Brainstorming: When Ideation Becomes Free Labor

Companies celebrate 'creative' workshops until the post-it notes end up in a slide deck someone else owns. In this ten-minute monologue Dr Disruptor performs a forensic audit of brainstorming: what it promises (open innovation, surface novel ideas) versus what it commonly delivers (extracted unpaid labor, vague next steps, idea hoarding). The Survivor voice supplies humane, tactical moves listeners can use immediately: three diagnostic signals that a brainstorm will be exploitative; a simple triage flow to convert ideas into Owner+Pilot+Criteria, Timebox+Ticket, or Archive+Credit; and three paste-ready prompts to set guardrails before the first sticky note is stuck. Episode close offers a two-week pilot to run an 'Idea Triage' in one recurring session, KPIs to measure (idea-to-pilot rate, credited authorship, time recovered), and a CTA to visit the site to download the 'Brainstorming Repair Kit' one-pager with facilitation templates and paste-ready language.