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Posted April 3, 2009 Conventional wisdom would be wrong. The conventional wisdom embodied in books and other formats teaches various brainstorming and ideation techniques for groups of people to engage and generate fresh new ideas. After 30 years of invention, idea generating, and problem solving, I am inclined to think that approach is all wrong. Idea meetings don’t work. Idea meetings don’t work for a number of reasons. They don’t work if people don’t know the rules of play. Like baseball, just because you are on the field doesn’t mean you know how to play the game. And the game of basketball doesn’t work so well if you have a mix of professional players and beginners. In baseball, you can see the ball and follow it easily. If you don’t keep your eye on the ball, it just might hit you upside the head. In idea sessions the ball is the conversational topic, the idea being passed back and forth, added to, modified. A good idea session can be like a game of catch. Like a game of catch, if you don’t pay attention and miss the ball when it's thrown to you, you ruin the game for the rest. If you hold onto the ball and don’t keep it moving, tossing it back once you have caught it, you stop the game or everyone. If you criticize each person's throw or ability to catch, it becomes no fun for them or anyone else. In idea sessions invariably some are players and others are not. Some keep their eye on the ball and others drift off, acting as a distraction to those who are in the game, or worse. Others hog the ball. They talk too much, listen too little. Or they want to criticize or critique rather than keep the ball moving. All these behaviors ruin the game of catch as well as the dynamics of an idea session. And in every idea session, at least one of these meeting killers will be at work. Conversely, when only two people are having an idea session, conversation, or whatever name you choose (and what you call it can be important), you will rarely see one of them not paying attention to the other, or hogging the ball. The dynamic of a one-on-one idea session with two reasonably compatible, similarly motivated and experienced people is very focused, and I find, very productive. The dynamic of a typical group-think idea session is more often ‘not so much.’ Our Hydrogen Rocket, Baby Go Boom, and many many of our other successes sprung from such a one-on-one idea conversation. I thank you.
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