Brainstorming provides the perfect vehicle to initiate collaboration as it allows everyone to not only have a voice, but more importantly to visualise each other’s perspective and understanding whatever the issue.
This in turn allows the collaborators to focus on the positives and identify relationships and opportunities to move forward. Negatives are not ignored but are defused or relegated in the process. Teams and team leaders can work well when you know exactly what it is you want to do and the best way to do it, however to reach that point, it is "collaboration" that works most effectively.
In this video, whilst David and Tom Kelly of IDEO discuss alternatives to brainstorming, however, David and Tom make it clear that brainstorming—in whatever area it is used—is more about being a form of ‘collaboration’.
Collaboration brings together a wide range of differing people with differing roles and differing knowledge and experience to provide a wider understanding of what is being brainstormed and thus has the potential for greater innovation.