Brainstorming (or the Story of a Stormy Brain)

Posted on January 24, 2013 by ThePMJournal

10:30 o’clock. Members of steering committee occupy silently the places in the meeting room. We open notebooks and prepare the pencils for the brainstorming session scheduled few days ago. CEO remind us the rules: “there are no bad or poor ideas, just ideas“.

-Dear members, we are here to identify opportunities and new methods to increase the number of users in our network but also to attract partners in our loyalty program.

That being said, everyone start working.

First Expert: -Let’s bring veterinary medicine in our loyalty scheme!

-Veterinary, but not only… also family medicine, drugstores, etc. Nowadays, there are so many sick people, we can make a longer list…

-Yes, and if we just look only around us, we can see… sick people! CEO said playful while was watching all of us.

-Gentlemen: What do you say about wood houses, furniture, appliances, bio food?

One of the Experts, a man more drunk than awake in his spare time, comment:

-Wines, but not any wine, the wine from the peasantry, un-bottled… many prefer un-bottled wine, bio wine, directly from producers.

-Agricultural products, machinery, service auto…

-Kids toys, cosmetics, underthings, accessories, etc.

We collected a big list with all possible products we could sell and potential partners from the industry. There were over one hundred of ideas…

-Please continue, continue… don’t stop! urged us CEO.

We watch one to another, because we have eliminated all the words from our basic vocabulary. We were silenced.  Suddenly one of Experts had an idea:

-I propose a theme: let’s say we have a brick… What can we do with it?

-Well… build a house, build a wall, break it, etc.

-And what else can we do? Please continue, continue…don’t stop! Remember there are no bad ideas, just ideas…

We all, knowing there are no rules regarding the ideas, we started to improvise:

-With a brick, we can hit someone in the head!

-We can color it…

-We can make an umbrella. (Build an umbrella with a brick?!)

We all remained shocked, but CEO seemed to be interested in possibility to make an umbrella with a brick (probably thinking at a replicator from Star Trek) and suggest to continue with the idea. The Expert, whose idea was, encouraged by CEO, has unleashed:

-From a brick we can make a trinket (Martisor season is coming), a feather, a bird … and madness continued with a unique line of products derived from brick: weapons, IT, web pages…

(From his mouth seemed out flames, not words…)

We reached to a huge list with almost every category of products existing or non-existing on Earth. In the end, in our head was not only a storm of ideas and a complete chaos, but also our mind was ravaged as it would be after a 12 degree typhoon on Beaufort Scale.

And when we thought that hysteria has been completed, someone came with a “genial” idea:

-Baptisms, weddings, funeral services.

-Brilliant! CEO exclaims.

-What? I asked quietly. Are you kidding right? Funeral services, embalming? For the God sake we are a social network, it supposed to offer users a unique shopping experience to users…now are we bury dead?

-Yes. Of course! Let’s continue. What else?

-Silver jewelry… or made from gold, nickel, platinum, cooper and continuing with all the chemical elements from Periodic Table by Mendeleev (finishing with heavy and radioactive metals… we can make a fine necklace from uranium, just perfect to wear it on neck…)

I smiled miserable. The perspective of this discussions has terrified me: -How I got here to work with these people? How could we manage to sell something? The brainstorming was for me “a tribute” brought to our helplessness to sell.

Read next: One last move.

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