Lately two articles about brainstorming have been making a stir in our world: Jonah Lehrer’s article “Groupthink” and Susan Cain’s “The Rise of the New Groupthink.” Both authors argue that brainstorming is not an effective method of stimulating creativity.
ITG facilitator Susan Robertson added our voice to the fray with “NYT Groupthink Rebuttal: Effective Brainstorming Works” and “10 Rules for Brainstorming Success.” Bob Sutton also recently posted a response we thought was valuable.
Sutton, IDEO fellow and co-founder of the Stanford Institute of Design, recapped his research on brainstorming in “Why The New Yorker’s Claim That Brainstorming ‘Doesn’t Work’ Is An Overstatement and Possibly Wrong.”
In the post his major points are:
“1. Nearly all brainstorming research is done with people who have no training or experience in doing or leading brainstorming. In fact, there is at least one study showing that, when facilitated well, the so called productivity loss disappears.
2. If creativity is about both talking and listening, if you look at the data from these same studies, I once figured out that people are exposed to substantially more ideas per unit of time when you compare group to solo brainstorming — and I would argue that talking and listening are both key elements of the social process underlying creativity.
3. A key part of face-to-face brainstorming is building on and combining the ideas of others. This comparison is impossible in most brainstorming studies because an individual working alone is not exposed to the ideas of others.”
Bravo, Bob. Sounds like you and Susan are on the same page.
