Not too long ago, someone mentioned that they were a B9B business and I thought, oh great, here’s another buzzword, and they’re trying to kill the cat of curiosity, making me ask them what B9B stood for. The individual claimed to be a brainstorming consultant, meaning he went into large corporations and worked with their research and development departments to help employees generate new ideas on his behalf.
Once they were taught these brainstorming methods, the theory was that they would be able to continually innovate, driving them to market with new products and services. I think they are claiming that the B9B had something to do with “beyond nine bots” which is one of those mind masturbation questions used in Mensa tests, or a trick question to get people to think outside the box.
However, when I saw what kind of industry they were in and tried to guess what B9B stood for, I came up with a benign brainstorm: Be9 Brainstorming. But of course I was told that this was incorrect, because it represented the proverbial past nine robots. Indeed, the reality is that in brainstorming there are multiple answers to the question or problem on the way to the solution. So, in fact, Benign Brainstorming was a perfectly good answer.
And by telling me that the answer was wrong, it somehow proves that the guy didn’t know what he was talking about. But I guess many innovative consultants or brainstorming gurus aren’t quite what they claim to be anyway. Is B9B really a new buzzword in the industry for innovative trainers, consultants and gurus? I think not, rather B9B is just a creative form of Benign Branding, and a tricky little way of triggering the N400 brain wave to burn into one’s memory, and in that case it’s a good use of innovative trade names.
Now where someone takes it from there, and what they do once they’re using benign brainstorming strategies is an entirely different matter. However, I thought you might like to think about this.