Brainstorming and Artificial Intelligence

This retrospective essay returns to Alex Faickney Osborn’s iconic book Applied Imagination (Scribner, New York, 317 pgs, 1953) in which the process of “brainstorming” was first introduced to academic audiences. In scenario planning, the capacity to brainstorm is an essential, core component of the process, even though few scholars and practitioners seem to return to Osborn’s original insights about the disciplined application of imagination. As the futures and foresight science community braces for the impending impact of artificial intelligence, we return readers to the fact that Osborn’s work, some 70 years ago, which championed human creativity, was written during the rise of the first “electronic brains” (i.e., computers) and all the potential implications of computing power. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to bring those AIs together; to recover insights from Osborn’s Applied Imagination and consider what those insights mean for our contemporary context rife with the concern and opportunity of Artificial Intelligence.