Personal Life

Alex F. Osborn was born in New York City, May 24, 1888, son of John and Kate Osborn. His
capacity for generating ideas was first recorded in his 1948 book, Your Creative Power and
described a situation that occurred in 1894, when he was 6 years of age. He was awakened one
night by the sound of his mother and father talking in another room. His father was about to lose
his job and had not saved enough money to live on for more than a few months. Eventually, the
parents went to sleep, but the boy stayed awake until about four o’clock in the morning. Alex
then went to his mom and dad’s bedroom, woke them up

After receiving his preliminary education at public schools in New York City, Alex was
graduated Ph.B. in 1909 and Ph.M. in 1921 at Hamilton College. His first job was as a reporter
for the Buffalo (N.Y.) Times in 1909 followed by a stint with the Buffalo Express during the
following two years. He was assistant secretary of the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce in 1911-
12, and sales manager of the Hard Manufacturing Company in Buffalo from 1912 to 1915. In
1915, he entered the field of advertising as manager of the E. P. Remington Advertising Co. in
Buffalo. During World War I, he worked as a volunteer for the United War Work campaign and
there met a young writer, Bruce Barton and a fellow advertising man, Roy Durstine. He was
married in Buffalo, September 5, 1916, to Helen, daughter of lawyer Edward Emerson
Coatsworth, and had five children: Katharine, Joan, Marion, Russell Barton, and Elinor.
The Adman

In 1919, Alex Osborn co-founded the advertising agency of Barton, Durstine and Osborn, New
York City with fellow war bond promoters Bruce Barton and Roy Durstine. In 1928, the firm
was merged with the George Batten Co. to form Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn. Inc. —
BBD&O. As an agency with the flexibility for new ideas, the company seized the new medium
of radio, writing and producing some of the great programs of the era and enjoyed amazing
success. They attracted a client list that was the envy of the industry. Then in 1939, almost
without warning, the great agency found itself facing a terrible problem. Profits had vanished.
Roy Durstine, who was managing the business in New York City and who had the primary
relationship with most of the key clients left the agency to start his own. Many believed BBD&O
would close its doors for good. It was then that Alex’s lifelong interest and “hobby” — the
understanding and encouragement of creative thinking — was desperately needed. Under Alex’s
management, the process of brainstorming was instituted and developed at BBDO utilizing a
Vice President of Brainstorming to solve the many business and personnel problems that the
agency faced. This divergent thinking technique for groups eventually became a keystone in the
process of Creative Problem Solving or CPS. BBD&O was the laboratory, and necessity played
the mother to invention of a whole new approach to generating solutions and putting them into
action.

Theory of Brainstorming
Alex found that conventional business meetings were inhibiting the creation of new ideas and
proposed some rules designed to change that. He was looking for rules that would give people
the freedom of mind and action to spark off and reveal new ideas. To “think up” was originally
the term he used to describe the process he developed, and that in turn came to be known as
“brainstorming”. He described brainstorming as “a conference technique by which a group
attempts to find a solution for a specific problem by amassing all the ideas spontaneously by its
members”. The rules he came up with are the following:

 No criticism of ideas
 Go for large quantities of ideas
 Build on each other’s ideas
 Encourage wild and exaggerated ideas
 He found that when these rules were followed, a lot more ideas were created. A greater
quantity of original ideas gave rise to a greater quantity of useful ideas. Quantity produced
quality. People’s natural inhibitions about producing ideas that might be considered “wrong” or
“stupid” were reduced. Osborn also found that generating “silly” ideas could spark off very
useful ideas because they changed the way people thought. With increasing refinement of the
process, and the introduction of creative thinking techniques, this original technique was
revolutionary in problem solving. For seven years after this discovery, Alex commuted 400 miles
each way from his home in Buffalo to New York City each week, checking in and out of the
Roosevelt Hotel and using the incubation time on the tracks, writing and developing the
systemized approach that would contribute to BBD&O’s turnaround and return it to a position in
the top five worldwide advertising agencies that it enjoys to this day.

Publications
The two landmark books Alex produced as a result of this period were Your Creative
Power (1948) and Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking (1953).
Applied Imagination has been used as a textbook in colleges, has had several editions, and has
been translated into five foreign languages. Other books written by Alex are Short Course in
Advertising (1921), How to Think Up (1942), Wake up Your Mind (1952), The Goldmine
Between Your Ears (1955), and How to Become More Creative (1964). He also contributed
articles to the Reader’s Digest, the Christian Herald, and other publications.

The Foundation
 In 1954 Alex Osborn established the Creative Education Foundation, Buffalo, and
served as its president until the close of his life. He assigned the royalties from his books to
finance the foundation, through which he disseminated his concepts for creative thinking, and
supplemented formal education in this area. The foundation’s literature, designed to encourage
original ideas, was distributed to thousands of college students and to people in industry and
business. In 1955 the first Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) was held. In attendance was
Dr. Sidney Parnes from the University of Pittsburgh, who soon became Alex’s collaborator.
Parnes contributed to the academic framework that Creative Problem Solving needed in order to
garner acceptance by colleges and other educational forums. Today the process they developed,
from which most deliberate creativity processes have blossomed, is known as the Osborn-Parnes
Creative Problem Solving Process.

Carrier

Osborn joined the advertising agency of Barton & Durstine in August of 1919 with an
understanding that he would work primarily out of Buffalo; and the agency would become
known as Barton, Durstine & Osborn. In 1928, Barton, Durstine and Osborn merged with the
George Batten firm and would become known as Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn
(BBD&O) .Osborn became general manager of BBD&O in 1939 and went on to become its
chairman, then vice chairman until his retirement in 1960. He served as a trustee for Western
Savings Bank and Hamilton College , and as a council member for the University of Buffalo
from 1951-1959 . Mr. Osborn died of cancer in Roswell Park Memorial Institute on May 5,
1966, at the age of 77 .

Content Summary

Before he published his theories and applications of creativity, Osborn published the
book A Short Course in Advertising in 1921. This book covered topics that were pertinent only to
the advertising field. Although the focus of the book was on the principles of the advertising
business in general and none of Osborn’s beliefs of creativity were included, this source serves
as a beginning point of his publishing career.

In 1952, Osborn published Wake Up Your Mind: 101 Ways to Develop Creativeness,
and subsequently published the book under the title How to Become More Creative in 1964.
Osborn describes “as a term, imagination covers a field so wide and so hazy that a leading
educator has called it an area which psychologists fear to tread. This haziness Osborn describes
is the same energy that powered his imagination to write on the very subject. The book builds on
the principles of creativity through showcasing examples of the application of creativity in
children, hobbies, writing, marital problems, jobs, health and happiness. Osborn concludes the
book with the sentiment that creativity is a component to building character. Since Osborn
believed in this notion, it is no wonder why he led BBD&O and many other organizations as
well.

Also in 1952, Osborn published Your Creative Power: How to Use Imagination. The focus of
this book is to help its readers “become more conscious of the creative power within your reach.
Osborn mentions at the conclusion of his first chapter that “each of us does have an Aladdin’s
lamp, and if we rub it hard enough, it can light our way to better living – just as that same lamp
lit up the march of civilization”. This core belief regarding imagination points out the fact that
human beings have the capability of being creative and its just a matter of accessing it
deliberately.

With regard to an understanding of the principles behind CPS, Osborn stresses the
importance that “we should hold back criticism until the creative current has had every chance to
flow. He later introduces ground rules for group brainstorming: judicial judgment is ruled out;
wildness is welcomed; quantity is wanted; and combination and improvement are sought. These
four guidelines provide the power behind the use of divergent thinking. Osborn mentions that
“not only in business but in every line, the quality of leadership depends on creative power” .
This notion that creativity drives leadership is why CPS has become a process that can promote
real change in any organization through a group of empowered individuals.

Since its initial publication in 1953, Applied Imagination has become one of the most
widely known textbooks on the subject of creativity. In 1998 alone there were 25 citations of the
before mentioned book by other authors. Chapter eight introduces the CPS process depicting
three distinct components: fact-finding, idea-finding and solution-finding .Chapter ten discusses
the concept of deferred judgment and quality yielding quantity. The book also discusses
exercises to enhance key points discussed in each chapter. The fact alone that the original
copyright is 46 years old points out that this “classic” still has its place in the emerging field of
creativity and innovation.

Osborn (1955) introduces the concept that provides “optimum opportunity for
creative thinking and for judicial thinking is to divide a conference into two sessions”. This
notion of two separate sessions where the first session allows for ideas to flourish is
counterbalanced with a second session where decisions are made on the ideas produced. Osborn
stresses that “when it comes to thinking, let’s try to act as if we were two people – at one time, a
thinker upper, a producer of ideas; at another, a weigher of ideas”.

Another article Osborn wrote regarding creativity appeared in A Source Book for
Creative Thinking (1962) titled “Developments in Creative Education,” which was originally
delivered as his address to the sixth annual Creative Problem Solving Institute in 1960. The
article focuses on scientific research conducted as of 1960 validating Osborn’s theories of
creativity . He discusses stages in the CPS process; the principles of quantity breeding quality
and deferred judgment; collegiate courses teaching an aspect of creativity; and applications of
creativity tools in business, public affairs, the armed forces, and worldwide. Osborn stresses “our
main aim is to help education do more to develop creative ability. This “aim” is the reason
behind why his establishment of the Creative Education Foundation (CEF) and how CEF’s
mission has evolved into the following: “to expand the use of creativity and innovation
worldwide.

To outline progress in the field of creativity, Osborn (1964) wrote The Creative
Education Movement . In this book published by the Creative Education Foundation, he
describes current research; basic principles for understanding CPS; the diversity of where
creativity is being taught; and suggestions on the use of “group brainstorming.” Osborn outlines
four key developments in the research of creativity which include the expansion of creativity
research; trends leading to a more creative style of teaching; the commencement of courses on
CPS; and incorporating creativity beliefs and procedures into existing courses. He also discusses
how the State University of New York at Buffalo utilized a $43,000 grant from the U.S. Office
of Education “to help finance further research into the developability of creative behavior by
means of programmed instruction”.

In addition to his published works, Osborn did quite a bit of public speaking
throughout the United States. Osborn delivered a speech to a group of sales executives where he
discussed “creative management is the power which has enabled man to excel all other
animals” . He reviewed his six stages of CPS and highlighted the fact that “we need to think up
plenty of tentative ideas, because, in ideation, quantity helps breed quality” . Osborn also
discusses emotional blocks to creativity; asking provocative questions that lead to ideas; the
importance of specificity in the wording of problems; and where creativity is being taught in the
U.S.

He delivered another speech later in the year at Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo,
New York. In this speech Osborn outlined that “all of us are endowed with two minds: a
knowing mind and a thinking mind” . Osborn mentions that Albert Einstien made the following
statement before his death: “Imagination is more important than knowledge” . He went on in his
speech to assume that Einstein said the before mentioned statement because “knowledge is the
fruit of creativity” . This belief that creativity drives knowledge is crucial to Osborn’s motivation
to understand the many applications of creativity in human life.

Osborn (1958) delivered another speech to the Macalester College in Saint Paul,
Minnesota, regarding how the institution could introduce creativity into its liberal arts
curriculum. He introduced the inspiration to offer courses on creativity because “that most
people have never learned – from education or likewise – that they do possess the gift of creative
imagination, that they can develop it” . He later described the marketing course he conducted as
a sales manager where he “shamefully ignored the fact that creative problem-solving is the
without-which-nothing of effective marketing” . He concluded his remarks to the faculty with the
following: “As a liberal arts man, I am keenly interested in what Macalester may do to improve
liberal arts education…and, if so, I hope Macalester will lead the way” .
Key Points and Concepts

Osborn has been labeled as the “father of brainstorming” and “made creative thinking
and brainstorming household words” .Although Osborn is credited with the origination of the
application of brainstorming. This technique would not be possible without the following two
ideals: the separation of imaginative and judicial judgment, and the principle of suspending
judgment. The first key point that is carried throughout his work is how the mind has both
creative and judicial sides. Osborn describes that it’s the imaginative mind that is able to
generate, visualize and foresee ideas; and the judicial mind takes care of the analyzing and
selecting ideas. His theory of these two kinds of thinking led Osborn to believe that if judgment
was suspended, then the imagination could produce ideas.

The second key point focuses on the belief that “deferment-of-judgment during
ideative effort to keep the critical faculty from jamming the creative faculty, is key to
imaginative success. He states that brainstorming is productive because “it concentrates solely on
creative thinking and excludes the discouragement and criticism which so often cramp
imagination” . Osborn elaborates on his deferred judgment principle to suggest the notion that
quantity will breed quality” .Osborn adhered to the fact that “the more ideas you think up, the
more likely you are to arrive at the potentially best leads to solution” . Research proved his
hypothesis to depict groups producing 90 percent more ideas when judgment was suspended
versus not suspending judgment . Osborn’s theories on imaginative and judicial thinking, and the
separation of these two kinds of thinking are core beliefs in the teaching and application of CPS
today.

Recommendations

For any individual interested in learning about creativity, the work of Osborn is must read. His
well-known textbook Applied Imagination is an excellent introductory manual to understanding
the applied theory of creativity and Osborn’s core beliefs. Osborn provides numerous exercises
to apply the ideologies of his book and the opportunity to incorporate these philosophies into any
and every aspect of life. This selection is not to discount any of his other works; however, to give
the reader a comprehension of the foundation behind the CPS process.

Other recommendations to gain an awareness of Osborn’s work would be to visit the State
University of New York at Buffalo Archives department. The Archives department keeps a
collection of work Osborn donated to the University ranging from unpublished manuscripts to
copies of some of his books (Osborn, 1948-1966). The Creative Studies Library housed in the E.
H. Butler Library at Buffalo State College – State University of New York contains both books
and manuscripts written by Osborn as well.
Conclusion

Osborn has left a legacy in the quest to understand applied creativity. His beliefs that everyone
has the potential to be creative motivated him to teach and nurture this trait in others. Although
the discipline of creativity is multifaceted in nature, Osborn’s theories allowed for research to
develop the CPS process into different interpretations and application of the original process
(Isaksen et al., 1994; Vehar et al., 1997). The work of Alexander Faickney Osborn has made him
one of the founding fathers of creativity research and a scholar that every individual engaged in
the application of the discipline should know.

Death

Around this time, Alex took up a hobby he loved the remainder of his life: oil painting. He had
been told as a child that he could not draw, and believing he had no talent, never tried. At the age
of 53, he challenged that belief, and enjoyed this pastime the rest of his life. In 1966, Alex’s
remarkable life ended. A note in the BBDO Newsletter stated, “Alex Osborn spent his entire life
being creative and curious. It was typical of him that he permitted researchers at Buffalo’s
Roswell Park Memorial Institute to give him experimental drugs in their quest for a cure for the
rare ailment that claimed him on May 5th just short of his 78th Birthday.” In January of 1967,
the Journal of Creative Behavior was first published, furthering the process of researching,
measuring and reporting the results of using deliberate creativity tools and processes across a
vast array of applications and uses.
References2

 Alex F. Osborn, 77, a founder and officer of B.B.D.& O., dies. (1966, May 6). New York
Times, p. 47.
 BBDO. (1997a). BBDO Worldwide History: The 1890s through WWI. Retrieved
October 18, 1999, from http://www.bbdo.com/history/1890/index.html.
 BBDO. (1997b). BBDO Worldwide History: The 1930s through the 1940s. Retrieved
October 18, 1999, from http://www.bbdo.com/history/1930/index.html.
 Creative Education Foundation. (1999). Profile and Mission of the Creative Education