Convening your executive team to brainstorm your next Big Idea? Doug Hall’s advice: Don’t do it!
by Gwen Moran
Myth: Brainstorming foments good ideas Bust: Brainstorming foments groupthink
With apologies to Aristotle, the modern workplace notion of rounding up colleagues and letting the ideas fly was developed more than 50 years ago by adman Alex Osborn — the “O” in BBDO. It was about as good a marketing idea as New Coke, argues Doug Hall, founder of the Eureka! Ranch, a Cincinnati invention, research and development firm. Hall is a former marketing executive (Procter & Gamble), TV personality (ABC’s American Inventor) and author (the best-selling Jump Start Your Business Brain).
Hall believes brainstorming destroys individuals’ ownership of ideas, replacing it with an atmosphere of intimidation and groupthink that can hinder true creativity. “We feed the individual with statistical stimuli and track academic journals. We get to ‘What is the truth?’ ” Hall says. Focusing on fact-based approaches eliminates many of the useless concepts that come out of many corporate brainstorming sessions.
Myth: Multi-stage innovation processes establish checks and balances
Bust: It’s death by a thousand cuts
This widely used system creates five points, or “gates,” at which product or service innovations can be killed before getting to market. Such systems, Hall says, also destroy individual ownership and encourage compromise that can water down great ideas, reinforce the separation between corporate divisions and hinder the flow of ideas. “It assumes command and control; it’s like corporate communism,” Hall says. “We use it because it fits our silos.”
Myth: Companies live and die via a definitive proprietary edge
Bust: Secrets should be shared
Borrowing beats building or buying, and that trick goes two ways — so do away with corporate ego and form strategic alliances with other companies. This can be tough for managers accustomed to proprietary zealotry. But the benefit of teaming up with suppliers, manufacturers and distributors for product-and-service development is gaining the ability to use existing resources to speed the innovation process.
The same theory works within the organization: Once the kernel of an idea is formed, it’s time to turn to the group — as long as the generator of the idea knows that the rest of the organization is there to help the concept prosper rather than co-opt it. “Instead of having some yahoo in the front of a room with a marker, the individual authors the idea in front of everyone,” Hall says. “This adds to the concept of individual ownership.” And helps creativity flourish.