Myths and Facts on Innovation
Team group work , open spaces , coffee these seem to be unquestioned elements of innovation teams and most office work in general . But are these just artifacts that support our myths about the workplace ?
Innovation cultures editorial director , Teresa Di Cairano , chatted with Philippe De Ridder — innovation consultant — as well as dug up some research on whether these are myths or facts .
Myth or Fact ? Group Brainstorming produces the most ideas for innovation .
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“ A key myth is often around brainstorming in groups , which is often associated as the key creative way of generating new ideas . But actually , what you find is that group brainstorming is one of the least effective ways to generate a lot of different ideas or different routes ,” argues Philippe de Ridder . The reason is that the first idea that is put forward influences everyone else ’ s thinking . So , the better technique to use is hybrid brainstorming . Like traditional brainstorming , this method starts from a question or problem statement but kicks off the process with 5-10 minutes of individual idea generation first . Then you share the ideas as a group and build further on each idea .
This will increase the diversity of options that you generate and enable building on top of each other ’ s ideas - combining the best of both worlds .
Myth or Fact ? Open spaces are better for creativity .
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“ It ’ s a myth that open spaces and co-working spaces are best for creativity . Actually , the introvert side of inventing something radically new often happens indeed in complete solitude ” says de Ridder .
Thus , we need to balance the two needs for solitude and collaboration in our workspace . This concept shares some insight from the book Quiet : The Power of Introverts in a World That Can ’ t Stop Talking by Susan Cain who also talks about the benefits of introversion in creativity . Her Ted Talk is worth watching . This was also confirmed in Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who led a long-range study of creativity as a process . He interviewed close to 100 people in the arts , business , government and science .
He discovered that creative people often were simultaneously introverts and extroverts . Creativity does require a certain amount of solitude , and we don ’ t talk about that very much .
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Myth or Fact ? Coffee is better than wine for stimulating creativity .
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“ Another interesting fact about creativity is that it is good to drink wine and it ’ s bad to drink coffee . Coffee is actually better for doing executional or repetitive tasks - so less useful for creativity . The optimum amount for creativity is two glasses of wine , after that it declines again ,” warns de Ridder .