You’ve heard these. Most likely you’ve even promoted them in your own team activities. Most of them seem hard to dispute and are widely accepted as dogma.

Seems hard to argue with any of these:

• Teams are more creative than individuals
• To stimulate creativity, get rid of rules and processes
• Striving for quality is better than striving for quantity
• Once you’ve got an effort underway, don’t break up the team working on it
• For best results, brainstorm in groups, rather than individually

Yet, in fact, all of these are myths which actually hinder the process of brainstorming and innovation rather than fueling it.

A number of research studies give ample evidence to dispel these beliefs. Their findings support exactly the opposite conclusion than these prevailing myths. The results of these studies point to conclusions which actually support the following:

• An aggregate of individuals working in isolation produced nearly 3 times more ideas than a brainstorming group comprising the same number of individuals. Furthermore, the quality of ideas produced by the individuals working independently was almost 30% higher. ⁽¹⁾
• Brainstorming groups provided with specific rules for ideation tend to produce more distinct ideas; in fact, as the rules increase in definition, so does the quantity of distinct ideas created by the group ⁽²⁾
• Teams directed to focus on producing the maximum number of ideas delivered more than twice the number of quality ideas than teams directed to focus on producing only quality ideas. ⁽³⁾
• The stimulation associated with re-aligning members into new teams more than compensated for the resulting disruption, producing better idea results from the disrupted teams as compared to from teams which were not altered. ⁽⁴⁾
• People asked to first ideate alone, and then brainstorm in a group produced approximately 15% better brainstorming results than when brainstorming is first done in a group. ⁽⁵⁾

Applying these basic rules is documented to improve any team’s effectiveness in brainstorming and new ideas generation. In the Signature community we are developing new programs to stimulate discovery and innovation with our clients, which apply many of these principles.

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References:

(1)     Diehl, M. & Stroebe, W. (1987). Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: Toward a solution of a riddle. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 53, 497-509.

(2)     Paulus, P.B. Nakui, T., Brown, V.R., and Putman, V.L. (2006). Effects of task instructions and brief breaks on brainstorming. Group Dynamics: Theory, research and practice, 10 (3), 206-219

(3)     Paulus, P.B., Kohn, N.W. and Arditti, L.E. (2011). Effects of quantity and quality instructions on brainstorming. Journal of creative behavior, 45 (1), 38-46.

(4)     Choi, H.S. & Thompson, L. (2005). Old wine in a new bottle: Impact of membership change on group

creativity. Organization Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 98 (2), 121-132.

(5)     Baruah, J. and Paulus, P.B. (2008). Effects of training on idea generation in groups. Small Group Research, 39, 523-541