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50s, science has shown again and again, that when we come up with ideas
together there is a loss in both quantity and quality of the ideas generated.
To be clear: Im providing evidence and reasoning that you’re better off
splitting the group in to individuals when coming up with ideas, not that one
individual alone comes up with better ideas than a whole group. However,
there is significant evidence, and multiple studies, that the accumulated
ideas of X individuals, are better than the ideas of a group of X. (Osborne
1953; Taylor et al. 1958; Diehl & Stroebe 1987; Mullen et al. 1991; Furnham
2000; Nijstad et al. 2007; Girotra et al. 2009 — full litterature list)
The largest study on this, in 1987 by Diehl and Stroebe, collects more than
22 experiments and studies of collaborative ideation. in 18 of them the
individual ideators perform better than the groups — and in the last four,
individuals and pairs of two, performed better than groups. But why is this?
I’ll take you through the researched arguments and answers in the following
sections:
1. How ideas get made
2. The invention of brainstorming
3. Why collaborative thinking stifles ideation
4. Best practices for ideation
This article is the first in a series based on the 2022 master thesis “Solo
ideation in digital tools” at IT University of Copenhagen. Keep up here on
Medium or follow me on LinkedIn. The next articles will cover Solo Ideation
in the Digital Sphere, The History of Pragmatic Creativity, and more. On with
the article!
How Ideas Get Made
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The old-school notion of coming up with ideas involves those “aha!”
moments, the lightbulb-over-the-head ideas that seems to strike people at
random. This has of course been demystified, revealing that ideas emerge
when the mind shifts focus from the immediate surroundings, creating room
for new combinations or adaptations of existing information (Rawlinson 1981;
Buzan 1993; De Bono 1995; Couger 1996; Hainsworth 2010; Goldschmidt
2016). Ideas, in essence, is a combination of existing information in new
patterns and creativity is the practical skill one must hone to be better at
creating such patterns.
Edward De Bono (the guy with lateral thinking and the six hats), explains that
our brain generates ideas like the flow of water in a process involving a
passive phase where the brain forms “rivers” of information and an active
phase where it retrospectively understands and interprets the paths these
rivers have taken. I myself like to think of it as a lightning strike; the brain
goes through an unfathomable amount of information, trying to make sense
of the connections it creates, and all of sudden, BOOM!, there is that one
pattern that actually makes sense: it’s an idea.
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I use a lightning strike as an analogy of coming up with ideas — in an instant our brain seeks out patterns in existing
data and once connected in a way that makes sense, an idea is born.
“Understanding that the cornerstone of new ideas lies in the association
of old ones gives all of us the ability to create idea almost at will”
— Micheal Leboeuf 1982
Designers, and other creatives refine and systematize this skill into a process
formally known as ideation. While not universally labeled, ideation commonly
denotes the generation of ideas within the context of a creative- or design
process. So as the skill to generate ideas comes down to the ability create
and recognize patterns in existing information, the best way to get ideas,
must then be the ways in which we can facilitate and support the flow of
pattern recognition stimuli.
The invention of brainstorming
Brainstorming might be believed to be a group activity; maybe with a
facilitator to moderate, a whiteboard, post-it notes, blackboard or the like,
with the intentions to leave with as many ideas as possible, viable or not
(Nielsen 1997; Rickards 2000; Faure 2004; Rawlinson & Graham 2011) — but
that is not necessarily the case. The term of brainstorm can be traced back
to ad-executive and author Alex Osborn, popularized in his 1953 book
Applied Imagination, in the chapter Creative Collaboration by Groups.
“The early participants dubbed our efforts ‘Brainstorm Sessions’; and
quite aptly so because, in this case, ‘brainstorm’ means using the brain to
storm a creative problem — and to do so in commando fashion, with
each stormer audaciously attacking the same objective”
— Alex Osborn, 1953
The reader might notice the chapter it was written in is called Creative
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Collaboration by Groups and you might say: Aha! See? It IS about
collaboration! But hold your horses. The strategy is laid out in two parts: A)
generating ideas, and B) selecting ideas. Osborne calls this thinking
creatively, and thinking judicially. Much a kin to the terms of divergence and
convergence you might be familiar with. Idea generating is in the diverging
part of the process: we expand possibilities. The converging judicial phase,
is not about generating more ideas or establishing new pattern, but to weed
out non viable ones, and it’s a different skillsets altogether — and not what
this article is about.
In Osborne’s version of Brainstorming, the generating ideas part, is done
mostly alone, and then the second part, the judging and selection of ideas, is
done together. But Osborne recognizes some benefits in coming up with
ideas together. He for examples agrees that, ideas of one participant, can
simulate the associative power of all the other participants. However, he
ultimately comes to the conclusion that the cons outweighs the pros. In
essence, the original brainstorm was a two-part method to come up with
ideas alone and judge them together, not the lets-all-sit-together-process
we’ve been fed for many years. So what are the cons on this collaboration
that outweighs the pros?
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Solo designer staring at a wall of sticky notes
Photo by Per Lööv on Unsplash
Why collaboration stifles ideation
There is three elements in collaborative work that stifles ideation session.
The first two are social issues:
The common hazards of teamwork
The lacking sense of mustness
While the third is of a cognitive nature
Group thinking differ from individual thinking
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The hazards of teamwork
This is the most obvious barrier in collaboration, and hopefully one creative
professionals are actively trying to mitigate. It includes not performing the
brainstorming correctly, behaving rudely, interrupting participants,
steamrolling, and overall bad facilitation. But subtle dynamics plays a part as
well : social dynamics, hierarchies — participants don’t want to present
themselves stupid, misunderstandings in context to mention a few. A study
by Daniel J. Couger, in his 1996 book Creativity and innovation in information
systems organizations, pointed towards three significant social dynamics
that stifled collaborative ideation:
1) Fear of social disapproval
2) The effect of authority hierarchy
3) Domination of the session by a few very vocal persons
- Daniel Couger 1996
These will be recognized by most practitioners of ideation, and professionals
will be able to mitigate some of them, to some degree. But the hazards of
teamwork are not the only ones at play.
The lacking sense of mustness
Osborn describes this as missing a “mustness” whenever we are in a social
setting — As the storytelling ad-executive he was, Osborne paints a picture
of the “mustness” of solo thinking:
“If you were alone in your cabin, heard a deafening crash, looked out of
the porthole and saw an iceberg, felt the floor sinking beneath you —
your intensity of interest would drive you so hard and so fast that it would
force you to think up something to do. On the other hand, if there were
two of us in that cabin, we might just look at each other blankly and wait
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for the other to suggest something.”
- Alex Osborn, 1953
I myself view this as not committing to thinking up solutions because it’s a
smaller cognitive load to hope someone else thinks of the brilliant idea,
instead of doing it ourselves. Perhaps a designer’s version of the bystander
effect, allowing us to rely on others to do the work, creatively or otherwise.
Group thinking differ from individual thinking
Remember the analogy that generating ideas is sort of forming lightning
bolts in the brain? Well, take a look at John Adairs 1996 visualizations of
individual thinking versus group thinking:
An INDIVIDUAL, when thinking, is like a person crossing a river on stones, jumping toand fro. It’s an untidy but
orderly process, using all the meta-functions.
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To take a GROUP across the river you must build a bridge with three pillars. As you’ll see, these pillars draw mainly
on one of the meta-functions, so it helps to be able to separate them
While not explicitly calling out creativity, the visualizations can be
contextualized in collaborative ideation. If group thinking is structured, it will
be in contradiction to the premise of idea generation as laid previously — as
such individual thinking is more suited ideation. In summary, Brainstorming
has become what psychology professor Paul Paulus described as:
“…a complex process where people are trying to listen, think, add,
collaborate, build. It’s cumbersome, it’s difficult psychologically, and
people don’t do it very well”
Chapter takeaways
Hazards of teamwork can be mitigated, but not eliminated
There is such a thing as the Creative’s bystander effect
Group thinking is ill-suited for the process of idea generation
Best practices for ideation
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Photo by Mehdi MeSSrro on Unsplash
Previously I’ve touched on why collaboration counters idea generation. In
this final chapter, I will give some insights in what the literature says about
supporting idea generation instead.
So how do you get the most out of ideation when doing it alone? In
researching creativity and ideation, I have some recommendations to follow
to achieve effective solo ideation.
1. Stimulate pattern recognition; It’s all about the instant pattern
recognition in the seemingly random chaos of one’s brain — the
lightning strike. Christian Kohls’ 2015 experiments found that
tools/techniques that emphasize holistic overview, directional flow and
impulse stimuli won out. Mand maps, word associations games and
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sketching comes to mind.
2. Utilize external, preferably vaguely relevant, prompts; In the field it
has been established that even random words as prompts, will increase
ideation effectiveness. But more recent research (Belski 2014 and Shen
2018) studied the difference between no prompt, random prompt,
vague prompts and hard prompts. The study showed getting prompts
vaguely related to your subject matter yielded the best and most ideas.
3. Avoid judicial thinking; In the same study, hard prompts saw a
decrease in idea quality and quantity. Hard prompts being almost
ready-made solutions and suggestions. The reasoning is that the
participants allocate brain power for evaluation and analysis, instead of
getting new ideas. In short, they started judging ideas, instead of
generating ideas.
4. Avoid fixating; A common problem any creative practitioner will have
encountered. In 2014 Youman’s studies found three forms of fixation in
creativity: Unconscious adherence, Conscious blocking and Intentional
resistance. Common for the three, is that the practitioner’s locking on
to particular patterns, not breaking them or moving beyond certain
ideas or notions. The remedies for each include some version of
inspiration from external sources.
This concludes this article on the tyranny of collaborative ideation. I hope the
scientific evidence, and my arguments and reasoning have swayed you
towards solo ideation. ‘Stay tuned for more.
