Admit it - you've called a meeting where you were going to do some brainstorming on a specific topic. Whether you were trying to tilt the ultimate thoughts in your direction or just didn't want to deal with the Star Trek/Star Wars guy in the group, you selected who was invited for your comfort - not necessarily for results.
Wrong answer - a new paper titled (take a breath, you'll need it) "Navigating a Darwinian Process of
Entrepreneurial Creativity: How Optimal Group Mood Differs for Generating and Selecting Creative Business Ideas" reminds us that the best brainstorming occurs when all the freaks you can find are around the table.
More on the paper from the deep thinkers at Knowledge at Wharton:
"The brainstorming phase also proved to be affected by group density, i.e., the closeness of the relationships within the group. High group density, Coff explains, “tends to facilitate convergent thinking; people bring similar things to the table, and that is actually not what you want, typically, in the idea generation phase. The more weak ties you have in a group,” he says, “the more likely you are to have a broader solution set to work with.”
With high group density in the idea selection phase, Coff notes, a group is more likely to select a more novel solution. “They’ll reach a consensus fairly quickly with less analysis than a less dense group,” he says, “whereas a less dense group is likely to select something that’s more viable.”
The authors analyzed the performance and group dynamics of 38 self-selected groups of undergraduate and masters business students in a classroom creativity exercise involving a business plan for some use of Georgia clay. Participants noted immediately following the exercise the extent to which their mood could be described by 21 different adjectives and their degree of closeness with each of the other group members. These rankings provided the raw scores for mathematical assessments of group mood and group density. Mathematical analysis of the novelty and viability of ideas began with the scores of two graduate students blind to the study’s objectives."
So, get the guy who can't stop talking about space colonies at work, and the girl riding her bike to work on the major traffic artery in town, and invite them to your early brainstorming sessions. You'll end up with a better solution to your issue than if you invite the usual suspects - you know the ones - they look and think exactly like you.
Another business argument for expanding the concept of diversity.
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