Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases: groups of nine generate fewer and poorer ideas compared to groups of six, which do worse than groups of four. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” writes the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.” The one exception to this is online brainstorming.

Psychologists usually offer three explanations for the failure of group brainstorming. The first is social loafing: in a group, some individuals tend to sit back and let others do the work. The second is production blocking: only one person can talk or produce an idea at once, while the other group members are forced to sit passively. And the third is evaluation apprehension, meaning the fear of looking stupid in front of one's peers.

I find the brainstorm meeting absurd. Everybody is looking for ideas all the time, like breathing, or they are not doing it at all. If you have to come in at a set time to come up with ideas, I don’t want to be anywhere near you. I want to be around people who are curious citizens of the world who want to know everything about everything.

The only way to maximize group creativity — to make the whole more than the sum of its parts — is to encourage a candid discussion of mistakes. In part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces cost. When you believe your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you're less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong.

...remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it's creativity you're after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can't see each other's ideas until everyone has had a chance to contribute.

There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.

Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say “Wow” and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.

En esta era interconectada existe la tentación de creer que las ideas pueden desarrollarse a través de mensajes de correo electrónico y en el iChat. Eso es una locura. La creatividad surge en las reuniones espontáneas, en las discusiones aleatorias. Tú te encuentras con alguien, le preguntas qué está haciendo, te sorprendes y pronto te encuentras elucubrando todo tipo de ideas.

This is how brainstorming goes with brightly faithful people: “Hmmm. Uh-huh. Nope. Nah. No. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Ooh. Ahh. Wait a second. Holy shit, yes, yes, yes, oh my God, we could…and then we could…and it would be so…and holy yes and…I’ll sell it all if I have to…and what am I going to wear when I accept the award?! Who will we invite to the wedding?! How big do you think we can build it? Excuse me while I make a phone call.” They go off. It’s illogical, grandiose, crazy, and most certainly romantic. It’s faith.

Creativity is about connections, and connections are not made by siloing everything off into its own space. New ideas are formed by interesting juxtapositions, and interesting juxtapositions happen when things are out of place.

"Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing. I get some of my best ideas when I'm bored, which is why I never take my shirts to the cleaners. I love ironing my shirts-it's so boring, I almost always get good ideas. If you're out of ideas, wash the dishes. Take really long walk. Stare at a spot on the wall for as long as you can. As the artist Maira Kalman says, "Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.

Whatever you choose, it’s helpful to have fellow travelers around you. They don’t have to be like you, just like-minded in some way. Creativity is contagious. When we spend time with other artistic people, we absorb and exchange a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world. This group can be called a Sangha. Each person in this relationship begins seeing with a different imaginative eye.

La gente creativa necesita tiempo para sentarse a no hacer nada. Yo tengo algunas de mis mejores ideas cuando estoy aburrido, por eso nunca llevo mis camisas a la lavandería. Me encanta planchar; es tan aburrido que siempre me surgen buenas ideas.

STARTUP THINKING New technology tends to come from new ventures — startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think. This book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.