According to a recently published study of the effects of more frequent brainstorming (Does Practice Make Perfect? The Contrasting Effects of Repeated Practice on Creativity by Melanie Brucks & Szu-chi Huang), more ideation sessions do not lead to an increase in unique ideas.  Instead they generate lots of ideas, but not lots of unique ideas.

While most business practices get better with practice, unfortunately it seems the 10,000 hour rule doesn’t apply to creativity of ideas.  When looking to generate truly new ideas, we’ve found it’s helpful to begin by getting the top-of-mind ideas out as the first step … help participants clear their minds.  Only then can we utilize stim and questions that come at the core challenge from multiple viewpoints to prompt more unique ideas.  Even consider including stim or questions that don’t appear even related to the core business or challenge to open the mind to completely new ideas.  While they may be bizarre at first, those outliers might become the foundation for a truly unique idea.