Group Brainstorming is fun....but it kills ideas!
Much still has to be learned about the (Fuzzy) front end of innovation:
Where do good ideas come from? How do you gather information from users? How do you evaluate alternative ideas?
Not group brainstorming or focus groups -- they kill
Techniques that have been rigorously researched for over 50 years are the use of group brainstorming and user focus groups to generate and evaluate ideas. The evidence of these studies is consistent and conclusive.
Group methods (compared to individual idea generation such as individual brainstorming):
- Produce significantly fewer ideas
- Generate ideas of lower average quality
- Produce fewer of the very best ideas, and
- In addition, groups are not effective at evaluating or ranking generated ideas.
Why then are focus groups and group brainstorming still employed to generate ideas from users? Are charlatans ignoring the research and overselling their expert skills at running such groups?
Maybe, but there is more to it than that: these group processes create an illusion of effectiveness to everyone involved.
Group Brainstorming and Focus Groups are FUN
Participants enjoy the group brainstorming process, and believe:
- that they are personally responsible for most of the ideas produced,
- that the group was creative and very effective,
- in and are committed to the ideas generated.
There is value to an organization of this positive illusion: it is often hard to sell innovation or new ideas to an organization - this group buy-in can help innovations go forward.
How to combine the bad and the good?
Again: Group participants don't come up with the best ideas but they believe in the ones they do come up with...
Moderators already employ techniques to help overcome group idea-cide: for example it is common to have participants individually brainstorm and write down their ideas before starting a group ideation effort.
If I were leading a group brainstorming or focus group for innovative ideas I would start with individual brainstorming, collect all the individual ideas, and then have the group brainstorming session. While collecting the group ideas I would gradually introduce the individual ideas to the group, so it those ideas can also be seen as part of the group process.
[I am putting off the question of how to evaluate the ideas for another day... research also indicates that groups do a bad job at evaluation...
This is an edited version of a post from Service Cocreation. Other posts on that site discussing idea-cide from group efforts include:
- Brainstorming groups still kill ideas
- Confessions of a focus group moderator
- Expert moderators and Focus Groups
I authored an article in the leading product innovation academic journal, the Journal of Product Innovation Management, on problems of group idea generation. The article is titled "Flawed Tools: The Efficacy of Group Research Methods to Generate Customer Ideas." The link embedded in the title connects to an abstract.
Would anyone like to share a tactic for dealing with the group idea generation problem?
Associate Professor at Thunderbird/ASU, Leadership Development Educator
9yI'm late to the party here, but this is exactly the issue I was seeing with leadership development clients. Jumping to brainstorming was killing ideas. We couldn't find a good solution for remote teams, so we built one from scratch. As Gary suggests, it's a matter of combining approaches. In our case, we combined individual brainwriting and group collaboration in a single app. It's been a labor of love to help solve the group idea generation problem. You can learn more here. http://youtu.be/phAev-FekGo
Newly Retired Professor at Radford University
9yThe evidence that group brainstorming is inferior to individual idea generation comprises studies from the 50s, 60s, 70s... through the present. Modern idea generation techniques use a combination of tools to work around the problems of group brainstorming.
Founder at Innovation Focus Inc; Facilitating New Product Discovery
9yThe ideation method suggested is a variation on Nominal Group Technique integrated with another Techniques of Structured Problem Solving (See book by this name by the late great Arthur Van Gundy.) The interpretation that "brainstorming does not work" is rooted in several small academic studies published in the social sciences and done in the 1970's, 80's and early 90's using techniques originating in the 1930's. This has been broadly replayed in the popular press and should be challenged. Brianstorming today is a broad collection of idea generation and decision making tools that are applied by professionals who can access the appropriate tool at the appropriate time in a problem solving process or for the nature of the group with which they are working. All have worked for someone at some point ... none work every time. Be sure you get help from someone who knows what they are doing. Check out the Wiki on brainstorming.
Principal Planner - Long Range Planning
9yDr. Schirr in the urban planning world there are various versions of "sticky note" exercises that involve people writing down ideas and then placing them on the wall. The sticky notes are then clustered and combined into themes while the facilitator leads a conversation. This makes use of some of the individual idea writing that you mentioned. Group evaluation goes along the same lines where people are given a certain number of sticky dots to "vote" on ideas. Each individual can choose to use all the dots for one idea or spread them out over several. The result is good visual feedback for the group discussion and it looks kind of like a stem and leaf diagram with rows of dots of various lengths emanating from concepts and ideas. In the end you hit the nail on the head in that people being involved, participating and having ownership is valuable. In my professional world, a lack of good ideas is not the problem. A lack of participation, ownership, follow-through and commitment can be. If a process doesn't produce any good new ideas, but it does get a few citizens and stakeholders committed to be partners in the process, it is still valuable to me.
Helping HVAC/Plumbing Contractors utilize the Premier Program to drive higher close rates, larger average ticket sales and ongoing recurring revenue all while delivering an enhanced customer experience.
9yExcellent idea to collect ideas and then brainstorm those..