BEWARE OF GROUP SIZE (Creativity and Innovation)...learn more at http://www.managing-creativity.com

1. Creativity and Innovation:
BEWARE OF GROUP
SIZE
by
managing-creativity.com

2. When leaders, consultants and
managers require ideas, they
automatically tend to herd people
into a room and conduct a (usually
ineffective) brainstorming session.
One reason for their ineffectiveness
is a failure to consider the impact of
group size.

3. There is a pervasive belief that
creativity is enhanced in larger
groups. However, significant data
indicates that large groups are
detrimental to creative output.
Some of the arguments against
large groups are:

4. #1
The sum of ideas produced by
individuals acting alone is greater than
the sum of ideas produced by those
same individuals when acting as a
group.

5. #2
Large groups dilute ideas.

6. #3
Symptoms of group think increase as a
group gets larger due to the illusion of
invulnerability, unquestioned belief in the
group's morality and rationalisation by
collective justification of decisions.

7. #4
As group size increases, the percentage
of individual performance decreases. A
single person is 95% engaged in a task,
two people are each 90% engaged and
the decline increases until it evens out at
about 15 members to around 30%.

8. #5
Groups of three to five elicit much more
conformity than just one or two.

9. #6
Large groups increase levels of
evaluation apprehension and social
loafing.

10. #7
Large groups result in core and
peripheral members, restricting
information flow.

11. #8
Conflict is inevitable as group size
increases, causing sub-group formation
and politicking.

12. #9
Large groups create sub-groups with
conflicting identities and goals.

13. #10
Large groups introduce time
inefficiencies. 30 individuals can work on
30 problems and produce 150 ideas (30
x 5) in the same time that 1 group
working on 1 problem produces 5 ideas
(1 x 5).

14. Learn much more at
managing-creativity.com