Brainwrite instead of group brainstorm

Have people generate ideas silently and individually first, then pool and build.

Why it works

Verbal group brainstorming suffers “production blocking”: only one person can talk at a time, so others wait, forget, and self-censor, and a few voices dominate. Brainwriting removes the blocking by letting everyone generate in parallel and in private first, then combining — capturing the diversity of a group without the loss that talking together imposes.

How to do it

1. Have each person silently write ideas alone, before any discussion.
2. Pool all the written ideas without attribution.
3. Only then meet to combine, build on, and evaluate the pooled set together.

Evidence

Decades of research find that “nominal groups” (individuals generating alone, then pooled) produce more and often better ideas than interacting brainstorming groups, primarily because of production blocking. This is the honest, well-replicated caveat about group brainstorming. Diehl and Stroebe (1987) isolated production blocking as the dominant cause across a series of controlled experiments, ruling out evaluation apprehension and free-riding as sufficient explanations. (rct)

Groups still help for building on and selecting ideas, and for buy-in; the loss is specifically in interactive verbal generation, not in collaboration overall.

Sources

• Diehl & Stroebe (1987), productivity loss in brainstorming groups, J. Personality & Social Psychology
• Diehl, M., & Stroebe, W. (1987). Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: Toward the solution of a riddle. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(3), 497-509.

Common mistake

Running a live verbal brainstorm because it feels energetic and productive — the very format that the evidence shows reduces both the quantity and quality of ideas.