Is Brainstorming a Drug?
Posted: March 13th, 2009 in Solution Generation
Brainstorming is a Drug
In Innovation processes (especially new product and service development), developing good solutions for consumer problems plays a critical role. Often, companies treat brainstorming as their entire solution generation process, where it should ideally play only a small role, if any. Some new scientific findings help illustrate why brainstorming might be so popular despite it’s lack of efficacy.
Researchers at Harvard and Princeton recently found evidence that rapid thinking produces an artificially elevated mood. Interestingly, the “rapid thinking” in the experiments looks a lot like what we in the innovation business call brainstorming.
In one segment of the experiments, researchers had participants generate as many problem-solving ideas as possible, as quickly as possible, for 10 minutes. “Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful.” Link
Reading this report led me to reflect on the difference between brainstorming and the type of idea generation that can be a useful part of the innovation process.
In most people’s minds, brainstorming has a very unconstrained and random quality, which can sometimes help stimulate creativity. That kind of brainstorming can provide some building blocks for real solutions, and is sometimes useful as a warm-up to the real task of generating truly useful concepts. Unfortunately all too often it’s seen as both the beginning and end of solution generation.
There are good and bad ways to generate solutions. The bad way is to generate as many ideas as you can, as fast as you can, with no regard for practicality And, yes, it can be a lot of fun.
In the mind of an innovator, good solution generation is still creative, and it doesn’t have to be slow-paced, but it does have to take customer needs and project requirements as the foundation for all ideas generated. Thinking outside the box is just fine, as long as the ultimate goal is to meet a real, identified customer need. When you put constraints on your ideation activity, it might not act as a mood-booster, but it can be infinitely more productive.
Science tells us that brainstorming feels good – it elevates mood measurably. It can be a good way to lubricate mental gears and get a solution generation session going. In the innovation process, an approach that churns out a large volume of ideas doesn’t necessarily mean there will be many good ones, or even that rare diamond in the rough. The results of this study should serve as a warning – brainstorming may deliver a quick high, but rigorous solution generation is the way to avoid an innovation hangover.