Brain Blink: the ugly secret about brainstorms

Every week, Cohn & Wolfe employees get a bite-sized email in their inbox called a “Brain Blink.” Brain Blinks alert our people to hot new trends, bold ideas, intriguing perspectives and thought-provoking concepts to inspire different ways of thinking and stimulate imagination.

While some Blinks highlight major global trends, others reveal emerging trends in smaller cities or obscure areas around the world.  Blinks can come from all sources, including proprietary or empirical research, magazines, books, newspapers, blogs, movies, ads, best practices, campaigns, current events, Websites and even the personal experiences from our own employees. Nothing is too strange, too obscure, too remote or too intellectual for a Brain Blink.  After all, ideas can come from anywhere, or out of nowhere.

Recent Blinks have covered everything from scientific studies showing the impact of art and music on the brain to a Turkish website offering an innovative approach to videos to a new brainstorming technique called “Footstorming” invented by Cohn & Wolfe’s office in Stockholm.

Over the years, Brain Blinks have grown in popularity.  (Many account teams now share them with clients around the world.)  In the spirit of this increasing interest, Brain Blinks will now be available publicly on Wolfe Tracking. Consider it our contribution to the people, places and things that continue to inspire us every day.

(If you have an insight, thought or bold observation that would make for a great Brain Blink, feel free to forward it to Jeremy Baka, Chief Creative Catalyst, at jeremy.baka@cohnwolfe.com.)

So with that in mind, here’s the latest Brain Blink:

The Ugly Secret About Brainstorms

A study at the Wharton School, considered one of the world's preeminent business schools, reveals that group brainstorms may not be the best way to come up with ideas. Instead, researchers say, a hybrid brainstorm where people are first given time to think on their own before sharing ideas with a group resulted in more, and better, ideas. Forty students were asked to come up with ideas for a hypothetical sports product. The resulting concepts were judged on relevance, feasibility, originality and overall market potential. An intricate rating and ranking system found that the hybrid method resulted in three-times more ideas and scored roughly 30 points higher on the quality scale than standard brainstorms. Researchers say that group dynamics (people either censoring themselves or being too domineering) can neutralize group ideation sessions.

Photo from Flickr courtesy of Kyle May

Try this before your next brainstorm: email a one-page summary of the challenge to each participant and ask them to bring three ideas to the storm. Also, always be sure to orchestrate at least one “solo” exercise during each storm to increase participation. For example: ask each person to take two minutes to write down the absolute worst idea they can think of and pass it to the person on the right. The person on the right then takes two minutes to make the idea better and passes it to the person on the right, and so on. Do this for 30 minutes. Then read the entire string of ideas to the group and have everyone build on them.

(Special thanks to Bob Osmond, Cohn & Wolfe San Francisco)