances aren’t leveraged for the benefit of others; it frustrates me that only live participants benefit from great conferences or leadership updates (is there really such a premium on live attendance that means those unfortunate not to be able to attend should pay the penalty of missing out?).

Given readily available tools to enable the recording and sharing of audio and video recordings, I feel we have reached an important stage of development, where we can all benefit from sharing our performances more often and more widely.

Curious about … Birth rates, and the demographic-economic paradox

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/YsaL

In the last few weeks I’ve heard two very contrasting interpretations of forecast birth rates. Both are largely based on the same facts, however with somewhat contrasting perspectives.

1. The first interpretation, concerns itself with declining birth rates in the major, ‘developed’ economies, asking the question, if populations aren’t growing sufficiently (and in some cases, like Germany, aren’t even replacing themselves), how will future economic growth expectations be met?
2. The second interpretation concerns itself with massive recent (ie, over the last 100 years) global population growth, and the potential consequences for earth’s finite resources (water, food, fuel, metals, etc.).

I’ve read around these concepts on the internet and set out, in the remainder of this blog post, some thoughts on what I’ve found, including the demographic-economic paradox,  the demographic transition, sub-replacement fertility rates, and suggestions of the ‘tabu’ of discussing population growth.

ps. The title of this post is made in hommage to The Curiosity Chronicles, a Tumblr blog by Paul Bennett, Managing Partner and Chief Creative Officer of IDEO. I encourage you to take a look at his posts, if you’ve not seen them yet.