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The advantages of innovating in a group

Creativity is all about the use of imagination and the generation of new ideas. We’ve seen already that ideas can start from many places and then need to be honed and improved by considering lots of perspectives.

Working as part of a group has some significant advantages here:

• More people trying to generate ideas is likely to lead to a higher number of ideas to start with (see Step 3 and Step 4).
• This, in turn, leads to more opportunities to combine concepts, which can be an effective way to generate better ideas (see Step 5).
• Ideas can also be refined more effectively through questioning, because there are individuals actually present who can ask those questions – they do not have to be created by the same person coming up with the idea in the first place (see Step 9).
• Finally, if the group is diverse to start with, it gives you a headstart on ensuring that your ideas benefit from multiple perspectives (see Step 10).

For all these reasons, working in a group to innovate should have significant advantages over trying to innovate alone.

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The risks of innovating in a group

However, there are often significant risks which are often overlooked to working in a team. Effective group innovation relies on being able to identify and mitigate risks, including:

• A rush to consensus: This is sometimes referred to as a Groupthink. It is a phenomenon often observed where groups put too much value on reaching an agreement quickly. In this scenario, individuals do not raise concerns, express disagreement, or share alternatives because they feel this would undermine group cohesion. (See Leadership Step 6 for more).
• Lack of diversity: Where groups lack diversity, they will not benefit from the full range of perspectives of different stakeholders. Instead, they might take false comfort from the idea that because there are several of them in the room, they cannot have missed any views. 
• Not a safe space: Depending on the group’s norms, it might not feel safe to group members to propose ideas or to question those of others. This might be because there is a power imbalance in the group, or because ultimately decision making power is concentrated in a small sub-group. In this case, the less risky approach for group members is not to suggest ideas that contradict the decision-makers.
• ‍Risk aversion: A group can sometimes be more risk-averse than an individual if there is a perceived risk that there will be blame for ideas that go wrong. In this case, group members will only make very low-risk suggestions.

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Some useful creative tools for groups

These risks of group work show that for group innovation to achieve its potential, it needs to do several things:

• It needs to resist reaching a consensus too quickly.
• It needs to encourage a wide range of perspectives, including beyond the group.
• It needs to provide a feeling of safety for individuals to contribute ideas.
• It needs to reduce the feelings of risk.

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Ways to avoid reaching a consensus too quickly

To avoid a premature consensus, you could:

• Designate one member of the team to challenge emerging consensus actively, and to provide an alternative perspective. In some settings, this is called being the ‘devil’s advocate’ – forcing ideas to be thought through in greater depth. 
• Another approach is to set a goal for the number of ideas generated by the team (maybe 20 or 50), which will force the group to consider a much broader range of options than they otherwise would. 
• The group could also commit to taking several options through to a final decision where the merits and drawbacks of each approach will be considered. This gives time for multiple opportunities to be fully explored, rather than rushing too quickly to only pursue one idea. 
• The group could also be split into smaller sub-groups to champion different ideas, leading to a better final debate about the options.

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Broaden perspectives

To broaden the perspectives, you could: 

• Widen the membership of the group to include stakeholders who will be affected by the ideas that you are developing. For instance, if you are trying to improve some aspect of community life, you would want to have a diverse range of community members involved. If you are creating a new customer product, it is helpful to include some of those customers in the thinking, as well as suppliers and other partners. In an education setting, some institutions now make an effort to include students in decision-making bodies alongside other leaders. 
• If it is not possible to have other stakeholders in the room, there might still be a value in allocating different roles to individuals, asking them to approach the problem from that particular mindset – for example, a loyal customer or a concerned parent.

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Creating a feeling of safety and reducing fear of risk

• The leader of a group has a vital role in making the group feel like a safe space where individuals can contribute ideas without fear. This might include making clear that they welcome a full range of ideas, or that they don’t want to reach the final answer too quickly.
• Other tools, like generating ideas anonymously before sharing any of them could help here, so individuals feel that they will not be judged for what they come up with.
• At other times, it might be helpful for individuals to have space without a leader or with a neutral external facilitator so they can share their ideas without worrying as much about perceptions of themselves.

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