"Creativity is not a Team Sport" was a key takeaway from this video by Improvides interviewing Prof Vincent Walsh on neuroscience of creativity. A couple of key points:
[There's] a very long and well-established literature in psychology that getting groups of people together is no way to come up with ideas. Creativity is not a team sport. What you're looking for is somebody's individual, intellectual trunk to make new connections and come up with something new.
What's necessary for devising new thoughts is liberating the brain from workaday tasks and letting them operate offline. When people have ideas is when they're not thinking about them -- because the 90% of the brain that you're not aware of is what's key for creativity. This is way daydreaming, afternoon naps, and sleep are key for good ideas.
In the modern world, we often find ourselves doing too much -- too much ordinary stuff. There's a great history of people and institutions giving themselves downtime -- time to do nothing and explore new things, which is when you get great ideas. The workaholic doesn't come up with great ideas.
Open-plan offices (with their constant interruptions -- not just from colleagues but visitors, delivery men, salespersons) and interrupt-driven tools (phones, IM, even email) disrupt that creativity.
Creating a time and a place for collaboration is helpful. Making that all the time is not. I despise open-plan (though there's some use for a small-group, shared-task, common space).
[There's] a very long and well-established literature in psychology that getting groups of people together is no way to come up with ideas. Creativity is not a team sport. What you're looking for is somebody's individual, intellectual trunk to make new connections and come up with something new.
What's necessary for devising new thoughts is liberating the brain from workaday tasks and letting them operate offline. When people have ideas is when they're not thinking about them -- because the 90% of the brain that you're not aware of is what's key for creativity. This is way daydreaming, afternoon naps, and sleep are key for good ideas.
In the modern world, we often find ourselves doing too much -- too much ordinary stuff. There's a great history of people and institutions giving themselves downtime -- time to do nothing and explore new things, which is when you get great ideas. The workaholic doesn't come up with great ideas.
Open-plan offices (with their constant interruptions -- not just from colleagues but visitors, delivery men, salespersons) and interrupt-driven tools (phones, IM, even email) disrupt that creativity.
Creating a time and a place for collaboration is helpful. Making that all the time is not. I despise open-plan (though there's some use for a small-group, shared-task, common space).
http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ
More: http://redd.it/21qgiv