Brainstorming doesn’t work – four exercises to flex your creativity

Brainstorming is a waste of time and nearly always fails to result in good ideas. It is also outdated and ineffective.

The term was introduced more than 50 years ago in Applied Imagination, a book by Alex Osborn (an advertising executive), which was published in 1953. It was a cutting-edge idea at the time. It thrived in offices where to-do lists were chalked on the blackboard in the director’s office.

The world of work has changed, and the office chalkboard is long gone – but, staggeringly, we’re still stuck with brainstorming as the go-to process to help us identify new ideas for our business.

Just five years after the process was developed, investigations proved the ineffectiveness of brainstorming. In 1958 Yale University ran a study to test brainstorming. Male undergraduates were divided into groups and given a number of creative puzzles. They were told that to solve the problems they must follow Osborn’s guidelines for brainstorming.

To provide a control group, the same number of male students were given the same puzzles and told to work alone. The students working on their own came up with around twice the number of ideas and their ideas were found to be more “feasible” and “effective” by the judges.

In 2012, Keith Sawyer, a psychologist from Washington University, summarised the findings on brainstorming: “Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.”

Let’s take a look at some of the brainstorming rules that have developed over time:

There are no dumb ideas, so encourage wild and exaggerated thinking

There are plenty of dumb ideas. When you encourage this type of thinking you end up with outcomes that are impractical and irrelevant.

Quantity counts at this stage, not quality

No it doesn’t. Quality is always important. Fewer ideas of better quality will always be of more value than a lot of useless ideas.

Build on other people’s ideas

Sometimes useful, but often it can lead you to bulk up a bad idea instead of coming up with something better.

Every person and every idea has equal worth

No, everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute something useful, and should be given the same amount of time to do so. But not all ideas will be of the same quality.

Only one person talking at a time

When you’re trying to come up with ideas yourself, do you find it useful to be listening to someone else’s at the same time? Brainstorming rules stipulate that there should only be one person talking at a time, but also that there’s always someone talking. Your best ideas frequently come when you have moments of silence.

If you leave these rules behind, here’s an alternative approach:

First, work out the question you’re trying to answer

It should be one that when answered well could deliver significant benefit, and a clear plan, for your business. The scope of the question should be at a realistic level for the size of your business. Initially, don’t try to think how it can be answered – just if it can be practically answered.

Be proactive

Don’t gaze into space hoping for a serendipitous thought to pop into your head – it rarely happens. There are many creative thinking tools online, so try several and find the ones that work best for you. Some people find that jotting down ideas on pen and paper is the easiest and most effective route for creative thinking.

Give yourself thinking time

You know when you come up with the best ideas; when you feel most energised and creative – so create a ritual around this. A local coffee shop is a good place to allocate blocks of 20-30 minutes for quality thinking. During these times, focus solely on the question and push all the other issues to one side.

Keep revisiting your question

Ever had an idea pop into your head from nowhere? That was because you had the question percolating in your mind and your subconscious was working on it in the background. A great killer question places an issue deep within your mind, and because you repeatedly return to it over several days or weeks this keeps your subconscious mind active on the subject.

Brainstorming assumes thinking is a team sport, but it isn’t. Because teams don’t think – individuals do. Dedicate time for solo thinking in an environment, and at a time, that’s most effective for you – and encourage your team to do the same.

Chris Thomason is managing director of Sprint for Growth. His book, The Idea Generator: 15 Clever Thinking Tools to Create Winning Ideas Quickly – is being published in October.

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