

Pmarca: Why brainstorming is a bad idea - abstractbill
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/quote-of-the--3.html

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garbowza
Edward de Bono, the so-called grandfather of creativity, describes this
approach in his groundbreaking book "Serious Creativity."

Basically you always want to generate ideas separately, then expand on them in
a group. The reason is that a group approach from the start will squash
somewhat crazy concepts before sufficient time has been put into making them
practical. As a result, the most creative ideas are shot down before they are
given a chance to be refined.

Instead, if you generate ideas on your own you can spend more time on a half-
baked concept in order to round out its flaws. Then once its ready, other
people can help provide different perspectives on the idea without shooting it
down outright.

Therefore I don't see this article as simply advocating a single founder
approach. However, co-founders should harden their new ideas on their own
before proposing them to each other for critique.

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staunch
What pmarca is ignoring is that most people won't even try to come up with
ideas by themselves. It's pretty tough to spend hours by yourself
brainstorming on one topic. When you have someone (even a manikin) as
resistance it can really draw out your best ideas. Nothing makes me come up
with a clever idea quicker than someone suggesting that there's no solution to
a problem. The real world difference between brainstorming as a group and as
an individual might be the difference between some and zero.

_What these groups of co-founders do together is more complicated than just
sitting down and trying to think of ideas. I suspect the most productive setup
is a kind of together-alone-together sandwich. Together you talk about some
hard problem, probably getting nowhere. Then, the next morning, one of you has
an idea in the shower about how to solve it. He runs eagerly to to tell the
others, and together they work out the kinks._ \-- Ideas for Startups

~~~
natrius
"What pmarca is ignoring is that most people won't even try to come up with
ideas by themselves."

All you have to do is tell each other that you're going to meet to discuss the
ideas that you've thought up in three hours. The social disincentive of
looking pretty lame if you show up with nothing is enough to get people to do
it. He's not saying a group of one is better, but the combined individual
efforts of a group are greater than when they all think about things together.

~~~
staunch
In my experience most people would show up with some basic ideas and then rely
on the group interaction to draw out the rest. The test and the results are
flawed because they don't match the real world at all.

Of course you don't do just one or the other because the together/alone
pattern repeats itself and there's an opportunity to present new ideas each
time the group meets.

I think pmarca's point was that group brainstorming isn't a valuable thing to
do. That's not true from my experience. I am a huge fan of avoiding feel-good
wishy-washy brainstorming though.

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ajju
The article mistakes more ideas for better ideas. The benefit of working in a
good group is not that you get more ideas, but that you take the ideas that
you get, prune the bad ones and combine the good ones to come up with the
'best' idea.

If 'mutual respect' or 'fear of looking stupid' gets in the way of suggesting
something while working in a group (as it quite often does) then you need to
work on overcoming that fear (individually) and improving your rapport (as a
group)

Now if they could repeat the study after having predetermined some criteria to
judge the 'best' solution to a problem, my hunch is that they would find that
a group with a good rapport (not a bunch of strangers put together) would come
up with the better solution (all other things - e.g. familiarity with the
problem set, problem solving skills etc being equal between groups). But yeah,
it's just a hunch.

~~~
koolmoe
"The article mistakes more ideas for better ideas."

Most often, the immediate goal of brainstorming is to come up with as many
ideas as possible. Leaders of brainstorming sessions often start by
encouraging wild ideas and discouraging the "pruning" that you speak of. In
that sense, the number of ideas generated is a logical measuring stick.

The goal is usually to hit an outlier, not come out with the best solution on
average. If that is the case, it's better to have more ideas, even if the
median idea is worse than the median idea generated by a group.

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palish
_"In 1958... psychologists let groups of four people brainstorm about the
practical benefits or difficulties that would arise if everyone had an extra
thumb on each hand after next year."_

Wait.. What?

The power of brainstorming is apparent when two people are thinking about
something _they will both use_. If it's directly useful to both of them then
two heads are about four times better than one, if not closer to ten times
better.

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arasakik
I completely agree - personally, I find brainstorming ideas by myself and then
bouncing off of other people in a group later on seems to be the most
effective.

Question for you guys: What is your ideal environment for brainstorming ideas
alone? I've found that taking 15 or 30 minutes of quiet time to
reflect/brainstorm before going to bed seems to generate the most high-quality
ideas, imo.

~~~
staunch
Straight brainstorming I think the shower and before bed work the best for me.

A more deliberate technique that works for me is having people say "It would
be neat if X existed -- but that's not possible." intentionally as a kind of
idea challenge game.

The best ideas I've had were solutions to real-world problems or opportunities
I noticed while doing real work.

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boris
If we believe this to be a general rule, then a single founder will have about
as many ideas as two brainstorming co-founders.

~~~
koolmoe
I don't think the problem with single founders is about generating ideas. It's
about not having someone to pick you up when you're discouraged, multiply your
enthusiasm, and turn you back around when you've fallen in love with a bad
idea.

Either that, or it's just that misery loves company. ;-)

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donna
Read this and thought it would add to the discussion: Who's Minding the Mind?
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html?em&ex=1186027200&en=52892c94ac29ebde&ei=5087%0A)

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ivankirigin
I'd be more confident in the results if there were some measure of the
individuals and their skill sets. Smarter people can probably always have more
ideas than a group of less intelligent people.

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edw519
Wow! What a great post! Starting right now, I will STOP FEELING GUILTY about
being a single founder. I have read and re-read all of the negative single-
founder propaganda here and other places. I was a little concerned, but
somehow, deep inside, I knew better. Over the years, I have come up with
thousands of fantastic ideas, sometimes with others, but almost always by
myself. And implemented them with accolades.

For me, this article confirms what I already suspected. I don't need a co-
founder to be creative and productive. It would be nice, but not necessary.
You don't have to give up equity just to have a little give and take. A
customer, a friend, even a stranger will do. My mind is my "ruby slippers".
I've had everything I really need all along.

And, staunch, it is not my experience that "most people won't even try to come
up with ideas by themselves". Then again, maybe I'm not "most people". There
are so many wrongs and so many opportunities in our field, it doesn't take
much to get the juices flowing. Just a little customer interaction or 5
minutes on a bad app, and I have 10 ideas to run with. Which reminds me...back
to work.

~~~
webwright
"Wow! What a great post! Starting right now, I will STOP FEELING GUILTY about
being a single founder. "

You should only stop feeling guilty if you think that a co-founder is only
good for a source of ideas. A co-founder isn't an idea guy (tho they should
have ideas). They are someone who:

-has skills you don't have. -will motivate you. -will make your good ideas better -will produce ideas that you won't

You might be an exception to the rule, but IMHO it's pretty amazing hubris to
think that you have all of the ingredients necessary for a successful startup.

