14 Creativity and Collaboration

So far in this book, we’ve discussed the individual experience with the creative process. Often, this is what people think of as being creative–a singular figure doing a lone, quasi-genius feat. The wild-eyed poet, the painter in the studio in the woods, the eccentric inventor with a workshop full of fantastical tools. (This is heavy, Doc.)

And while there is a lot of honor in that singular pursuit, creativity is actually just as much a collaborative act as an individual one. In fact, great examples of teams being creative together are everywhere–your favorite music groups, all the people listed in the credits of movies and TV shows, the many smart humans that developed the apps and products you are using right now to read this very text.

The Difference Between Individual and Collaborative Creativity

What’s fascinating about the individual creative cycle and a team being creative together is that there is a lot of parallel between the processes, as we’ll examine a little later in this section.

But a group of individuals tackling a problem together, or collaborative creativity, can have some big advantages over the singular creative genius, too. There’s a magic that is possible when a team’s wide-ranging perspectives, skills, and experiences come together towards a creative solution, creatinga dynamic interplay of ideas sparking one other. The combined output of a team can create something much greater than the sum of its individual contributions.  

And it’s not just because of the sheer number of people involved, either. In fact, too many team members can water down the creativity and initiate a regression to the mean. Instead, the magic of creative collaboration is in the interaction between the right collection of team members. Collaborative creativity thrives on:

• Alchemy of ideas: The Preparation element of has a much greater volume of expertise and experiences than one person’s Preparation. And the Incubation and Illumination elements have more power, as teammates’ ideas can spark a completely new and unexpected idea in someone else.
• Distinct perspectives: Team members bring different backgrounds, educations, experiences, and ways of seeing the world. This leads to better Illumination and Verification, when ideas can be vetted with a wider range of empathy.
• Dogsled progress: Rarely does a team hit a creative block. Like a dogsled team, creative collaboration can rely on many members pulling together. When one team member hits a wall and needs to Incubate, others can step in and keep the project moving forward, or help generate fresh ideas and connections.
• Constructive challenge: There is a consistent element of Verification all throughout the creative collaboration process. Team members can challenge each other’s ideas, pushing the group to think more critically and refine their concepts.

As with any relationship, collaborative creativity involves a lot of negotiation, adaptability, concession, and compromise. It takes a carefully-designed team as well, with the right mix of different perspectives, strengths, and temperaments. And it takes a healthy dose of emotional intelligence during the process.

And while individual creativity can be great fun and highly energizing when generating initial ideas or finding that flow state, collaborative creativity shines at developing and refining those ideas into robust and innovative solutions. It allows for a deeper exploration of possibilities, a more rigorous evaluation of potential outcomes, and often a broader application of the final product.

Divergent and Convergent Thinking in Teams

Collaborative creativity follows a pattern that is a bit different than individual processes, due to the larger amount of ideas and interaction (though, as you’ll see below, the overall process remains very similar).

This pattern in creative collaboration is known as Divergent-Convergent Thinking. Here’s a quick visual of the pattern:

As depicted here on the left, Divergent thinking is a stage in which a team is generating a wide range of ideas. Each team member is exploring and bringing ideas to the group, bouncing ideas off of teammates’ suggestions, and the like. It’s the brainstorming-type phase where the goal is quantity over quality. Or another way to think of this phase is like everyone is working together, digging for gold all over a field–well, the golden idea anyway.

In a team setting, divergent thinking might involve:

• Brainstorming as a team–the good kind where everyone participates and all ideas are welcomed without judgment.
• Guided activities like mind mapping, free association, or synectics to explore different perspectives of a problem.
• Pie in the Sky thinking, where teammates imagine money or time are no objects and concoct ideas that might seem wild or impractical.

In divergent thinking, the team is generating lots of ideas, increasing their chances of conjuring a truly innovative one.

Once you have a slew of ideas, it’s time for convergent thinking. As depicted in the image above, convergent thinking is when the wide group of ideas starts narrowing back town toward a unified one. This mode focuses on moving forward with the most promising ideas, narrowing down the options. Sometimes the team still might not know the precise path forward, but they choose a general direction to head in.

In a team, convergent thinking might involve:

• Critically assessing the divergent ideas based on project criteria.
• Using pros and cons to separate ideas with the most potential.
• Determining which ideas give the team the best options to complete the task.
• Voting or ranking to prioritize ideas.
• Developing a focused plan of action based on the selected ideas.

Both divergent and convergent thinking are crucial for successful collaborative creativity. Teams need to effectively switch between these modes, knowing when to generate a broad spectrum of ideas and when to critically evaluate and refine them.

The Creative Process: Individual and Collaborative Models

The infographic below illustrates the way divergent and convergent thinking work in stages during creative collaboration. Over the next few chapters, we’ll break down each of these stages. 

The important thing to notice here is that each stage is made up of a cycle of a team going through divergent thinking, then turning back in with convergent thinking. And with each stage, the divergent thinking gets a little narrower. While it starts out very wide, each stage brings the team closer together in their thinking and application of creativity to the problem, so their focus as a team takes on a tighter window as the ideas take shape.

And while this divergent-convergent thinking is a hallmark of collaborative creativity, there is also a remarkable similarity between these stages and the individual creative process. See the following infographic and think through the similarities you can envision.

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An Introduction to the Design Sprint

We are using the model outlined by IDEOU to study creative collaboration because its divergent-convergent model illimknates how the creative process works within a team setting. However, there are also a large number of frameworks that teams and organizations frequently use to structure and inspire creative collaboration.

You have likely heard of Design Thinking, and its close cousin, the Design Sprint. These two frameworks utilize the divergent-convergent thinking pattern and overlay it with a series of outlined steps, each step focusing on an element of product or solution development.

These frameworks are designed to move fast. While individual creativity can be efficient for generating initial ideas, collaborative creativity can move much more rapidly when developing and refining those ideas into robust and innovative solutions.

The Design Sprint was developed at Google Ventures as a way to generate new products and services as quickly as possible. It is designed as a time-constrained, five-phase process. The five phases help creative teams keep track of where they are in the process and have clear team objectives. And the time constraints, perhaps counterintuitively, are viewed as a booster to the team creativity, because within this framework teams don’t have the leisure to talk through ideas at length. They make decisions and go. Often, design sprints result in subpar or flawed products–which are simply thought of as prototypes. This is partly due to the speed, but it’s part of the philosophy as well. The team moves fast, makes something, gets feedback, then starts the creative collaboration again to refine their first idea.

The usual format for a design sprint is spread out over five days, with each day serving a single-minded purpose. Teams move through an intensive brainstorming and prototyping session compressed into a single week, though variations exist.

Here’s a brief overview of the typical five phases:

1. Understand (Monday): The team comes together to clearly define the problem, identify the target audience, and establish the project goals.
2. Sketch (Tuesday): Teams often break out in this phase to individually sketch or write out their ideas. This encourages divergent thinking before coming back together.
3. Decide (Wednesday): Moving into convergent thinking, the team reviews their individual sketches and together decide the most promising ideas to prototype.
4. Prototype (Thursday): With time running out, teams quickly create a prototype of the chosen solution. There’s no expectation that the team will get it right the first time. Rather, this stage is designed to make something that can be tested.
5. Test (Friday): Just like in Verification, the  prototype is tested with stakeholders and users from the target audience. Their feedback helps the team know where to focus the next time through the process.

A full Design Sprint might seem intensive, and, well, it is! But it’s highly effective and often fun. By taking away the expectation of instant success, planning in divergent and convergent thinking steps, and using the beauty of deadlines to inspire desperation openness to ideas, design sprints harness many of the most powerful elements of collaborative creativity.