If you’re looking to come up with a creative solution to a business problem, chances are you get your team together for a brainstorming session. After all, isn’t intellectual capital one of a business’s key assets? Harnessing the collective creativity and imagination of your team will surely produce new ideas and innovative solutions.
Individuals more creative than groups
Or will it? New research conducted by Nicholas Kohn and Steven Smith from A&M University in Texas shows that group brainstorming is not nearly as effective at generating novel ideas as
most business people think. Two key findings arising out of the research show that people are likely to generate more ideas, and more creative and varied ideas, when they brainstorm on their own individually (individual participants produced 44% more ideas than groups).
In addition, an interesting thing happens when people brainstorm together in a group – instead of producing a range of different ideas, as one might expect, people in a group tend to mirror the ideas of others in the group. The net result is that the group produces fewer ideas and the ideas it does produce are less varied.
The need to conform
Researchers call this tendency to conform to one or few similar ideas ‘collaborative fixation’. As Nicholas Kohn explains, “Fixation to other people’s ideas can occur unconsciously and lead to you suggesting ideas that mimic your brainstorming partners. Thus, you potentially become less creative.” Such conformity could be the result of something known as ‘evaluation apprehension’, the fear that others will criticise your wildly creative, left-field ideas. Interestingly, the researchers also found that the rate of conformity increased as the number of ideas exposed increased. In addition, groups that were exposed to more ‘typical’ mainstream ideas produced fewer novel and unique ideas.
Taking a break helps
Another interesting finding that emerged from the study flies in the face of normal brainstorming practice which throws people together in a room to ‘thrash it out’ for hours. “There is a decline in the number of ideas over time,” say the researchers. They found that when groups were given a break in the middle of the brainstorming session, it appeared to revive them and stimulate a fresh outpouring of ideas.
