When it comes to creating new solutions, a tool that most companies use is group brainstorming. We are often told that it is a most efficient ways to generate many original ideas. Let’s check if that’s true.

Researchers Brian Mullen, Craig Johnson, and Eduardo Salas published an interesting study in the journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology about group idea generation. The researchers found something interesting.

It seems that individuals will generate more original ideas when they don’t interact with others.

To arrive at that finding, the team made a meta-analytic review of over 800 teams.

In my own experience, I have come to the exact same conclusion. I have led many idea generation workshops with many different teams. With non-creative professionals, group brainstorming blocked the participants. In a certain case, we let participants try out group brainstorming versus individual brainstorming at their request. The result was astonishing. When working alone, individuals were able to generate around 10 to 20 ideas in 20 minutes. When working in groups of 4 to 6, they were able to produce between 0 and 5 ideas. The worst team had many discussions but wasn’t able to create a new idea.

Thus, instead of making a brainstorming session where everybody shouts his idea and then it’s discussed, service designers often use silent brainstorming.

Silent brainstorming consists of a first round where each attendee comes up with new ideas or solutions on his own.

Once this is done, the ideas are shared in the group and improved on together. This allows each individual to express their ideas and then use the power of the group to make them even better. Another advantage of this method is that you quickly see which ideas have a larger support in the group as the same idea came in different formulations from different people.

This article is part of my free course "What is Service Design?" which helps you to discover what Service Design is and why it is powerful to enhance the customer experience.