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Management guru Peter Drucker (yes, he actually lived up to the title) said that if you want something new, you must stop doing something old.
Of course, “getting something new”—or better—is the quest of most people. Better performance. Better products. Better service. Better … you name it.
All this “better” stuff is fueled by ideas. After all, innovation is not an event. It’s the result of manipulating ideas.
Stanford University professors Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn dig deep into this process in IDEAFLOW: The Only Business Metric That Matters. They advocate a simple core principle: ideas matter. But they say that instead of focusing on output, innovators focus on input. Instead of obsessing over quality, innovators generate quantity. Ideaflow, they say, amplifies creative output.
Rodger Dean Duncan: You say innovation is a volume game, and that the quantity of ideas drives the quality. Can you give us a brief snapshot of a case study that illustrates this?
Jeremy Utley: Jerry Uelsmann, a photography professor at the University of Florida, conducted a fascinating experiment in his classroom. He divided the class in half, and told one half, “Your semester grade is a function of how spectacular of a photo you turn in. We are going to have a jury of photographers, and they’re going to rate the quality of your work. You have to turn in only a single photo, but it’s got to be truly exceptional to get an A.” To the other half of the class, he said, “Your semester grade is based on a different criteria. Instead of looking at the quality of your work, the jury is going to assess the quantity of your work. If you turn in more than 100 photos, you’ll get an A, no matter how ‘bad’ they are.”
At the end of the semester, Uelsmann and his jury were amazed to discover two things. First, not a single student from the first half of the class got an A. None of the students whose job it was to take a spectacular photo did so! Second, many of the students in the second half of the class took photos that would have been graded an “A” if they had been judged according to the first group’s criteria.
The message is simple: to produce spectacular caliber work, the key is to produce a large volume of work. This isn’t just true in the arts. Dr. Dean Keith Simonton, who was recently awarded a lifetime achievement award from Mensa, has studied breakthrough thinkers and creators across disciplines. His studies confirm the findings of Uelsmann’s experiment: the variable that affects the quality of one’s ideas the most—regardless of field—is the quantity of ideas one has.
Quantity is an unexpected driver of quality.
Duncan: What mindsets or myths seem to be the most common impediments to innovation?
Utley: Abraham Luchins first identified the “einstellung effect” back in 1942. It’s subsequently been validated by Karl Dunker and researchers at Oxford. We call it the anti-Einstein effect because of its chilling impact on breakthrough thinking. What it demonstrates is that when we think of a solution to a problem, two critical things happen. First, we cease the search for other solutions. Second, we become blinded to potentially better solutions.
This tendency to fixate on the first “viable-seeming” idea that comes to mind is a reflection of what Arie Kruglanski dubbed the longing for “cognitive closure.” Humans hate not knowing. So, instead of pushing for the volume ultimately required to break through, they “settle” on the first good idea they encounter, despite there being no evidence that the first idea we think of is our best idea. This phenomenon is known as “satisficing.”
Duncan: How can ideaflow help aspiring entrepreneurs solve the problem of solving problems?
Klebahn: Ideaflow helps entrepreneurs focus on how they can better identify and solve problems. If founders generate multiple target users and multiple needs to solve, for example, they have options. They also have the ability to generate many ideas and compare them.
Duncan: How has the upsurge in remote and hybrid work affected the way teams approach creativity?
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Klebahn: Sadly, it has hurt innovation, as the best practices in idea generation are not well known. Hybrid work could hurt idea generation if the benefits of being remote are not leveraged. This article from Columbia University explains how online communication methods impair group ideation, for example.
Our work shows the best ideation methods for any group involve both individual and group idea generation, and require understanding and structure. (The Columbia University article rightly concludes that doing a group ideation session as you do a normal online meeting will not yield many ideas). We see the hybrid work environment as a chance to leverage individuals’ ability to ideate and be creative. They are at home in a different environment with different context, which can be leveraged to generate ideas. Then group time, in person or online, is structured to build on ideas—or turn ideas from “mine” to “ours”—to evaluate and make collective decisions about what ideas to move forward, together.
In short, hybrid is a great environment to generate a breadth of ideas—but leaders need to make sure they’re utilizing the right tools and methods and not relying on antiquated models of “busy work,” which can stifle creativity and innovation.
Duncan: What can leaders do to help their teams embrace and benefit from the practice of ideaflow to unlock more innovation?
Klebahn: A leader must ask great questions and value the ideation that their teams create. This as a critical part of innovation and must be recognized as such by those at the top.
Great leaders of innovative teams ask their teams, “How many ideas have you generated? How many prototypes have you built?” If you include metrics for those that are followed and valued, then teams know it matters and is part of the organization’s mission.
Duncan: You suggest that idea validation is as crucial to the creative process as idea generation. Can you explain?
Utley: Folks mistakenly over-associate creativity with idea generation and fail to see the creative merits of the validation process. The truth is, the best way to validate the merits of a new idea is by crafting scrappy experiments. And the efficacy of those experiments is largely a function of the creativity of the experiment designer. Not only is designing an experiment a creative act, synthesizing the implications of an experiment is also a wildly creative act. Most of the time, clever experiments beget other ideas for testing, etc.
Duncan: How can typical brainstorming sessions be made more effective?
Klebahn: We need to look at brainstorm sessions as a sport. Your team will get better with regular practice. Pick any of the tools outlined in our book—building an innovation pipeline, focusing on quantity of ideas etc.—and then decide with a group or a team that you will use the tool for the next few meetings and measure ideas generated over time. Everyone will get better, and the ideas that are generated will become stronger in the process.
Duncan: You say it’s important for organizations to adopt an experimental mindset that focuses on momentum rather than perfection. Why?
Utley: You can waste a lot of time endlessly refining a meritless idea. No matter how good your website copy, if the customer isn’t interested in the product, nothing is going to happen.
Conversely, if you’ve conceived of something truly desirable, no matter how many typos are on your web page, customers are going to beat down the door!
By optimizing for momentum, and crafting many scrappy experiments, you get vector-shifting information that informs more-perfect iteration in the right direction.
Duncan: Occasionally getting “stuck” is okay, you say, and logjams are a crucial part of the creative process. Can you elaborate, and give us an example?
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Utley: Getting stuck is evidence of care, and care is an essential prerequisite to the creative process.
As Reid Hoffman says, “I never go to sleep without giving my subconscious a problem to work on.” Getting stuck is part of what summons your subconscious.
James Webb Young was an advertising exec in the Mad Men ilk. He wrote a fantastic short guide to creative thinking called “A Technique for Producing Ideas.” Here’s how he described the phenomenon: "... After a while you will reach the hopeless stage. Everything is a jumble in your mind, with no clear insight anywhere ... It is important to realize that this is just as definite and just as necessary a stage in the process as the two preceding ones."
What does Young suggest one do upon reaching the point of desperation? "You make absolutely no effort of a direct nature. You drop the whole subject and put the problem out of your mind as completely as you can. You remember how Sherlock Holmes used to stop right in the middle of a case and drag Watson off to a concert? That was a very irritating procedure to the practical and literal-minded Watson. But Conan Doyle was a creator and knew the creative process."
Duncan: Why did you write this book?
Utley: I listened to the audiobook. You know what surprised me? How often I had to stop to scribble notes! In my own book!
We wrote it because we need it ourselves! Just like the president of the “Men’s Hair Club” once quipped, “I’m not only the president; I’m also a customer.” We find ourselves falling prey to the same cognitive biases that afflict our clients! We aren’t just the teachers; we’re also the front row students!
We are fellow learners on the journey to creative mastery ourselves, and are delighted to get to adventure with other eager explorers.
