
"Brainstorming is a terrible way to generate good ideas" - gphilip
http://www.improvides.com/2014/03/24/creativity-team-sport-interview-vincent-walsh-prof-neuroscience-ucl/
======
gphilip
Interview with Prof Vincent Walsh of UCL, one of the world’s preeminent
cognitive neuroscientists. Some interesting points from the interview:

1\. You’re only _aware_ of less than 1% of your brain activity, and most
creativity happens in the other 99%.

2\. If you want to stimulate an idea, you need to give your brain time to go
“off-line”.

3\. Creativity is not a team sport, and brainstorming is a terrible way to
generate good ideas.

4\. Execution of ideas is more important than generation, _and previous
failure helps this_.

5\. There are no miracle exercises / processes / drugs / brain implants to
“turn on creativity” in areas where it didn’t previously exist.

6\. _However_ , creativity can be improved by giving people the right
exercises, knowledge, experiences and environment.

~~~
stefanix
All of the above is easy to understand when you think of creativity as
unconscious problem solving.

Also John Cleese has a great talk about it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ)

~~~
exodust
Yeah I dunno, it's a long video.

Is there a transcript? I can't listen to Cleese for more than the average
length of a comedy sketch.

As for creativity not being a team sport, and brainstorming being "terrible",
I disagree. Creative ideas need organised foundations, and brainstorming can
solve problems for a team to action and expand creative ideas. The band
jamming in the garage, is their musical brainstorming so terrible?

"Creativity" is such a loose word. As for what it even is, I lean towards the
theory I read somewhere of it being about "discovery" rather than bringing
something new into the world. Creativity is the act of discovering what was
already there. Works for me until I change my mind.

~~~
collyw
My experience of brainstorming is that everyone comes up with a crap idea (a
couple of people will probably come up with the same idea).

I can see why some are crap, and can't see why some others are. I have an OK
idea, I can see is better than the crap ones. The loud people get hooked on
one of the crap ideas and don't listen / or bother to comprehend why your idea
may be better, they are too busy elaborating on of their crap one.

My best ideas come at unusual times. Staring into space. Or Riding my bike.
Crap idea wins.

------
briantakita
I have grown as a programmer since I started working from home with real
autonomy. The software created has, by far, been my best. I'm also
productively creating features, architecting the system, etc. It feels great!

I'm healthier. I eat better. I exercise regularly. I'm able to take naps when
I need one. I can meditate or zone out as needed. I feel focused.

There's less need to appease peers on a day to day basis. I can have streams
of thought without having to communicate them. I can then reflect on these
thoughts & communicate a coherent story when I am ready.

------
DigitalSea
​I think sometimes you can strike gold with a good brainstorming session, but
it is a rare occurrence. But I do agree forcing out ideas without much thought
and in usually limited amounts of time can result in some horribly uncreative
ideas.

You can't force an idea, they just come and history has proven you come up
with creative solutions and ideas to things when you try and fail, sometimes
hundreds and thousands of times.

Do you think Thomas Edison invented the light-bulb right away? He failed
multiple times, he didn't succeed the first time he created something. In-
fact, I am fairly certain although nobody knows the exact figure, but it was
over 1000 attempts. The difference between a good idea and a bad one is
experimentation and the execution of said idea.

Once you have the initial idea, it never hurts to have a post-idea brainstorm
to help further refine the idea. Conception should be natural, but getting
multiple people involved to refine the core idea I think is still a great way
to help a great idea even better as you get more than one angle you should
approach it from. Don't be confused here, this is a different kind of
brainstorm, not an ideation brainstorm like the article touches upon.

Great article that I think some companies who insist on brainstorming should
read before they decide to pull an all day brainstorming session that will
ultimately result in most likely nothing substantial or worthwhile.

~~~
Ygg2
Thomas Edison didn't invent lightbulb, per se. He improved existing designs to
make it usable.

~~~
zimpenfish
He did a lot of "improving" "existing designs". Although nowadays we call it
"being a filthy thieving bastard".

~~~
Ygg2
Basically he was a more dastardly Steve Jobs.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
No, just a regular Steve Jobs.

~~~
Ygg2
I'll be honest, I said dastardly merely because I see Thomas Alva Edison
twirling his mustache.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
He had a mustache? I learn something all the time on HN :)

Indeed Alva was a first-class bastard. But that's what it took to be
successful in the gilded age I guess.

~~~
Ygg2
No, I took some artistic liberties. But he should have :P

------
duncanawoods
If you generalise the whole world of ideas and problem solving to the word
"creativity" then I have no idea what conclusions you can make. There are a
great many types of idea generation to solve unrelated classes of problem.
Brain-storming is most definitely a valuable tool for some but not all
situations.

i) discover what colleagues know about the issues

ii) widen options beyond what you are immediately aware

iii) make connections between different topics

iv) experience explaining and talking about a problem

v) get a feel of how emotionally invested colleagues are in particular
decisions

vi) spot bogus assumptions and false premises

etc.

What's the alternative suggestion, nobody works together? This type of article
plays to the seductive developer trap that you can to put your head down and
work on problems in isolation. Its fun and optimal for small projects but it
doesn't scale. You can only build garden sheds, you will never build
cathedrals.

Whiteboards rock.

~~~
vortmeester
All of your points are sound. But notice what's not on your list: generating
new ideas, the ostensible goal of many brainstorming sessions.

From what I've read elsewhere, the "alternative suggestion" that you asked for
is actually a two step process:

(1) Everyone, working alone, comes up with as many new ideas as they can,
writing them down. It's best if you write down some crazy ones too.

(2) Everyone comes together to discuss all the ideas on all the lists, in a
more classic brainstorming format. Here is where your points apply.

The reason for doing it this way is that people universally self censor in
groups, often without knowing it, and don't contribute ideas that are too far
outside the previous consensus. By taking off the immediate social pressure
during ideation, you get a wider range of ideas that is more likely to contain
useful new ones.

Edit: I'd forgotten where I got this, until another comment mentioned Quiet by
Susan Cain.

------
axefrog
I actually find brainstorming a great way to refine existing ideas I've come
up with but for which I don't have a clear picture of the details. Granted,
it's something I'll do by myself and come back to it over time until I feel
like I finally have clarity of purpose and implementation, but it is still a
case of sitting there just dumping out a huge bullet point list of ideas and
refinements as I think about the idea. Not only that, but often it also helps
me expand the idea in directions I hadn't thought of, and sometimes pivot the
idea into something even better.

~~~
gphilip
The professor's point is about group brainstorming, not individual
brainstorming. Indeed, what he says in the context of brainstorming (see
around 13:00 in the interview) supports individual intellectual effort as a
better way to come up with good ideas.

------
Bpal
My 2 cents on the topic would be: it takes time for the brain to find a
creative solution to tackle the problem, so a person has got to give a thought
some time, kind of let it run on the background on its own. I've used this
technique a lot of times in my life. If I can't remember where I've put
something, I don't try to find it asap. I try to distract myself from the task
by anything like reading news, or making a cup of tea or doing some exercises,
anything really. It takes considerably less efforts to find the thing or the
right solution when I don't feel that it's life or death important. And after
the thing or the solution is found, it's really worth of sharing your thought
with people as they might help you see some weak sides of the way you are
about to take and help with peices of advice. So all in all, the best approach
imho is giving a problem some time, no rush, no panic, and then share ideas
with people to get the most of it.

------
michaelwww
Sh*t ads swoop in while reading, which always in my mind degrades the
trustworthiness of the content and causes me to look for an escape out.

~~~
gagege
Also, when you hover over the 'X' on the ad, the black 'x' swoops away and is
replaced with a red 'x'. Ridiculous.

~~~
michaelwww
Ain't nobody got time for dat! Look you either got time to tell me something
or sell me something but not both.

------
nnq
I think a better process than brainstorming would be "idea brewing" (made up
future-buzz-word :) ):

1\. Making the concoction: tell people about the problem they need to solve
and about where to find good infos on it (and hopefully also spark their
interest about the problem, otherwise it's pointless), let's say at the start
of the week...

2\. Brew: just leave people alone for, let's say, a week, so ideas can
"ferment" in their heads...

4\. Distill: meet and talk with people, have them present and discuss ideas
they had and select ("distill") the ones that can be really good, let's say at
the end of the week.

...now, I've never tried the process in a formal enough manner to have proof
that it works better than anything, else, but according to this guy's theory
it should.

(now, if you use up the term "idea brewing" a bestseller buzzword-creating
management or self-help book, please be a nice chap and give me some credit
for it)

------
bildung
Using brainstorming in a business context is also problematic from a social
psychological point of view: For brainstorming to work as planned (collecting
lots of different ideas, every idea including the quirky ones count are valid
at this stage, ideas only get filtered after the brainstorming session ends),
certain criteria have to be met by the group doing the session. If the boss or
a potentially competing colleague is around, most people won't brainstorm
freely, even though the moderator says it's ok to get crazy. For brainstorming
to work as intended the group has to be cooperative and without hierarchies
(really without, not startuppy without). Otherwise, people will fear the
criticism of the others and only speak about the too-dull-to-fail ideas.

~~~
duncanawoods
You can have hierarchy within an effective team. Its not mutually exclusive in
the same way that lack of hierarchy guarantees nothing.

Group problem-solving can reveal team problems and help resolve them. If your
team is not working well together, you need to fix it ASAP and not avoid the
situations where it comes to the fore.

~~~
bildung
> You can have hierarchy within an effective team.

Absolutely! I was talking specifically about hierarchiy affecting the
brainstoring method.

> Group problem-solving can reveal team problems and help resolve them. If
> your team is not working well together, you need to fix it ASAP and not
> avoid the situations where it comes to the fore.

I have the suspicion we are talking about different things here (me not
speaking English natively could also be reason). With brainstorming I meant
the specific didactic method used to generate a collection of ideas with as
much breadth as possible, specifically including quirky and unusual ideas for
a specific class of open questions like finding a new product idea or a name
for a new project. This method has a defined process and was subject to a few
paedaogical studies.

I think what you have in mind is more like collectively trying to solve a
specific engineering problem. In a setting like that many aspects of
brainstorming methods do not apply, particularly because the problem to be
solved is more closed in nature and has a specific class of right solutions.

(edit: formatting)

------
midas007
Try out concepts as quickly and cheaply as possible. It's hard to know what
works without real experiments, because idea guys think they've found the
Fountain of Youth when they've just inspired people with charismatic snakeoil.
Try something, anything already.

------
tonyblundell
"Brainstorming sessions and equivalent ideation techniques like Creative
Problem Solving have an ever-growing body of evidence showing them to be an
ineffective way to generate good ideas."

Any links?

~~~
Flenser
Not sure if this is what you're looking for but I just found it an interesting
read:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all)

------
quarterwave
Does cathedral v. bazaar also apply to creativity?

Cathedral creativity = "divine spark" of the individual.

Bazaar = small/random steps shaped by the evolutionary processes of fork,
commit, & pull.

------
3rd3
I wonder how brainstorming in a collaborative text editor compares to real-
life group brainstorming. In my experience using an EtherPad for brainstorming
can be very fruitful because there is an element of both synchronous and
asynchronous communitation. All parties can write down their ideas down
simultaneously and one can comment very quickly and nonchalantly to other
ideas at the same time.

------
jahaja
What I think often happens in a culture where group brainstorming is common is
that the few meeting specialist, often the gregarious managers, is the ones
leading the meetings and is in the end labeled as the creative ones. In the
end people will start to expect that these people will make the suggestions
and the others will just give feedback.

------
danieltillett
I have found that brainstorming is great for getting a really good handle on
the problem. Once I know exactly what the problem is with all the associated
issues then I can start to think about the best solution. Often I just let the
problem ferment in the background and the solution pops up when I am doing
something unrelated.

------
bthornbury
I had always noticed that I never came up with any good ideas during a
brainstorm session. I also worried that this made me seem unintelligent to my
peers so I would spend a lot of time before or after the session creating and
refining my ideas to compensate.

I'm glad to know I've been going about it effectively.

------
mercer
What fascinates me is that I learned about the ineffectiveness (in general) of
brainstorming back in my first year of Communication Science, which was at
least six years ago, and yet everyone around me still brainstorms all the
time.

Why do businesses not take this research to heart?

------
coldcode
Counter example: [http://www.slashfilm.com/trivia-cafe-pixar-bugs-life-
monster...](http://www.slashfilm.com/trivia-cafe-pixar-bugs-life-monsters-
finding-nemo-walle-shuts/)

------
NAFV_P
I thought this would be a (common) business oriented (language) presentation,
so I was quite surprised (relieved).

Recently had a great idea regarding binary search trees, which came to me
while felling a (real) tree, odd.

------
Aloha
Brainstorming is where the initial kernel of good ideas comes from though, you
take something from person A/B/C and combine it with your own - and that
synergy is the source of good ideas.

------
ibstudios
If people did not have egos then brainstorming would work fine.

I find it is hard to be creative on the spot. I do like meetings that discuss
a range of preconceived ideas.

------
colmanw
I disagree with this. I've found that structured brainstorming and
collaboration always yield better ideas and results than one person working
solo.

~~~
gjm11
That's the wrong comparison. You want to compare structured brainstorming
against _all the people who would have been in the brainstorm_ working solo.

Otherwise, all you're finding is that N people are more effective than 1
person. That'll often be true; the question is how to make the best use of
those N people, and the claim being made here is that brainstorming is worse
than having them work mostly independently.

------
joerich
I think brainstorming has demonstrated that is useful, I believe in teamwork.
The key is not the brainstorming but the brainstormers or teamworkers

------
jsemrau
Brainstorming ins business is like jamming in music. Teams with great synergy
can create great results.

------
briantakita
"What's the value of trashing your talk"

It also causes your idea to evolve or die.

------
teemo_cute
I read the book Quiet by Susan Cain. Brainstorming was likened to as the 'New
Group Think' in that book.

The three reasons stated for the inefficiency of brainstorming are:

(1) Production blocking (Only one person can talk at a time while others
listen. Think of a single entry queue.)

(2) Evaluation apprehension (Some (or most) people hesitate in presenting
their idea because it might be critiqued or ridiculed.)

(3) Social Loafing (There are times when members of a group will slack-off
because they know other members will take over the work.)

