ist Magazine January 2022

Feature

The Neuroscience of INNOVATION How Your Own Brain Limits Your Creative Thinking by Susan Robertson

S everal neuroscience prin- ciples limit our ability to creatively solve problems and generate innovative ideas. Understanding some of these principles can help you optimize your cre- ative thinking and innovation processes. 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 sig- nificantly. 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 obviously why. However, it’s also important to help peo- ple understand 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 or 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 intensive brain work. Another energy-enhancing tip: feed peo- ple. A growling stomach is not conducive for maximum output of ideas. Be sure to feed them satisfying food – not just sweets. Offer nuts, cheese, veggies or fruit. Oh, you can offer sweets, too – but always make sure there’s some more sustaining fare, as well. 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, obvi-

If you avoid (or limit) System 2 thinking when it’s needed in your innovation pro- cess, you will, at the least, miss out on really 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 in which people frequently try to avoid System 2 thinking is immediately after idea generation, when it’s time to select the best ideas. Brain- storming is usually lots of fun; it’s fast, and our brains are making sub-conscious and intuitive connections. Then comes the time when we have to be focused 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 thinking, and you need to be prepared to counter the objections, and ensure that the needed deliberate thinking will happen. For example, people will say, “It takes too long to review all the ideas. We don’t have time.” Or, “Let’s just have everyone champion a few ideas instead of re- viewing all of them. The ones we remember are probably the best ones, anyway.” (Which isn’t true, but that’s another topic.) t

ously, it’s also energy-efficient. • System 2 (Slow) is thinking that

requires more deliberation, more focus, more conscious thought and, literally, uses more energy. So, we subconscious- ly avoid it whenever we can.

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January 2022 istmagazine.com