Yet a number of recent studies have suggested that brainstorming is less effective than its practitioners would like. One trouble with brainstorming is that it is finite in both time and space: a group gathers for an hour in a room, or for a daylong corporate retreat, they toss out a bunch of crazy ideas, and then the meeting disperses. Sometimes a useful connection emerges, but too often the relevant hunches aren’t in sync with one another. One employee has a promising hunch in one office, and two months later, another employee comes up with the missing piece that turns that hunch into a
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