Your Best Ideas Are Often Your Last Ideas

Research has clearly shown that people’s creativity tends to increase or stay constant over the course of an ideation session. Nevertheless, most of us consistently underestimate the value of persistence in the creative process — a fallacy the authors refer to as the “creative cliff illusion.” While it is true that we tend to produce fewer ideas the longer we brainstorm, we inaccurately assume that that decline in productivity correlates with a decline in the creativity of the ideas we come up with. And this misperception can lead us to stop brainstorming too early, before we’ve reached our best ideas. Luckily, the authors’ research also suggests that increased awareness of this phenomenon — either through prior experience with the reality of creative work, or through explicit education — can reduce its potency. Based on these findings, the authors propose several tactical strategies for managers looking to foster creativity in their teams, including explaining and reminding people about the counterintuitive nature of the creative process, setting aside extra time for ideation, and constant experimentation and iteration to improve how teams come up with new ideas.