Brainstorming? No, thanks!

Doing business means being in competition on the market, in direct or indirect competition with others. The only thing that matters is creating value for the customer, making them amazing.

Just as no architect designs a skyscraper lower than that of the neighbor, similarly no company introduces actions and acts with a goal other than success on the market, possibly greater than that of the competition, of the so-called “enemies”. It is for this reason that every company is looking for new ideas, because they are the engine of growth.
Successful ideas are the bricks to build the skyscraper, and the more successful ideas (and therefore bricks) are stacked, the higher the skyscraper will be.

In some companies the search for ideas is entrusted to the creativity of individuals (we talked about it in another article that you can read here).
In many others, brainstorming is the most common way to hunt for ideas because it is less solitary, more engaging and more controllable than relying on the individual genius of one or a few resources in the company.

Brainstorming sessions appear in the Outlook calendars of the people involved; they are organized moments whose purpose is to bring out different possible alternatives to solve a problem. Often the measure of success of a day of brainstorming is the length of the list of ideas generated, even if rather confused and scribbled on a sheet of paper or post-it.

What often happens, unfortunately, is that entrepreneurs and managers are not fully satisfied with the ideas that emerged, or that – after a hard day of generating ideas – those ideas are lost, nothing is written, or nothing is done.

The ineffectiveness of brainstorming sessions can be traced back to some elements that characterize brainstorming itself and the way these idea-generating sessions are conducted.

• Lack of stimuli Entrepreneurs (and managers) are often linked to an imaginary of innovation – the result of genius and impromptu insights – which does not correspond to reality.
  Instead, it is essential to expose ourselves to well-structured stimuli that affect our mind and give rise to unexpected sparks. It is not magic, but the ability of our brain to regenerate itself under new stimuli when it is properly administered.
  The process of selecting and structuring stimuli plays a fundamental role which, if not carried out well, generates an undesirable outcome: great chaos that increases the manifestation of a previous fear (false and unfounded): possessing a capacity for ingenuity that has now faded, or worse still, a belief of inadequacy.
• Excessive zoom in (i.e. starting from the product). We are always obsessed with products, but what is valuable to the customer is often a topic that is not explored. The biggest failures of innovation lie in launching a solution on the market that nobody cares about. The fact that you like it is irrelevant, or rather, it takes a back seat; the market must like it, that is, it must solve a problem for the people who will buy your solution. This is the only thing that matters.
• Excessive zoom out (i.e. starting from a mega trand). It is important to understand where the world, your sector and neighboring sectors are heading. So, I’m not saying that knowledge of mega trends is irrelevant to stimulate sparks in the mind, quite the contrary!
  It is essential, however, to be guarantors of the effectiveness with which these stimuli are administered. Refer to real solutions, interpretations of a given trend that others have already given. Also, be careful not to consider trends and fashion in the same way.
• More is better. The expected result of a brainstorming session is to produce as many ideas as possible. This expectation is intrinsic to the very nature of brainstorming, according to which the greater the number of ideas, the higher the probability of success. Instead, be aware that “more” is not synonymous with “better”. Furthermore, it will take a long time to analyze so many ideas, and you need to be aware that company resources are available in a quantity that is certainly not infinite, indeed much more than finite.
• Building too much on the ideas that have emerged. Brainstorming is a method that encourages people to build and reflect from the ideas of others. Based on this assumption, it is easy to understand why the excessive number of ideas is a high risk factor: people are led to spend a lot of time working on an idea that, may be discarded at the end of the brainstorming day because it is considered less interesting than others. Furthermore, what happens is that the first ideas analyzed during the brainstorming day could be discussed at length, but as the end of the time is approaching, the timid time will force the pace to accelerate and the last points on the list of ideas will be discussed – in fact – almost for nothing. This will lead to the elimination of some ideas, perhaps without having analyzed them sufficiently, a rather obvious result since we are inclined to trust less of what we know less, or on which we have little information.
• Role effect. In brainstorming sessions, managers and their resources are all sitting at the same table, and sometimes entrepreneurs also participate. Receiving contributions from more than one person at different hierarchical levels can certainly enrich the result of exploring new ideas. The problem is how this happens. Direct comparison of different roles can create a “role effect”, meaning that subjects may feel the need not expose themselves, especially after the first corrective comment by their boss (one example above all: “this idea is not good”).