The Neuroscience


Of Innovation How Your Own Brain Limits


Your Creative Thinking By Susan Robertson


S


everal neuroscience principles limit our ability to creatively solve problems and generate innovative ideas. Understanding some of these principles can


help you optimize your creative thinking and innovation processes.


1. While your whole brain is working all the time, there are serious energy constraints. The brain stores no fuel and running on empty degrades performance significantly. Therefore, it needs frequent breaks from high energy usage.


One of the places you experience this brain energy


constraint most acutely is during the brainstorming phase. It's a fast and furious pace of generating ideas, potentially for a long time. Leaders have always known that taking breaks from ideation makes for better results, and this neuroscience principle is the obvious reason.


However, it's also important to help people understand


that they actually need to take a brain break, and to have the willpower to do it (instead of checking email or doing other work during the “break”). To help them, plan a little “enforced fun.” This can be things like group juggling, kid-like games, songs like “Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” or an impromptu dance session.


You’ll notice many of these activities have a physical


element. This physicality also helps with restoring some energy for the intensive brain work.


Another energy-enhancing tip: Feed people. A growl- ing stomach is not conducive for maximum output of


January 2022


ideas. Be sure to feed them satisfying food—not just sweets. Offer nuts, cheese, veggies, or fruit. You can offer sweets too, but always make sure there's some more sustaining fare as well.


2. The brain naturally limits System 2 thinking. Your brain has two types of thinking:


• System 1 (fast) is the “easy” type of thinking that we use most of the time. It’s intuitive and automatic. So, obviously, it’s also energy efficient.


• System 2 (slow) is thinking that requires more deliberation, more focus, more conscious thought, and literally uses more energy. Therefore, we subconsciously avoid it whenever we can.


If you avoid (or limit) System 2 thinking when it’s needed in


your innovation process, you will, at the least, miss out on re- ally good ideas, and at the worst, make some bad judgment calls that you might have avoided if you had effectively used System 2.


One of the phases where people frequently try to avoid Sys-


tem 2 thinking is immediately after idea generation, when it’s time to select the best ideas. The brainstorming is usually lots of fun. It’s fast and our brains are making subconscious and intuitive connections. Then comes the time we have to be fo- cused and deliberate to narrow to a manageable set of ideas. Suddenly, it all becomes a lot less fun.


Know that your team will try hard to avoid System 2 think-


ing, so you need to be prepared to counter the objections and ensure that the needed deliberate thinking will happen. For


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