Posted: 03/29/2015 9:30 am EDT Updated: 03/29/2015 9:59 am EDT
To grow and innovate, organizations have to come up with creative ideas. At the employee level, creativity results from a combination of expertise, motivation, and thinking skills. At the team level, it results from the synergy between team members, which allows the group to produce something greater than the sum of its parts.
The most widely used method to spark group creativity is brainstorming, a technique first introduced by Alex Osborn, a real life "Mad Man," in the 1950s. Brainstorming is based on four rules : (a) generate as many ideas as possible; (b) prioritize unusual or original ideas; (c) combine and refine the ideas generated; and (d) abstain from criticism during the exercise. The process, which should be informal and unstructured, is based on two old psychological premises. First, that the mere presence of others can have motivating effects on an individual's performance. Second, that quantity
(eventually) leads to quality .
Osborn famously claimed that brainstorming should enhance creative performance by almost 50 percent versus individuals working on their own. Yet after six decades of independent scientific research, there is very little evidence for the idea that brainstorming produces more or better ideas than the same number of individuals would produce working independently. In fact, a great deal of evidence indicates that brainstorming actually harms creative performance, resulting in a collective performance loss that is the very opposite of synergy.
A meta-analytic review of over 800 teams indicated that individuals are more likely to generate a higher number of original ideas when they don't interact with others. Brainstorming is particularly likely to harm productivity in large teams, when teams are closely supervised, and when performance is oral rather than written. Another problem is that teams tend to give up when they notice that their efforts aren't producing very much.
But why doesn't brainstorming work? There are four explanations:
 Social loafing : There's a tendency -- also known as free riding -- for people to make less of an effort when they are working in teams than alone. As with the bystander effect, we feel less propelled to do something when we know other people might do it.
 Social anxiety : People worry about other team members' views of their ideas. This is also referred to as evaluation apprehension . Similarly, when team members perceive that others have more expertise , their performance declines. This is especially problematic for introverted and less confident individuals.
I2B - Brainstorming Debate - Is It a Waste of Time? - S2015.docx

 Regression to the mean : This is the process of downward adjustment whereby the most talented group members end up matching the performance of their less talented counterparts.
This effect is well known in sports -- if you practice with someone less competent than you, your competence level declines and you sink to the mediocrity of your opponent.
 Production blocking : No matter how large the group, individuals can only express a single idea at one time if they want other group members to hear them. Studies have found that the number of suggestions plateaus with more than six or seven group members, and that the number of ideas per person declines as group size increases .
Given brainstorming's flaws, why is the practice so widely adopted?
There are two main reasons . First, with the increased specialization of labor, organizations see that expertise is distributed among their employees. If problem-solving benefits from different types of knowledge, assembling the right combination of people should, in theory, increase the amount of expertise in the room and result in better solutions being proposed. However, in practice, this approach would require careful selection of individuals and painstaking coordination of their efforts.
Second, even though groups don't generate more or better ideas, brainstorming is arguably more democratic than the alternatives, so it can enhance buy-in and subsequent implementation of the ideas generated, regardless of the quality of those ideas.
Ultimately, brainstorming continues to be used because it feels intuitively right to do so. As such, it is one more placebo in the talent management cabinet, believed to work in spite of the clear absence of evidence. So go ahead, schedule that brainstorming meeting. Just don't expect it to accomplish much, other than making your team feel good.
This post originally appeared in Harvard Business Review . http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tomas-chamorropremuzic-phd/why-group-brainstorming-is-a-waste-of-time_b_6964012.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business
QUESTIONS:
1.) Reflect on your own personal experiences with group brainstorming. Have they been fun? Productive?
Were they well run? Did they produced more good ideas by being in a group?
2.) Honestly assess your own contribution to the group brainstorming cited above. Were you (or others in the group) guilty of “social loafing”? Did you experience any “evaluation apprehension” (anxiety that others would judge your ideas)? Did it prevent you from sharing your ideas fully?
3.) Did your participation in the brainstorming session make you more willing to support the idea eventually chosen by the group? Do you think this fact alone can make brainstorming worthwhile?
I2B - Brainstorming Debate - Is It a Waste of Time? - S2015.docx

Posted: 02/25/2014 3:40 pm EST Updated: 04/27/2014 5:59 am EDT
In the past few years I have noticed a curious trend in the media -- one I can no longer ignore -- and that is the appearance of seriously derisive articles about brainstorming by self-declared pundits and freelance writers. Citing selected research on the subject and paying brief homage to Alex Osborne , the father of brainstorming, they make bold assertions about the ineffectiveness of the method, often claiming that "it does not work" and making grand declarations like "people are more creative away from the crowd" and "over 50 years of research shows that people often reach irrational decisions in a group." While the previous two quotes do have some degree of truth associated with them, likening a brainstorm session to a "crowd" is not only a poor choice of metaphors, it is patently untrue.
And while many irrational decisions have been made in groups since the beginning of time, to assume that irrational decisions will necessarily be made in a brainstorming session is only more proof that the writers of the recent spate of anti-brainstorming screeds have either never participated in a skillfully facilitated brainstorm session or are hopelessly late for their next journalistic deadline, refusing to take the time to go beyond their specious all-or-nothing conclusions drawn from someone else's research -- some of which is more than 50 years old.
To blatantly conclude that brainstorming sessions don't work is as absurd as saying that marriages don't work because 50 percent end in divorce or tourists shouldn't visit New York City because sometimes the traffic is heavy. What I'm guessing that brainstorming naysayers really mean is that bad brainstorming sessions don't work... or poorly facilitated brainstorming sessions don't work... or brainstorming sessions with the wrong mix of unprepared participants (marriage, anyone?) don't work. Brainstorming critics like to cite a 1958 study, at Yale, that showed that students thinking on their own came up with twice as many solutions as brainstorming groups -- and their solutions were deemed to be more effective and feasible.
Fine. Good. Terrific. I'm all for people thinking on their own in their dorm room... or Starbucks... or the zoo. That's a good thing. But as a replacement for a well-run brainstorming session? Why the either/or syndrome? Why not both? Just because you had breakfast this morning doesn't necessarily mean you should skip dinner tonight, does it?
And besides, even a casual scan of the literature will reveal an extraordinary number of innovationleaning people who joined forces with others to conceive something brilliant that none of them could have conjured on their own. Think Jobs and Wozniak. Think Watson and Crick, Hewlett and
Packard, John, Paul, George and Ringo -- and any number of less famous ad hoc groups of aspiring innovators, working in all kind of organizations, who came out of their corporate dorm rooms long enough to jam with other seekers of possibility to jump start bold new advances in just about every industry on planet Earth. But wait! There's more! The anti-brainstorming forces are also fond of asserting that creativity is stifled in a brainstorming session.
Hello! Earth to journalists on deadline writing about brainstorming for a flight magazine. To claim that creativity will invariably be stifled in a brainstorming session is like saying that creativity will invariably be stifled in a marriage... or in a school... or in an organization. Possible? Yes. Whenever people with egos get together, creativity has the potential to be stifled. But inevitable? No.
On the contrary, creativity is often sparked in a group -- even groups that are cranky, competitive, and strong-willed. "Creative dissonance" can be the catalyst for breakthrough - NOT lone wolf, ivory tower idea generators sitting alone in their room attempting to conjure up the next big thing.
Brainstorm detractors -- as least the ones I've read -- are fond of citing "social loafing," "social blocking," "free riding" and other group-centric sociological phenomenon as proof of why
I2B - Brainstorming Debate - Is It a Waste of Time? - S2015.docx

brainstorming sessions should cease to exist. Yes, I agree that some people who work in organizations fit this slacker stereotype. But there is no room for this kind of energy-sucking behavior in a well-run brainstorming session -- one that has been thoughtfully prepared, the right people invited, and with a skillful facilitator catalyzing the creative process.
Would brainstorm detractors suggest that we get rid of cities because some of them are polluted, or get rid of marriages because some couples quarrel, or eliminate music because some people turn up their stereos just a little too loud when their neighbors are trying to sleep?
With all due respect, I humbly invite the small, but very vocal anti-brainstorming faction to pause for a moment and contemplate any one of the following questions -- questions with the potential to spark the kind of creative thinking our small, but very vocal anti-brainstorming faction might have missed by not participating in a brainstorming session on this very topic.
1. How can brainstorm sessions be improved?
2. How can the facilitators of brainstorm sessions learn how to dependably spark creativity in others?
3.
How can brainstorming build on good ideas generated by participants before the session begins?
4. How can team leaders ensure that the right mix of people attend their brainstorm sessions?
5.
How can a group of brainstorm participants generate and abide by a set of guidelines that will radically increase their odds of generating breakthrough ideas?
6. How can brainstorming become part of a continuum of idea generation strategies in an organization, so its "idea eggs" are not all in the same basket?
Mitch Ditkoff is the co-Founder and President of Idea Champions, a management development and training company specializing in creative thinking, innovation and leadership. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mitch-ditkoff/in-defense-of-brainstormi_b_4851219.html
QUESTIONS:
1.) Does this second article convince you of the potential merits of group brainstorming? Why or why not?
Which arguments from both articles do you find most persuasive?
2.) Do you agree with the premise that the problem is that “most people are not doing brainstorming the right way”? Based on your own experiences would improving the brainstorming process and methodology help alleviate the shortcomings mentioned above?
3.) Will you continue to experiment with brainstorming and try to make it work. Why or why not.
I2B - Brainstorming Debate - Is It a Waste of Time? - S2015.docx