In my podcast “Designed Innovation”, I always like to talk about different creative methods because I believe they are the starting point for innovation initiatives.
And brainstorming is a very old technique here, which interestingly enough is still very often used incorrectly. Birna Dröfn Birgisdóttir did her PhD on brainstorming in Iceland. She is also the co-founder of Bulby, a tool that aims to simplify and, above all, initiate brainstorming with the help of AI. In this podcast, she explains why brainstorming is such a powerful tool and how it can also be a complete failure. And these are her answers.
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Why classic brainstorming meetings don’t work
„When we come together as a group, some people tend to become the free writers. They just rely on other people’s contribution instead of relying on themselves because we are quite different. Some people are more introverted and need more time to think. They don’t get as much chance to really tap into the creative potential at this typical brainstorming meeting.
And then again, we have the HIPPO – „highest paying person“ – in the room, really is controlling the meeting, but it’s just unconsciously because people unconsciously try to come up with ideas that they believe the highest paid person will like. And also people that are really creative, they tend to become less creative to match the group because as humans, we want to belong. We don’t want to stand out that much. And when we are in a group, we don’t want to be that person that is different from everyone else. All is unconscious. People tend to become less creative.
Also, most brainstorming meetings are at a specific time. So you’re supposed to be in a meeting room, for example, at 2:00 PM. And at 2:00 PM, you’re supposed to come up with good ideas. But maybe you had a bad night’s sleep the night before. This is not the best day for you to be creative. And also, maybe you’re just really busy and this is just cut your day. And so this was not the optimal time for you to think creatively. And also because we tend to be more creative according to our biological rhythm. Some people are more creative in the morning and other people are more creative in the evening. And to have them all come at 2:00 PM is not maybe the best optimal way to really get the creative thinking.
So it’s recommended that we create on our own. So we are better. So there are many research behind it that we are actually better at creating on our own instead of in teams.
But teams are really good at choosing which idea to go forward with. It’s this combination of first giving people time to create on their own to really get everyone’s creative thinking and also another reason, if we call brainstorming meaning, can reduce creativity is that we start to think as a group. So the first person to speak really directs the thought process of the whole group. And so the whole group starts to think in the same direction instead of thinking in many different directions. So yeah, there are many reasons why this typical brainstorming medium doesn’t work.“
How brainstorming can be made more effective
„So it’s called brainwriting, where people write their idea on their own first. Sometimes the best option is just to start the meeting and people write on their own silently on a paper before they start sharing ideas.
But as I mentioned before, creative ideas are valued differently depending on who comes up with the idea. So the best way to come up with ideas from teams is to do it anonymously, to give every idea the same chance.
As I mentioned also, some of us are more creative in the morning and others in the afternoon. So it’s best to give people the space before the meeting to come up with ideas. To clearly state like this is the challenge we want to solve and can you come up with ideas based on that? And so the tool that we are creating helps people create on their own and they write their ideas.
And there are exercises that people can use to really think more differently. For example, if you connect your problem or challenge with a random word, it can spark new and different ideas, or if you connect it with a random feeling or a random person, or you’re imagining you’re a different company or you can, for example, question storm instead of brainstorm.
So you come up with a lot of questions related to the challenge, the problem you’re focusing on. Doing this on your own and leading your thought processes in different direction, you can come up with many different ideas. And as you say, it goes the best way to come up with a good idea is to come up with many ideas. So I recommend that people come up with many different ideas, and also there’s research behind it that we are more likely to make a better decision if we have different options.“
How artificial intelligence can help facilitate better brainstorming sessions
„I quite often ask people to draw a house. The majority of people draw the same type of house, so it’s a square with a triangle roof. But when I ask them to draw different houses, I show four more houses and none of them can be the same, they tend to come up with more creative solutions or different ideas. So for example, a boathouse or a snowhouse or a book that looks like a house or something, or a house and different houses.
And this is a great way to show us that our brain has this bias of coming up with familiar ideas.
But when we ask AI to help us, think in different directions and for example, if I want to draw a house and I get a random word that is a bicycle. Like, how could I draw a house related to bicycle? And I could draw a house that is like a circle or like with windows that are like circles on the bicycle or whatever. But when I ask AI to help me with this, I can come up with suggestions. So I can use AI to help me come up with different ideas. And when I see ideas from AI, that can also spark my ideas. So it can help me think in different directions.
And then also like AI is just really full of information. And one part of the creative formula is knowledge. And we can for sure ask AI about a lot of information and also research indicate that we are not the best people to evaluate our own ideas we tend to fall in love with our own ideas and managers, they tend to underestimate people’s ideas. So AI can be this evaluator for us. Also help us evaluate the ideas or come up with ideas.
How can we test it? Like AI can be really helpful when we are creating. For example, I listed up 20 ideas and I asked AI and I used ChatGPT. And I asked, can you evaluate those ideas for me? And AI came up with this has a high potential and low impact. So it rated it and I got the four categories. And then I got a list of the high-potential, low-impact ideas. And then I asked AI, like, which one would you choose for a startup? And the AI said, I would choose these three. And I asked them, okay, can you suggest three experiments I could do to see which one of these three I should go forward with. And then AI suggested the experiments and what I could measure. And then I had a plan to test my next step as an entrepreneur.
The tool that we have created has different exercises that you can go through. And AI comes up with suggestions based on the challenge problem you’re focusing on and combined with the exercise you’re in. And I just love to go through them all to get inspiration from different perspectives.
But I believe that one I like the most is that when I connect it with random words, it’s just really powerful for me to, for example, connect my problem with airport. And I think about it. Airport has this gate you have to go through and you cannot take everything with you. You have to leave something behind. And there’s a lot of noise there and a lot of things happening. And like, there are so much that can inspire problem-solving when you connect it with random words.“