Jonah Lehrer tells us in his New Yorker article that brainstorming doesn’t work. Although it is common practice, if you gather a group and ask for ideas in an open format with no judgment allowed then you should expect inferior results. Who knew?

So what does work? Allow criticism and debate as ideas are being generated. To produce great innovations, create teams with a mix of people who know and have worked with each other with others they don’t know; teams that are too homogeneous/familiar with each produce less innovation. Nor do teams that don’t know each other at all. Organize the work environment so people have frequent opportunity for informal conversation. “The most creative spaces are those that hurl us together.”