the.com/ideation
Brainstorming's business-school cousin, invented so meetings can bill thinking as a deliverable.
means The formal process of generating and developing ideas, usually before anyone commits to actually building one of them.
from Built from the verb 'ideate' (to form an idea), which traces back to the Greek 'idein,' meaning 'to see' — the same root that gives us 'idea.' The word itself is old, used in philosophy and psychology for the mental act of forming concepts, but it got drafted into corporate life more recently, when 'brainstorm' started to sound too childish for a slide deck.
- origin
- coined 1818, long before whiteboards existed
- clinical twist
- also means forming thoughts, including dark ones
- corporate tell
- often precedes zero actual ideas
- synonym inflation
- thinking plus a consulting fee