In 1953 the advertising executive Alex F. Osborn published Applied Imagination. The book gave a name to a practice his agency had used for years. Osborn called it brainstorming.
He set rules for the meetings. No criticism came first. Wild ideas were welcome. The group aimed for quantity. Improvement came later, when people combined the ideas. Osborn wrote that it is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one.