In 1939, a marketer named Alex Osborn needed ideas for an ad campaign. He wanted to push his company outside its comfort zone and create wildly new kinds of advertising. But the traditional approach-delegating the task to one of his employees-wasn't producing the results he wanted. So he started hosting group meetings, using the collective brainpower of the room to "storm" creative problems. A few years later, he published a book on his methods. The name he chose for his invention: brainstorming.