Open Brainstorms

is efficient IF it is splitted from voting and IF you assume only inspriration for a good idea and IF you do it in a group

Important to be able to provide the ideas that are part of a larger concept because you may only want to use some of the parts of the concept and not the whole concept, individual broken down ideas allow this to happen.

Brainstorming is about ideas...it is important to be able to concisely describe an idea and present many of them.

As most peoples ideas are only a few lines long....why have the 500 character limit? It is bothersome to me as a more serious respondent. Also...it seems that many questions that people are seeking ideas for are rather trivial. I just included my email address within a response....and it was deleted before it posted. I didn't read "the rules" of membership though...if there are any. It was in response to a serious question that I couldn't possibly begin to answer within 500 characters! Whoops!

The concept of using an online tool like this helps to level the playing field and remove politics that can happen in a more formal setting.

there are virtual tools that can help you like brainreactions.net, and mindmap programs

is effective with a group or on your own

can be done by writing things down or saying them outloud

helps you think outside the box

it enhances creativity

it is the first step to quality ideas

Greatest thinking tool ever. However, Don't dump on ideas, anything goes, judge and filter ideas until the end

the rule of brainstorm are necessary: no rank of users, allow many odd ideas

many idees can create with many people or many views of the objects or look at many times to insert a new idee

My view on brainstorming is it's just one tool to use for creative problem solving... and like all tools, has its strengths and weaknesses. Its strength is with an enthusiastic cooperative group + skilled facilitator, you can generate a lot of ideas. Its weakness are that speed is generally favored over deeper introspection, and the more vocal people tend dominate. Brainstorming can also be used as a great team-building exercise.

Here are my suggestions from "Tips For Brainstorming": http://manygoodideas.com/CreativeBusinessIdeas/brainstormingTips.htm

good