THE NEUROSCIENCE OF INNOVATION Another all-too-common scenario: The team has spent several
hours together generating ideas. Then, everyone gets five sticky dots to vote for top ideas. Most people will do this in five minutes and immediately dash out the door. They weren’t forced to engage System 2 thinking, so they won’t. Their decisions will rely on System 1, with all its concurrent biases, shortcuts, and mistaken intuition. There will never be the deliberate, conscious, effortful thinking that’s needed at this stage. If this is the typical process in your innovation sessions, you need to make some significant changes.
3. The brain is a “Bayesian inference machine.” Huh? Bayesian logic is a very specific, formulaic method that
provides a disciplined way of combining new evidence with prior models. So, the reference to our brains being a Bayesian inference machine is obviously a metaphor, although a very apt one. Whenever people are faced with new information, they use it to
only slightly refine—not completely rethink—their existing models/ beliefs/hypotheses. Rarely do we assume new data means our existing beliefs might actually be wrong. Instead, we make only incremental and minimal adjustments to our existing beliefs—the least possible change in our thinking that will account for the new data. Further, the more experience you have in a subject, the more of
these existing assumptions you have about it. You are likely not even aware of all these embedded assumptions; many of them are so
ingrained in your thinking that it wouldn’t occur to you to ques- tion them. They are presumed to be fact, if you even consciously recognize that you have these beliefs. Obviously, to reach truly breakthrough insights and ideas, you
must go beyond incremental thinking. To get there, we need to consider the possibility that our view of the world (or the market, or our product category, etc.) might need shaking up. Given that our human tendency is to retain existing mental models, you need to consciously be doing things to help you and your team break out of this natural limitation on new thinking. Our brains are constantly making shortcuts, mostly in the
interest of conserving energy. As a result, your brain will sub- consciously limit your thinking in ways you’re not aware of, unless you consciously and actively manage it. Remaining vigilant about these neuroscience-based barriers can help you dramatically improve your creative thinking and your innovation processes.
Susan Robertson empowers individuals, teams, and organizations to adapt more nimbly to change by transforming thinking from “why we can’t” to “how might we?” She is a creative thinking expert with over 20 years of experience speaking and coaching in Fortune 500 companies. As an instructor on applied creativity at Harvard, Susan brings a scientific foundation to enhancing human creativity. To learn more, visit
https://susanrobertson.co/.
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