The Buzz Isn’t Always Right

The recent Facebook IPO focused much media attention on how, in the future, “we will share everything”–an end that Mark Zuckerberg, the young CEO of Facebook, believes he can make easier and more seamless … not to mention more profitable for himself.
Forgive my lack of enthusiasm. I understand that it is heresy to say anything that contrasts the latest buzz, but the only people I remember who had a need to share everything were college freshmen, whose insecurity in their environment led them to go everywhere and do everything as a group. Even, the upper classmen used to joke, using the bathroom. Thankfully, we all grew out of that stage as we gained more confidence in our ability to navigate the challenging currents of college and life with a little more balance between solitude and community.
The Facebook “gosh, isn’t it great to share everything” craze isn’t the first buzz concept that I’ve disagreed with. I remember arguing with friends who gushed to me, back in the dot-com craze, that the “New Economy” would be a party that never ended.
“Every party ends,” I said. “No spike continues forever. Just ask the barons of the 1890s, the 1920s, or any other giddy era.”
“Ah, but this time is different,” they argued.
“Sure it is,” I said. “And this guy really will leave his wife.”
I also argued with my magazine publishing bosses, back in the early 2000s, that if we gave everything away free on the website, there’d be no reason for people to subscribe to the magazine, our revenue would plummet, and there would be dire results for the magazine’s economic health. “But this is what everyone has to do, now,” they argued. One destroyed publishing industry later, I’m tempted to say “I told you so.” Except the damage that “information wants to be free” craze inflicted is really too severe to even joke about.
I also have the same reaction any time an aircraft designer comes us to me and says they’ve designed an airplane that flies twice as fast, on half the fuel, with no sacrifice in range or payload. It’s not that I’m some genius or am possessed with the ability to see the future. It’s just that when someone comes up to me with “THE ANSWER” that clashes with the entire history of commerce, engineering, physics, logic, or every common-sense instinct my gut knows to be true … I suspect I am facing the highly suspect phenomenon of buzz, as opposed to a lasting innovation or idea that might truly transform the world. In point of fact, very few of the people who design no-kidding transformative inventions (the automobile, the telephone, penicillin) went or go around boldly declaring that the rules have (or had) all now changed. And there’s probably a notable lesson in that, somewhere.
But I had the same reaction when I read an article last year talking about how creativity really works best in groups. Brainstorming, open office space, and sharing everything via electronic media, the article announced, was THE ANSWER to more creative innovation in business. (Seriously. Any time anyone announces they have THE ANSWER to anything … run, do not walk, as fast as you can in the opposite direction.)
As someone whose livelihood requires creativity on a fairly regular basis, I can attest to the fact that my best ideas are not always … in fact, are rarely … generated in a high-energy group discussion. The same is true for many of the world’s most famous inventors. The guy who figured out how to design an effective supersonic airplane design came up with his breakthrough “aha!” solution while sitting in his office alone, feet up on his desk, imagining “tubes” of air flowing over the nose, wings, and fuselage of a plane. Archimedes was sitting in a bathtub when he had his insight about volume and displacement, which is rather the antithesis of a frenetic group brainstorming session.
That’s not to say isolation is THE ANSWER, either. I find I need both quiet, reflective time and a really good thinking buddy (or two or three), to run ideas past, or ask for input,  in order to hit my creative best. Not to mention the casual conversations I have with other people that unexpectedly spark new ideas or insights.
But twice, in the past year, I’ve actually sat through frenetic, group brainstorming sessions, and in both instances, I spent the whole time thinking, “This is not productive. It feels good (lots of positive feedback for any idea, no matter how silly), but this is not the way to really think through solutions to sticky problems.” And yet, there’s a whole school of thought, supported by a bevy of very trendy and cool consulting companies (which translates into Buzz), that touts these high-energy brainstorming sessions as THE ANSWER to unlocking corporate and individual creativity.
So I felt just a tad vindicated when my gut reaction was reinforced, recently, by not one, but two articles that announced, based on numerous studies of the subject … that all this group-think and brainstorming may not be the best path to creativity and creative innovation, after all. The first was a New York Times piece by Susan Cain, entitled “The Rise of the New Groupthink.” The second, and in my opinion better, of the two articles was a piece by Jonah Lehrer in the January 30th issue of The New Yorker.
In essence, both articles pointed out that despite the “buzz” about the wonders of brainstorming sessions … brainstorming doesn’t actually work. At least, not in terms of generating the best, or the most, innovative or new, creative ideas or solutions. People in study after study, the authors said, came up with more and better ideas on their own, with uninterrupted time to think.
The element that Lehrer adds (and I’m sure will be elaborating on in his new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, which comes out March 19th), is that solitude alone is not the answer, either. Collaboration, critique, and casual interaction with people who have different ideas is also important–not just according to Lehrer, but also to the numerous researchers he cites.
Lehrer is young, but he seems to be a pretty balanced writer who’s not trying to make a killing by coming up with THE ANSWER. The answers he suggests are hard to fit into a sound bite, because they are as complex as the world often proves to be … which is, of course, why people who swear they have THE ANSWER (read: the SIMPLE answer) to creative innovation, easy success or how the rules will now be different … are so often wrong.
To be fair, I think there is a role for the much-touted brainstorming sessions that consulting firms in Silicon Valley put so much stock in. I think they may help people who believe they cannot be creative … feel creative. And perhaps that opens up some minds, or changes some thinking in managers or executives, that then allows the more thoughtful, challenging, innovative and creative ideas within those companies to see the light of day.
But change is actually a difficult, erratic, and slow process. (Just ask the folks in Egypt, these days.) And getting to those breakthrough insights, or those revolutionary innovations, will remain as resistant to formula and every bit as challenging as figuring out any other path through an uncharted wilderness–especially when that wilderness is the future.