When we need new or more creative ideas from our team, usually we call for a group session where we evaluate the problem and what happens next in this kind of sessions is that people give their ideas and listen to other ideas and finally some ideas are picked and everybody leaves. Nobody criticise ideas too much because they were not supposed to do so, at least nobody told them to do so

Well the truth is that the opportunity is in criticising the ideas. Innovation is like a chain reaction that can be fuelled by a bad idea, a series of bad ideas can lead to a pretty good idea. For that chain reaction to happen we need to challenge immediately others peoples ideas, on what might or not might work, we should encourage openly the debate and even the criticising in the session. It is at this time where teams brains are engaged and focused on the issue and the solution they are giving so it is the best moment for the creator or anybody else to come up with an improved idea. Each person in this team working is then collaborating on each others ideas (usually the debate focuses on one idea, the one with the most potential) and that’s powerful!

Mathiew Syed, author of : “Please, no more brainstorm sessions. This is how innovation really works» says in his paper:

Creative ideas

Innovation is not inspiration coming out of the blue, it usually pivots over a problem, if the problem affects many people a great innovation will come. So creativity has to work out from the problem, via the flaws of potential solutions, a candid dialogue that leads to collaboration. He mentions an experiment in California where out of three groups, the group that came out with the best initiatives was the one that was encouraged to highlight the flaws in others ideas

“The basic finding is that the encouragement of debate and even criticism if warranted appears to stimulate more creative ideas. And cultures that permit and even encourage such expression of differing viewpoints may stimulate the most innovation.”

Thus, innovation grows in a culture where feedback is accepted and sought for, where this type of criticism is not taken personally, a culture of team working, collaboration where people with a positive challenging attitude feel free to speak

So when challenging someone you are in fact helping them to get better!

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