One of the most interesting chapters in Teresa Torres’s book Continuous Discovery Habits is ‘The Problem with Brainstorming’.
I’ve worked in numerous companies where this was the default method of idea generation. It is often fun, but is it useful or productive? The answer is categorically NO.
Torres cites academic research, including a 2010 study that surveyed and aggregated results from published brainstorming research. They found that study after study showed that individuals alone generate ‘more ideas, more diverse ideas, more original ideas’ than brainstorming groups.
The reasons for this are:
1. People brainstorming alone work harder. In groups, ‘social loafing’ means many people can coast while a small number of people do the work. On your own, there is no one else to do the work.
2. Group conformity. Early ideas set the tone for later ideas. Ideas were too similar to one another or too conservative. Individuals with ideas that differed from the consensus censored themselves.
3. Production blocking. People lose ideas while waiting to speak or don’t get the chance to speak at all.
4. Downward norm setting. The group’s performance tends to be limited to the lowest-performing member.
Torres points to another academic study (in Making the Team by Leigh Thompson) that shows that brainstorming groups suffer from ‘the illusion of productivity’. They think their work as a group is better than their work as individuals, despite this being unlikely to be true. Groups:
– Overestimate their performance
– Report high levels of satisfaction with their work
Brainstorming reduces the pressure on the individuals, is less work, is more social, and is more enjoyable. If you brainstorm alone, you are more likely to have ‘cognitive failure’ (not generating any ideas). In a group, you may be inspired by others to have ideas. Nevertheless, research shows that brainstorming alone is more likely to generate more and better ideas than working in a group – it is simply harder work and riskier for the individuals involved.
So brainstorming is a bad idea. What should we do instead?
In their paper ‘Alternating individual and group idea generation: Finding the elusive synergy’Runa Korde , Paul B. Paulus describe experiments they ran to test the efficacy of ideation procedures that involved alternation of individual and group idea generation sessions (hybrid brainstorming) as compared to traditional individual and group ideation.
Participants ideated on their own, then shared their ideas with the group, then went back to ideating on their own. They never ideated as a group but benefited from hearing other’s ideas. This, it turns out is the best way to go about idea generation in an organisation.