BQF Innovation

There is an interesting post on some research on Brainstorming here on the Innovation Tools site.  Josh Hyatt of the Sloan Management Review discusses some research by Karan Girotra, a professor at INSEAD, and Christian Terwiesh and Karl T. Ulrich, both professors at the University of Pennsylvania.

Two types of groups generated ideas. One followed a traditional model, assembling a group - in this case, students studying product design - and having them come up with appropriate product ideas for dorm rooms. They worked solely in a group. The other group took a hybrid approach: Those students worked on ideas by themselves before coming together to share their thinking.

Which technique yielded the best ideas?  Strictly speaking, the traditional brainstorming groups came up with the very best ideas. They also came up with the very worst ones. In other words, their results’ quality varied much more than did the hybrid group’s results. The hybrid group produced more ideas that were, on average, of higher quality.  But, as Girotra notes, “when it comes to innovation, the extremes are what matter - not the norm and not the average.”  So, if both groups work for the same amount of time, the traditional brainstorming team “significantly outperforms” the hybrid group when it comes to producing the best ideas, according to the authors.

This finding contradicts most existing literature on the subject, which tends to conclude that while working in teams is more satisfying, working alone generates the most effective ideas.  But “what we found makes sense, since the most successful creative firms do mostly use team processes for brainstorming,” Terwiesch says. “We just brought some new thinking to the subject.”

Full article on Innovation Tools.

Paul Sloane

If you hold a brainstorm meeting and generate 90 ideas then the chances are that you whittle those down to a dozen promising ideas and then action the two or three best.  What happens to the other promising ideas that don’t make it onto the to-do list?  Ideally you should capture them in a database of good ideas and then take a look through that list from time to time. 

Many great ideas are cast aside because the time is not right for them.  An energy saving initiative which is not justifiable when oil is $50 a barrel can be a real winner when oil is $150 a barrel.  The post-it note glue that did not stick was an invention that had to wait until Art Fry found a use for it.

Many of the ideas that you need for new products or services may have surfaced in earlier meetings and been shelved for all sorts of reasons.  Don’t waste all the creativity that goes into idea generation.  Recycle and re-use ideas.  When you need some inspiration just browse through your database of ideas that were promising but not actioned.  The solution you need may be sitting in there now.

Paul Sloane