Brainstorming Teams Kill Breakthrough Ideas

Brainstorming teams produce fewer ideas and ideas of less novelty than the sum of ideas created by the same number of individuals working alone (Diehl, M., and W. Stroebe).

Cross-fertilization of group ideas is more likely to be affected by free riding and homophily (the tendency for individuals to like people that are perceived as being similar to themselves). Almost every team suffer from some degree of groupthink.

According to Melissa A. Schilling, there are 3 main reasons that groups are less creative than working solo:

1. Fear of judgment: A series of study by professors M.Diehl, W.Stroebe, B.Nijstad, P.Pauhus and others found that people self-censor many of their creative ideas in group brainstorming sessions for fear of being judged by others. As Isaac Asimov said: "as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The presence of others can only inhibit this process since creation is embarrassing...".
2. Production Blocking: Scientists were able to demonstrate that the process of attending to another person's ideas hijacks the idea generation process of the listeners. The research was conducted by separating individuals into rooms where they would speak their ideas into a microphone when lights indicated it was their turn. In some of the rooms, the individuals could hear the contributions of others, and in some, they couldn't. This study resulted in big creativity losses: being required to wait to give ideas caused people to submit far fewer ideas, and even fewer if they could hear others' ideas. Usually in brainstorming groups, the process of sharing ideas is not organized in turns and the most outgoing people in the group will dominate the idea submission while quieter people or more introverted ones will submit fewer and less novel ideas.
3. Feasibility trumps originality: Another series of studies shows that teams are not just bad for idea generation; they even impair idea selection. When groups rank their "best" ideas, they chose the ones that are less original and more feasible than the average of the ideas produced.

What is the best environment to elicit breakthrough ideas?

Spending time alone is extremely valuable for creativity, solitude can help to develop our own beliefs and develop a self-concept that is less structured by the opinions of others. Moreover, research on breakthrough innovators shows that many spent a lot of time alone, investing in self-education. Elon Musk for example often read 10 hours a day, and has his brother Kimbal recalled, "if it was the weekend he could go through two books in a day".

Another suitable path can be the one followed by Google and 3M with employees in creative roles, which consists in giving a significant amount of working time and financial resources to pursue products of their own creation. Google Gmail, Google News, 3M's post-it notes and many other products were developed this way.

So loud each tongue, so empty was each head, So much they talked, so very little said. (Churchill, 1761)

Stronger productivity loss was demonstrated in the context of (a) larger groups, (b) experimenter presence, (c) tape-recorded vocalization of contributions (vs. writing of contributions), and (d) in comparison to a nominal group of truly Alone individuals (vs. a nominal group of Together individuals). These patterns are (a) highly consistent with predictions derived from social-psychological explanatory mechanisms, and (b) only marginally consistent with procedural explanatory mechanisms, and (c) highly inconsistent with economic explanatory mechanisms.

Adapted from Schilling, M.A. "Why brainstorming Teams Kill Breakthrough Ideas", Strategic Management of Technological Innovation, MCGrawHill, 6th edition, (2019): 281-282.