Debate: How to Brainstorm Effectively

In my recent post Susan Cain: The pow­er of intro­verts, I men­tioned that I agreed with Cain’s view on brain­storm­ing — that it is ben­e­fi­cial to allow par­tic­i­pants to brain­storm on their own before dis­cussing ideas in a group set­ting. Then last week I came across more arti­cles dis­cussing the pro­ce­dure of brain­storm­ing.

• Inno­va­tion Is About Argu­ing, Not Brain­storm­ing. Here’s How To Argue Pro­duc­tive­ly. – writ­ten by Daniel Sobol from Con­tin­u­um, post­ed on Co.Design
  

  “Delib­er­a­tive dis­course is not just argu­ing for argument’s sake. Argu­ment is pro­duc­tive for us because every­one knows that we’re work­ing toward a shared goal. The state­ment of pur­pose estab­lish­es the rules: It reminds us that we are work­ing togeth­er to move the ball down the field. As much as we may argue and dis­agree, any­thing that hap­pens in the room counts toward our shared goal. This enables us to argue and dis­cuss with­out hurt­ing one anoth­er.”

  This is impor­tant because I’ve def­i­nite­ly been in brain­storm­ing ses­sions where some peo­ple took things way off top­ic and at the end of the day we made lit­tle progress.

• The Brain­storm­ing Process Is B.S. But Can We Rework It? – writ­ten by Cliff Kuang, found­ing edi­tor of Co.Design
  

  “For one, the brain­storm­ing might work bet­ter if it focused not on find­ing solu­tions, but rather iden­ti­fy­ing prob­lems. What if, dur­ing a brain­storm­ing ses­sion, peo­ple weren’t asked to sim­ply throw out ideas, but rather prob­lems as well? Grant­ed, you’ve still got the annoy­ing prob­lem of group­think. But the fact is that peo­ple are usu­al­ly bet­ter at find­ing fault than they are at find­ing answers. Prop­er­ly har­nessed, that could be a good thing.”

  This is true, but once the prob­lems are iden­ti­fied we still need solu­tions. Maybe that is where indi­vid­ual think­ing can come into play before regroup­ing to dis­cuss ideas.

• Group­think: The brain­storm­ing myth – writ­ten by Jon­ah Lehrer, post­ed on The New York­er
  

  “The under­ly­ing assump­tion of brain­storm­ing is that if peo­ple are scared of say­ing the wrong thing, they’ll end up say­ing noth­ing at all. The appeal of this idea is obvi­ous: it’s always nice to be sat­u­rat­ed in pos­i­tive feed­back. Typ­i­cal­ly, par­tic­i­pants leave a brain­storm­ing ses­sion proud of their con­tri­bu­tion. The white­board has been filled with free asso­ci­a­tions. Brain­storm­ing seems like an ide­al tech­nique, a feel-good way to boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. But there is a prob­lem with brain­storm­ing. It doesn’t work.”

• The Rise of the New Group­think – writ­ten by Susan Cain, post­ed on The New Times
  

  “Soli­tude has long been asso­ci­at­ed with cre­ativ­i­ty and tran­scen­dence. Cul­tur­al­ly, we’re often so daz­zled by charis­ma that we over­look the qui­et part of the cre­ative process.”

  “I’m not sug­gest­ing that we abol­ish team­work. Indeed, recent stud­ies sug­gest that influ­en­tial aca­d­e­m­ic work is increas­ing­ly con­duct­ed by teams rather than by indi­vid­u­als. (Although teams whose mem­bers col­lab­o­rate remote­ly, from sep­a­rate uni­ver­si­ties, appear to be the most influ­en­tial of all.) The prob­lems we face in sci­ence, eco­nom­ics and many oth­er fields are more com­plex than ever before, and we’ll need to stand on one another’s shoul­ders if we can pos­si­bly hope to solve them. But even if the prob­lems are dif­fer­ent, human nature remains the same. And most humans have two con­tra­dic­to­ry impuls­es: we love and need one anoth­er, yet we crave pri­va­cy and auton­o­my. To har­ness the ener­gy that fuels both these dri­ves, we need to move beyond the New Group­think and embrace a more nuanced approach to cre­ativ­i­ty and learn­ing. Our offices should encour­age casu­al, cafe-style inter­ac­tions, but allow peo­ple to dis­ap­pear into per­son­al­ized, pri­vate spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach chil­dren to work with oth­ers, but also to work on their own for sus­tained peri­ods of time. And we must rec­og­nize that intro­verts need extra qui­et and pri­va­cy to do their best work.”

So, what do you think effec­tive brain­storm­ing looks like?