Why we called it selfstorming, not brainstorming

There is a perfectly good word for four people in a room pretending to have ideas. It is called brainstorming. It was invented in 1948 by Alex Osborn, who was selling advertising at the time, which should tell you something.

Since then, roughly every behavioral study that bothered to measure group brainstorms against the same people working alone and pooling their output has reached the same conclusion: the group produces fewer and worse ideas. Psychologists call this production blocking. Freelancers call it "the meeting that could have been an email." Junior strategists call it "the ninety minutes I spent watching Karen defend her sub-headline."

But the word survived. Because the word is good. "Brainstorming" sounds like a weather event. It has drama. It makes whiteboards feel necessary. It justifies the cost of the room.

We needed the right word. The word itself already existed - it is common enough that you have probably heard it thrown around in a meeting or a thread. We just happened to be the ones who bought the .com and built the product.

The product needed a name. The method needed a name more.

When we started building Selfstorming, we kept running into the same pitch problem. Investors, friends, potential users all asked the same question: "So it is brainstorming, but with AI?"

And every time, we would say: no, it is actually the opposite.

Brainstorming assumes a room. Selfstorming assumes a person, alone, with a thinking partner that happens to be powered by a library of 1,000+ award-winning campaigns and 60+ marketing laws instead of three colleagues who are checking Slack under the table.

Brainstorming is noisy, social, and polite. Selfstorming is quiet, solo, and honest. When an idea is bad, the AI will tell you. When your deck is weak, it will explain why. When your framework does not fit the brief, it will swap it. No one is going to take that personally over lunch.

So we stopped calling it "brainstorming with AI." We called it selfstorming.

Why not "solo ideation" or "AI brainstorming"?

Because words shape behavior. Solo ideation sounds like something a lean-startup coach would say with a headset on. AI brainstorming frames the AI as a replacement for your colleagues, which it isn't. Your colleagues are fine. They are just bad at producing ideas in a group.

The best naming advice I ever got, from an old Rory Sutherland talk: "A good name doesn't describe the product. It describes the change the product makes in you."

Brainstorming describes what a group does in a room.
Selfstorming describes what one person does, alone, with help.

The change is in the preposition. Brain-storming is external. Self-storming is internal. That is the actual product.

Three things the old word did not cover

1. Speed. A brainstorm takes two weeks to organize. A selfstorming session takes the amount of time between having a brief and getting coffee. The old word assumed you had time. You do not.

2. Evidence. Brainstorms run on gut feel and the personal taste of whoever is loudest. Selfstorming runs on Byron Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass, Jobs-to-be-Done, and a catalogue of campaigns that actually worked. The old word did not care if the idea was true. The new word does.

3. Honesty. In a group, no one tells you your idea is weak. It is socially expensive. In a selfstorming session, the feedback is immediate and unembarrassed. You get better faster because you are not being protected.

So what is selfstorming, actually?

It is the thing you already do when you think well. Just faster, with a library of techniques on tap, and without the social tax of a meeting.

You feed it a brief or a topic. Maybe a campaign to invent, a product to name, a hook to craft, or a strategy direction to find. It generates ten strategic directions, twenty creative angles, thirty hooks, sixty name candidates - whatever the job needs. Every option is inspired by a real award-winning campaign or a proven technique, not by the average of the internet. You edit, delete, challenge, refine. The AI does the heavy lifting. You do the taste.

Forty minutes later, you have a deck that a four-person workshop would have produced in two days - if it had produced one at all.

We called the product Selfstorming because the product is the method. There was no other honest option.

What happens to brainstorming?

It stays. Group workshops are still useful, just not for producing ideas. They are useful for alignment, buy-in, onboarding, and company culture. They are useful when the point is the ritual. Use them for those things. Do not use them to generate strategy at 9 AM on a Monday for a deck that is due Friday.

The honest sequence is: selfstorm first, gather later. Everyone brings their best output. The group compares, combines, and challenges. You get individual firepower without production blocking, and you get collective judgment at the end. Best of both.

The very short version

Brainstorming is a 1948 word for a 1948 behavior. It describes something that does not scale, does not happen often enough, and produces less than the same people would produce alone.

Selfstorming is the word for what strategists, freelancers, and founders have actually been doing since AI got good. Thinking alone, but better, with help.

Now you have a word for it.

Read the full definition of selfstorming, or see the side-by-side comparison with brainstorming.