The myth of the creative spark and why we are doing brainstorming sessions wrong

A creative flash is deeply influenced by two factors, which is why many brainstorming sessions based on collective idea sharing are ineffective.

We all know the story of Isaac Newton sitting under a tree when an apple falls on his head, leading him to suddenly conceive the universal law of gravity. If the apple had fallen on my head or yours, would it have occurred to us that "every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them"? Of course not, even if a watermelon had fallen on our heads, because we wouldn't have the slightest idea about what is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two bodies. This illustrates that a prerequisite for the birth of such a groundbreaking idea is that the head on which the apple falls possesses sufficient information, and the shoulders upon which this head stands have ample experience in the field.

A creative flash is thus deeply conditioned by these two factors, rendering many brainstorming sessions based on collective idea sharing ineffective.

Therefore, instead of gathering all the "young, modern, creative" people of the company and encouraging them to think freestyle to come up with some brilliant idea, it would be more productive to spend the majority of time on focused thinking and analysis. This entails:

• Analyzing the problem we want to solve,
• Understanding the audience for whom we need to solve this problem,
• Researching all existing solutions to the same or similar problems,
• Considering how to adapt these solutions to our market/audience, and
• Thinking of common-sense solutions to the problem without overcomplicating matters, as is often done in the industry.

This is not to say that we should discourage creative or lateral thinking. However, without a thorough analysis of the problem, the audience, and the existing solutions, the chances of it having a meaningful impact are significantly lower. Therefore, it is advisable to reserve it for later stages, when all team members are fully aware of the goals that need to be achieved with the requested fresh and unconventional ideas.

In this manner, over time, we will accumulate enough experience to recognize patterns in problem-solving processes and become familiar with a plethora of similar examples, solutions, and case studies that can be applied in a given situation. Ultimately, we will be able to do all of this quickly enough to make it appear as though we've delivered an instant idea that is the result of our creative flash—similar to what is seen in "Mad Men" type shows, or as in the favorite response to the question, "How long did it take you to come up with this solution?" Two hours... and several years of solving similar problems.