Brainstorming Doesn't Work
Brainstorming is an over-egged and over-cooked management idea. And it probably doesn’t work.
Honestly.
Yes, a group brainstorm (and that is what people mean when they talk about brainstorming) is a great fun event. But surely it is nothing more than executive entertainment. Cerebral popcorn. You know the buzzwords they use: creative juices blah, blah… team spirit blah blah…, collaborative working…. I believe the humble brainstorm’s reputation and popularity far outweighs its efficacy.
So, my case is this.
One, brainstorming just for the sake of it, because it’s expected or habit, may well be a waste of time.
Two, it may actually be less productive and creative than more traditional methods like working on your own.
Of course having the right training or methodology would help but most brainstorming sessions I have been involved in have been pretty unstructured, random and at best, ill-conceived. A bit of fun.
The research supports my point of view.
"As sexy as brainstorming is, with people popping like champagne with ideas, what actually happens is when one person is talking you're not thinking of your own ideas," says Professor Leigh Thompson at the Kellogg School. That process is called anchoring. And it crushes originality. (Ironic!)
Anchoring influences everything that comes after it. (So much for free thought!)
"Early ideas tend to have disproportionate influence over the rest of the conversation," Loran Nordgren, also a professor at Kellogg, explains. "They establish the kinds of norms, or cement the idea of what are appropriate examples or potential solutions for the problem."
In other words, because brainstorming favours the first ideas, it also breeds the least creative ideas. This is conformity pressure.
A study by researchers at Texas A&M University concluded that group brainstorming exercises can lead to fixation on only one idea or possibility, blocking out other ideas and possibilities. The result is a conformity of ideas.
In a review of 22 studies of group brainstorming, Michael Diehl and Wolfgang Stroebe found that, overwhelmingly, groups brainstorming together produce fewer ideas than individuals working separately.
The conclusion appears to be that group creativity may be an overestimated method to generate ideas. On the other hand, individual brainstorming exercises (as opposed to group brainstorming sessions), such as written creativity drills may be more effective.
So, before you rush headlong into your next brainstorming group, think carefully about what is the most effective way to get the result that you want.
"Early ideas tend to have disproportionate influence over the rest of the conversation," I am inclined to agree. It is at this point that you realise that we are not looking for breakthrough ideas but more of the same to maintain the status quo. Everything from there just becomes about confirming all the initial bias - and leading us back to the original quicksand.
I completely agree with David Hall in his above comments! I view brainstorming as a fun team building sort of activity, but it just captures all of the previous ideas that weren't good enough before and are unlikely to be taken forward, they also won't be good enough a year later when the same exercise is repeated. The techniques that David has showed me (through the ideas centre) such as super heroes and reversal not only generate genuinely new thinking with far fewer people in less time, they also give greater ownership to the problem owner who sees a genuinely useful way of taking a solution forward.
Absolutely agreed! We at the Ideas Centre define creativity as the "generation of ideas that are both novel and useful". Brainstorming is great for generating useful ideas - based on the way we normally do things, but typically incremental in nature. What we need is novelty i.e. NOT what we normally do around here. Since "useful" is much quicker and easier to generate than "novel", the brainstorming approach tends to kill any hope of creativity. We have techniques that structure thinking to suppress the natural tendency to useful, giving novel more of a chance e.g. Step 1 - brainstorming in the style of Superheroes to generate novel ideas (that will be usefulness - impossible to implement (naturally!) - would solve the problem, if only they were possible. Then Step 2 - take the outrageous novel and useless Superhero idea, understand how the novelty helps solve the problem, then find a USEFUL way to deliver the same impact. Bingo - a Novel and Useful (i.e. creative) idea!
My experience is different to that of Prof Leigh Thompson. In unstructured brainstorming, when one person is talking, most people don't listen (really really listen) to what's being said. They are thinking of their ideas and waiting for the chance to speak. End result is the same though. Which is why having structured sessions where ideas are nurtured or greenhoused or whatever you want to call it produce ideas that one person alone can't generate.
I have to agree and disagre, I have been in groups where we are in the same team and we have got one or two ideas to go forward, very poorly meeting. I find taking in different people with different experiences always will be a good group of people with lots of ideas popping up due to different ways to see on the task ahead. So my conclusion will be, with the right people the brainstorming will be amazing 😊✌️