Is collaboration the enemy of innovation?

A few days ago I came across an article called ‘’Collaboration is the enemy of innovation’’ in which Geoffrey James argues against brainstorming, group writing and ‘’designs by committee’’. If you look through my previous blogs you will be able to find a blog on brainstorming where I discuss the value of it and why I liked it. By reading Geoffrey’s article which contradicts mine, I decided to look into this problem and discuss it once again. Therefore, this blog will serve as a review of my previous blog about brainstorming, an example of a learning process and a critical thinking exercise. So, let’s get into it...

Every time I took part in the group project it was evident that the main ideas came from the members that had some leadership skills. Leaders are mostly extroverts and willing to share their ideas with others while the rest of the group is shy and tends to agree with the person that’s leading the conversation. Also, leaders are almost always passionate about what they are suggesting and their energy may repel other members of the group. In most cases, I was the one pushing for innovation and conversation which often put me in a leadership position. More often than not my ideas were brought forward and developed on. However, if I look back now, I am able to see what was actually happening with the group collaboration. Other members of the group often contributed and commented but this mostly served as an addition to the idea that seemed as the best one (being that idea mine or somebody else's). This either involved making it simple or adding features on it, but it rarely happened that there was a big number of ideas and that we struggled to choose one to proceed with.

Geoffrey shared the research from the Harvard Business Review where they found that brainstorming harms the innovation process as individuals tend to be more innovative alone than when speaking to each other. As soon as I read this, it didn’t make sense to me. I mean, different individuals, different personalities, different views on the world, different experiences, a different approach to problem-solving and so on and so on. How is it that a combined effort is worth less than a single person’s input? I continued to read the article and then it came to me what Geoffrey was trying to explain. The mutual input at the same time and with the same goal produced by more than one person, more often than not, leads to a mess of ideas and, more importantly, feelings. Everyone somehow wants to put their part in the project, especially when there is an opportunity for reward or promotion it is highly likely that each individual will push his or her own idea while lacking the reasoning to fairly assess somebody else’s idea.

The problem mentioned above doesn’t surface too much in a constrained university environment where the whole group gets the same reward and there are no individual benefits. Students somehow care less if their idea is chosen or not and the benefit of brainstorming and truthful collaboration can indeed be seen. But, the university is rarely tailored to the real world and the point Geoffrey was trying to make now becomes clear. Collaboration is only good when there is a single aim the whole group is trying to reach and not when members are in the process of finding that single aim. Moreover, I saw the drawbacks of collaboration on written projects where in my last group work the whole group simultaneously created a report which didn’t yield the result we aimed for.

In summary, the brainstorming exercises I participated in were a combination of individual efforts without much conversation between the members before the exercise was brought to an end. In this way, each one of us was able to think independently which allowed us to write down a lot of good ideas. Thereafter, we had one aim, that of finding the one best idea regardless of whose it was, and this was the reason why I considered brainstorming useful. Now, having read Geoffrey’s article, I was able to identify the limits of brainstorming and acknowledge that it can be used only to the certain extent and not in every situation. I still think that there is value to it from the point that it allows for a quick start. However, now I know that when a single road has to be decided upon, the leader needs to step up and take the charge instead of allowing everyone to tailor the idea until it becomes 'perfect' for everybody or should I say - ruined.

#brainstorming #innovation #collaboration