When leaders, consultants, and managers require ideas, they automatically tend to gather people in a room and hold a (usually ineffective) brainstorming session. One of the reasons for its ineffectiveness is the lack of consideration of the impact of group size.

There is a widespread belief that creativity increases in larger groups. However, significant data indicates that large groups are detrimental to creative output. Some of the arguments against large groups are:

a) The sum of ideas produced by individuals acting alone is greater than the sum of ideas produced by those same individuals when they act as a group.

b) Large groups dilute ideas.

c) The symptoms of groupthink increase as the group grows due to the illusion of invulnerability, the unquestioning belief in the morality of the group and rationalization through the collective justification of decisions.

d) As the size of the group increases, the percentage of individual performance decreases. A single person is 95% engaged in a task, two people are 90% engaged each, and the decline increases until it evens out at about 15 members at about 30%.

e) Groups of three to five elicit much more compliance than just one or two.

f) Large groups increase levels of apprehension about evaluation and social loafing.

g) Large groups result in core and peripheral members, which restricts the flow of information.

h) Conflict is inevitable as group size increases, leading to subgroup formation and politicking.

i) Large groups create subgroups with conflicting identities and goals.

j) Large groups introduce time inefficiencies. 30 individuals can work on 30 problems and produce 150 ideas (30 x 5) in the same time that 1 group working on 1 problem produces 5 ideas (1 x 5).

The above and other data suggest that group size should be kept small. But there are also benefits to large groups, such as a high degree of intellectual cross-pollination, a high degree of skills sharing, and a radical break in the framework. And what are the pros and cons of people working alone and in pairs?

This topic is covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity and Innovation, which can be purchased (along with a creativity and innovation audit, good idea generator software, and a PowerPoint presentation) at http: //www.managing-creativity. com. You can also receive a free periodic newsletter by entering your email address on this site.

Kal Bishop, MBA

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