63% RETURN WITH A DEVIANT INVESTMENT

What if I told you that you could earn a 63% increase on your investment in 20 minutes? Would you take the risk and go for it? Or would you play it safe keeping things the same.

That is the value of having a Deviant Thinker on your team.  Just by having someone who is willing to debate and question it causes the whole team to be more creative. A report “Better than Individuals? The potential benefits of dissent and diversity for group creativity” by Nemeth, C.J., & Nemeth-Brown, B. compared the difference between control group (A) that was simply told to brain storm ideas and group(B- Deviant Group) that was told to brainstorm ideas by debating and questioning the ideas. The second group (B-Deviant Group) that was given permission to debate had 63% increase of in the number of creative ideas that were surfaced.  Not only were there more ideas.  The ideas of the Deviant Group (B) were also deemed more creative.

Next time you need to brainstorm with a group. Change the rules.  Tell everyone let’s debate this one out.  Let’s allow ideas to surface but let’s look at those ideas from all angles and really question ideas until we get to the heart of things. All ideas are not good ideas, and often the first ones are not our best.  So keep going and question your own ideas.  What if the opposite could be true?

I know you will see the return on your investment.