Imagine: How Creativity Works (21 page)

There is, of course, something very appealing about brainstorming. It’s always nice to be saturated in positive feedback, which is why most participants leave a brainstorming session proud of their contributions to the group. The whiteboard has been filled with free associations, the output of the unchained imagination. At such moments, brainstorming can seem like an ideal mental technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity.

There’s just one problem with brainstorming: it doesn’t work. Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, summarizes the science: “Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.” In fact, the very first empirical test of Osborn’s technique, which was performed at Yale in 1958, soundly refuted the premise. The experiment was simple: Forty-eight male undergraduates were divided into twelve groups and given a series of creative puzzles. The groups were instructed to carefully follow Osborn’s brainstorming guidelines. As a control sample, forty-eight students working by themselves were each given the same puzzles. The results were a sobering refutation of brainstorming. Not only did the solo students come up with twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups but their solutions were deemed more “feasible” and “effective” by a panel of judges. In other words, brainstorming didn’t unleash the potential of the group. Instead, the technique suppressed it, making each individual less creative.

The reason brainstorming is so ineffective returns us to the importance of criticism and debate, the very elements that define the Pixar morning meeting. (Steve Jobs has implemented a similar approach at Apple. Jonathan Ives, the lead designer at the company, describes the tenor of group meetings as “brutally critical.”) The only way to maximize group creativity — to make the whole more than the sum of its parts — is to encourage a freewheeling discussion of mistakes. In part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces its cost. When you believe that your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you’re less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong.

Consider this clever study led by Charlan Nemeth, a psychologist at UC-Berkeley. She divided 265 female undergraduates into five-person teams. Every team was given the same difficult problem: How can traffic congestion be reduced in the San Francisco Bay Area? The teams had twenty minutes to invent as many solutions as possible.

At this point, each of the teams was randomly assigned to one of three different conditions. In the minimal condition, the teams received no further instructions; they were free to work together however they wanted. In the brainstorming condition, the teams got the standard brainstorming guidelines, which emphasized the importance of refraining from criticism. Finally, there was the debate condition, in which the teams were given the following instructions:

“Most research and advice suggest that the best way to come up with good solutions is to come up with many solutions. Freewheeling is welcome; don’t be afraid to say anything that comes to mind. However, in addition, most studies suggest that you should debate and even criticize each other’s ideas.”

Which teams did the best? The results weren’t even close: while the brainstorming groups slightly outperformed the groups given no instructions, people in the debate condition were far more creative. On average, they generated nearly 25 percent more ideas. The most telling part of the study, however, came after the groups had been disbanded. That’s when researchers asked each of the subjects if he or she had any more ideas about traffic that had been triggered by the earlier conversation. While people in the minimal and brainstorming conditions produced, on average, two additional ideas, those in the debate condition produced more than seven. Nemeth summarizes her results: “While the instruction ‘Do not criticize’ is often cited as the [most] important instruction in brainstorming, this appears to be a counterproductive strategy. Our findings show that debate and criticism do not inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them relative to every other condition.”

There is something counterintuitive about this research. We naturally assume, like Osborn, that negative feedback stifles the sensitive imagination. But it turns out we’re tougher than we thought. The imagination is not meek — it doesn’t wilt in the face of conflict. Instead, it is drawn out, pulled from its usual hiding place.

According to Nemeth, the reason criticism leads to more new ideas is that it encourages us to fully engage with the work of others. We think about their concepts because we want to improve them; it’s the imperfection that leads us to really listen. (And isn’t that the point of a group? If we’re not here to make one another better, then why are we here? Just look at the Beatles: Lennon and McCartney had a famously combative and competitive relationship. But that turned out to be blessing in disguise, since all the internal disagreements inspired the songwriters.) In contrast, when everybody is “right” — when all new ideas are equally useful, as in a brainstorming session — we stay within ourselves. There is no incentive to think about someone else’s thoughts or embrace unfamiliar possibilities. And so the problem remains impossible. The absence of criticism has kept us all in the same place. (The emotion of anger also seems to have short-term creative benefits. That, at least, is the take-away message of a 2011 series of studies led by Matthijs Baas, Carsten De Dreu, and Bernard Nijstad. In their first experiment, they demonstrated that anger was better than a neutral mood for promoting creativity. In their second experiment, they elicited anger directly in some of the subjects, and then asked all of the study participants to brainstorm on ways to improve the environment. Once again, people who felt angry generated more ideas than nonangry people. These ideas were also deemed more original, as they were thought of by less than 1 percent of the subjects.) Of course, this doesn’t mean that anger is a cure-all or that nastiness is always wise. For one thing, anger is resource depleting: although angry subjects generated more ideas initially, their performance quickly declined.

To better understand the power of criticism — why it acts like a multiplier for the imagination — it’s worth looking at another experiment led by Nemeth. While the typical brainstorming session begins with an instruction to free-associate — to express the very first thoughts that enter the mind — that’s probably an ineffective strategy. In study after study, psychologists have found that people just aren’t very good at free-associating. For instance, if I ask you to free-associate on the word blue, there’s a 45 percent chance that your first answer will be sky. Your next answer will probably be ocean, followed by green, and, if you’re feeling creative, a noun like jeans. Our associations are shaped by language, and language is full of clichés.

How do we escape these clichés? Nemeth found a simple fix. Her experiment went like this: A lab assistant surreptitiously sat in on a group of subjects being shown a variety of color slides. The subjects were asked to identify each of the colors. Most of the slides were obvious, and the group quickly settled into a tedious routine. However, in some groups, Nemeth instructed her lab assistant to occasionally shout out the wrong answer, so that a red slide would trigger a response of “Pink,” or a blue slide would lead to a reply of “Turquoise.” After a few minutes, the group was asked to free-associate on these same colors. The results were impressive: people in the dissent condition — they were exposed to inaccurate descriptions — came up with far more original and varied associations. Instead of saying that blue reminded them of sky, they were able to expand their loom of associations, so that the color triggered thoughts of Miles Davis, Smurfs, and berry pie. The obvious answer had stopped being the only answer. More recently, Nemeth has found that the same strategy can lead to improved problem solving on a variety of creative tasks. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to invent a new brand name or decipher a hard insight puzzle. Beginning a group session with a moment of dissent — even when the dissent is wrong — can dramatically expand creative potential.

The power of dissent is really about the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer — red is called pink — you start to reassess your initial assumptions. You try to understand the strange reply, which leads you to think about the problem from a new perspective. And so your comfortable associations get left behind. The imagination has been stretched by an encounter that you didn’t expect.

These experiments demonstrate the value of Pixar’s morning production meetings. When the animators and engineers sit down on those couches with their cereal bowls, they know the meeting isn’t going to be very much fun. “Nobody likes to begin their day by learning about all the stuff they got wrong the day before,” says Bobby Podesta, the lead animator on Toy Story 3. “But we know that, if you want to make the best stuff, then you’re going to have accept some tradeoffs. You’re going to have to stay late at the office. You’re going to have to deal with critiques. Your feelings might occasionally get hurt.”

Nevertheless, Pixar strives to ensure that the criticism never gets out of control, that all the mistakes don’t become too demor-alizing. This is why the team leaders at Pixar emphasize the importance of plussing, a technique that allows people to improve ideas without using harsh or judgmental language. The goal of plussing is simple: whenever work is criticized, the criticism should contain a plus, a new idea that builds on the flaws in a productive manner. “Since we spend most of our day in these group meetings, it’s really important that the meetings stay relatively cordial,” Podesta says. “It could get pretty depressing if all we did was shoot each other down. And that’s why, when we do engage in criticism, we try to make sure the criticism is mixed with a little something else, a new idea that allows us to immediately move on, to start focusing not on the mistake but on how to fix it.”

When plussing works, it’s incredibly effective at generating creative breakthroughs. The criticism feels like a surprise, and that makes everyone in the room more likely to invent a plus, a new idea that moves the movie forward. According to Podesta, many of his best fixes come after the meeting, as he continues to contemplate the morning conversation. “It might be hours later, but I’m often still thinking about what the group talked about,” he says. “Maybe I’m still a little upset because I got taken apart. Or maybe we just exposed a really tough problem, and none of the proposed fixes really worked. But it’s like I put the problem on the back burner of my brain. And then, when I’m doing something else” — Podesta can often be found at the Pixar gym — “I come up with a better solution. I suddenly know how I should animate the face, or how that scene should go. I’m still plussing.”

This is why the Pixar process is so effective: while the groups engage in critical debate, it is a debate shot through with the unexpected, with the innovative ideas that emerge from relentless dissent. “The most wonderful part of working here are the surprises,” says Lee Unkrich, a Pixar director. “Before we begin every movie, there’s always the worry that maybe we don’t have any good ideas left. Maybe all our good jokes have been used up. But then the process begins and those worries mostly disappear. The team finds a way to make it happen. Because if it was just me making this” — he points to a computer screen with a frame from Toy Story 3 — “then the movie would stink. I’m not capable of surprising myself every day with some great new idea. That kind of magic can only come from the group.”

Sometimes, the dramatic improvements unleashed by the Pixar process can startle outsiders. In August of 2002, Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney, was given an advance screening of Finding Nemo, Pixar’s third full-length release. At the time, Disney wasn’t sure if it would renew its distribution contract with the fledgling studio. Eisner was not impressed by the film. As James Stewart recounts in DisneyWar, the CEO immediately e-mailed the Disney board: “Yesterday we saw for the second time the new Pixar movie Finding Nemo. This will be a reality check for those guys. It’s OK, but nowhere near as good as their previous films.” Eisner used the mediocrity of the movie to explain why he wanted to wait until after its release before restarting contract negotia-tions with Pixar. The creative failure would allow Disney to get a better deal.

But Eisner was wrong: Finding Nemo turned out to be a huge box-office success, grossing more than $868 million. While the rough cut was deeply imperfect, Eisner underestimated the power of Pixar’s iterative method. He didn’t realize that the studio excelled at fixing its failures, transforming a problematic draft into a polished final cut. (The director Andrew Stanton ended up restructuring the entire movie, cutting a series of flashbacks.) Ed Catmull summarizes this creative journey in typically blunt terms, describing it as the ability to go from “suck to non-suck.” The original Finding Nemo sucked. But then, after nine months of morning crit sessions, it ended up firmly in the nonsuck category, winning the 2003 Academy Award for best animated film. Disney ended up paying dearly for the negotiating delay.

It’s important not to sugarcoat the struggles of the Pixar process. Even plussing can’t prevent the occasional heated argument, and many employees complain about the grueling hours. (“At least they give us free food on the weekend,” Podesta says.) When I spent time at the studio, people answered many of my questions with references to the same traumatic experience: the making of Toy Story 2. Although the movie is more than a decade old, it remains a frequently cited parable at Pixar. Catmull, for instance, referred to the struggle of Toy Story 2 as “our defining moment. . . A lesson we should never forget.”

The problems with the film began in the fall of 1998, during the final days of story development. (Disney originally urged the studio to make the sequel a direct-to-video release, which meant it would have a smaller budget and shorter running time. However, Catmull and Lasseter concluded that the decision was a mistake. “We came to believe that having two different standards of quality was bad for our souls,” Catmull says. “You either always make the best stuff you can or you shut up shop.”) Pixar takes its stories very seriously. In fact, it often takes the studio longer to develop the narrative than to animate the movie. The process begins when the Pixar brain trust — a group composed of John Lasseter, Ed Catmull, and eight directors — hashes out the initial plot, often while sitting at a burger joint down the street. That sketch of a story is then turned into a treatment, a two-page document outlining the basic arc of the movie. Several drafts and plenty of crit sessions later, the treatment is handed over to a screenwriter. (Pixar frequently brings in outside talent to write the scripts. It’s one of the many ways they inject fresh voices into the process, ensuring the team maintains the right level of Q.) The studio doesn’t want a polished screenplay — it just wants something to get the process started. And so the script gets revised. And then revised again. Scenes are cut; scenes are added. New characters emerge to fill narrative holes. After a year of edits, the script is turned into a story reel, an elaborate sequence of storyboards. There is no animation yet, just drawn poses like in a comic book, with the lines read by Pixar employees. “The reels look very rough,” Catmull says. “But they’re an essential part of the iterative process. When you see the script as a movie, you see all the mistakes in the story. And there are always many, many mistakes.”