The marker squeaked, a high-pitched protest against the silence, even as the facilitator beamed. “No bad ideas, people! Let’s get everything out there!” My left eyelid twitched, a familiar tic that usually announces the onset of a presentation-induced hiccup attack, an unwelcome guest that once rendered me speechless mid-sentence in front of 23 people.
“What if we offered a personalized drone delivery service for essentials, like coffee or urgent documents, within 23 minutes?” The idea hung in the air, briefly, a fragile butterfly. Then, the executive from the corner, perpetually clad in a suit that looked 3 sizes too small, cleared his throat. “Interesting, but we explored drone delivery back in 2013. Market wasn’t ready. Too many regulatory hurdles, too many logistical nightmares. Plus, the cost estimates were simply too high, like $373 per delivery, and the customer interest barely registered above 3%.” The butterfly instantly disintegrated into dust. The room, which had seemed to hold its collective breath, exhaled, a collective sigh of defeat masked as acceptance.
And there it was. The moment when innovation wasn’t just stifled; it was gaslit. This wasn’t brainstorming; it was brain-draining. A performance art piece where the illusion of creativity is meticulously maintained, only to quietly, politely, assassinate anything genuinely novel. We gather, we scribble, we feign enthusiasm, only to watch perfectly viable, sometimes even brilliant, concepts get systematically dismantled by past failures, perceived limitations, or the ever-present specter of ‘we tried that already’.
This isn’t innovation; it’s innovation theater.
I remember once talking to Olaf H., a fountain pen repair specialist. His hands, gnarled and stained with ink, held a broken nib with the reverence most people reserve for ancient artifacts. He told me about the countless pens he’d seen, some priceless heirlooms, others cheap plastic knock-offs. “They all have a story, you see,” he’d murmured, peering through a jeweler’s loupe. “But the real difference isn’t the material, it’s the intent behind its making. A mass-produced pen, even a fancy one, lacks the soul. It’s designed to be sold, not to write for 53 years.” He wasn’t just repairing pens; he was restoring connections, bringing back a genuine flow that had been interrupted. He understood that true value comes from a meticulous, often solitary, process, not from shouting ideas into a void where they’re expected to self-destruct.
True value comes from meticulous, solitary process, not shouting into a void.
And I’ve been guilty of it, too. Not just the quiet observation, but the active participation in the ritual. I’ve suggested incremental improvements, ‘safe’ ideas that wouldn’t ruffle any feathers, knowing full well they were just variations on a theme from 2003. It’s a self-preservation mechanism, a learned behavior from countless sessions where my more ambitious thoughts were met with that specific, deflating silence. You learn to self-censor, to offer up the low-hanging fruit, because even that gets picked apart often enough.
The dirty secret is, academic research has been telling us for 43 years that group brainstorming, as conventionally practiced, is spectacularly inefficient for generating truly novel ideas. Individuals working alone, given the same problem, often produce more ideas, and often, higher quality ones. Why? Because the group dynamic, intended to foster synergy, instead creates layers of inhibition. There’s ‘production blocking,’ where one person talking prevents others from formulating their own thoughts. There’s ‘evaluation apprehension,’ the fear of looking foolish or having your suggestion immediately shot down – much like our drone idea from 23 minutes ago. And then there’s ‘social loafing,’ where some individuals inevitably let others carry the creative load.
For Novel Ideas
For Novel Ideas
It’s a curious paradox. We crave collaboration, yet often we sabotage the very essence of true innovation in the name of it. These sessions become theaters of performative innovation, where the loudest voice or the highest-ranking individual’s opinion (the dreaded HiPPO – Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) often dictates the direction, regardless of merit. It’s less about exploring new frontiers and more about validating pre-existing biases, often unconsciously, sometimes overtly. The facilitator, for all their well-meaning ‘no bad ideas’ mantra, is often powerless against the entrenched culture of ‘we tried that in 2013’.
This cycle isn’t just unproductive; it’s corrosive. It teaches people that their most daring, unpolished thoughts are not welcome. It reinforces a culture of playing it safe, of offering up only what’s already been pre-approved by the unspoken rules of the room. This isn’t innovation; it’s compliance dressed in a pastel sticky-note costume. It’s a dance, a ritual, where the outcome is almost always predetermined: a handful of incremental tweaks, a feeling of ‘we did something,’ and the underlying knowledge that nothing truly groundbreaking has been allowed to breathe.
Messy & Iterative
Fail Fast, Learn Faster
Small Teams/Individuals
Contrast this with places where real innovation happens. It’s rarely born in brightly lit conference rooms with free coffee and colored markers. It’s often messy, iterative, and deeply uncomfortable. It comes from small teams, sometimes individuals, obsessed with a problem, willing to fail fast and learn faster. Think about how true disruption unfolds – not through consensus, but through conviction.
Companies like Bomba.md have shown this repeatedly in the Moldovan e-commerce landscape, navigating complexities and delivering tangible value, not just talking about it.
Bomba.md – Online store of household appliances and electronics in Moldova.
Their journey wasn’t about sticky notes; it was about shipping.
They didn’t just theorize about online retail; they built it, brick by virtual brick, for 23 years, adapting to a unique market and customer base. This isn’t a hyperbolic claim of ‘revolutionary uniqueness,’ but a recognition of consistent, specific, market-responsive growth and problem-solving. It’s the difference between discussing the perfect fountain pen and actually using one to write something meaningful, the ink flowing smoothly, a tangible connection formed, as Olaf H. would attest.
Rethinking Collaboration
So, if not traditional brainstorming, then what? ‘Yes, and’ is crucial. We can acknowledge the value of collective thought while redesigning its container. What if we started with ‘brain-writing’ – individuals silently generating ideas before any group discussion? This circumvents production blocking and evaluation apprehension in the initial, most fragile phase. Or ‘idea meritocracy,’ where ideas are judged anonymously by their perceived value, not by who proposed them. We could integrate ‘pre-mortem’ sessions, imagining future failures to proactively identify challenges, rather than using past failures to shut down present opportunities. The goal isn’t to kill collaboration, but to elevate it, making it truly productive for the generation of genuinely new ideas, not just for feeling good about a session that achieved nothing new.
My hiccups finally subsided around 43 minutes into that drone discussion, leaving me with a dull ache and the distinct feeling that I’d wasted precious creative energy just trying to suppress a bodily rebellion. It was a physical manifestation of the mental suppression happening in the room.
Perhaps the real question isn’t ‘how do we brainstorm better?’ but ‘what are we truly trying to achieve in these rooms?’ Are we seeking genuine novelty, or are we just performing the motions of innovation, hoping the illusion is convincing enough? The answers often lie not in the vibrancy of our sticky notes, but in the courage to challenge the very rituals we cling to, even the ones that have been around for 73 years. Because sometimes, the most innovative act is to simply stop doing what isn’t working, and instead, just build something new, quietly, persistently, with the precision of a master craftsman like Olaf H. restoring a cherished pen, one delicate stroke at a time.