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> In fact, a great deal of evidence indicates that brainstorming actually harms creative performance, resulting in a collective performance loss that is the ver

> 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. This is my experience. It's difficult to get under the surface of a problem in a committee. Better to take the same group, state the issue, then ask everyone to separately go on a long walk and think about it. Then come back and perform group memetic meiosis on the solutions.

noneeeed 6y ago
I seem to remember reading about some studies that came to a similar conclusion. The optimum approach to generating new ideas was to ask everyone to presubmit suggestions, which were then put to the group unattributed (at least initially) and the group then riffed on those ideas. People tended to come up with a wider variety of options on their own, and presenting them all equally made personal/power relationships in the group less of an impediment to creative thinking (less writing off ideas just because they came from Bob or Carol).
Fricken 6y ago
Idea sessions for us are less about coming up with anything new than they are about vetting the ideas we have kicking around and deciding which ones are worth running with.
clairity 6y ago
that's the raison d'être of structured approaches like design sprints, to control for the collapse of the creative space during brainstorming sessions (colloquially, groupthink).
hanniabu 6y ago
From my experience the best comes from a combination of both. Everyone think separately and come up with your own solutions, then meet as a group and everyone goes over their ideas, then go one by one and list the pros and cons of each solution. Typically you can eliminate half right off the bat. Then you go through each of the remaining ones and brainstorm how you can tweak it to maximize the pros and minimize the cons. Sometimes you can't make any changes and sometimes you end up combining different parts of different solutions into one. Note that this will only work in small groups, like 3-5 people or so.

noneeeed 6y ago

I seem to remember reading about some studies that came to a similar conclusion. The optimum approach to generating new ideas was to ask everyone to presubmit suggestions, which were then put to the group unattributed (at least initially) and the group then riffed on those ideas. People tended to come up with a wider variety of options on their own, and presenting them all equally made personal/power relationships in the group less of an impediment to creative thinking (less writing off ideas just because they came from Bob or Carol).

Fricken 6y ago

Idea sessions for us are less about coming up with anything new than they are about vetting the ideas we have kicking around and deciding which ones are worth running with.

clairity 6y ago

that's the raison d'être of structured approaches like design sprints, to control for the collapse of the creative space during brainstorming sessions (colloquially, groupthink).

hanniabu 6y ago

From my experience the best comes from a combination of both. Everyone think separately and come up with your own solutions, then meet as a group and everyone goes over their ideas, then go one by one and list the pros and cons of each solution. Typically you can eliminate half right off the bat. Then you go through each of the remaining ones and brainstorm how you can tweak it to maximize the pros and minimize the cons. Sometimes you can't make any changes and sometimes you end up combining different parts of different solutions into one. Note that this will only work in small groups, like 3-5 people or so.