Like Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting, individuals can solve more complex problems quicker and more efficiently than Internet-based group brainstorming, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories said today.
The researchers looked at solving what they called “Wicked problems,” which they defined as problems that by their very definition are so tangled that there is no agreement about their definitions, much less their solutions.
The finding that individuals are more successful than groups in computer-mediated brainstorming suggests a time- and cost-saving potential for companies, the researchers said. Generally, when electronic group brainstorming is compared to face-to-face brainstorming, it is touted as having the advantages of shorter meetings, increased participation by remote team members, better documentation via electronic recording, and cash savings. But the Sandia research suggests that people working to solve problems on their own might involve less time and, thus less expenses, than electronic group brainstorming, the researchers said.
“In this day and age of email and the Internet, our expectations were that computer-mediated group brainstorming, i.e. across the web with no face-to face contact, was going to have the best results,” said George Davidson, a member of the technical research staff in a release. “What we found, however, was that people working as individuals were at least as effective and possibly more so than those brainstorming in a group over the web when trying to solve ‘wicked,’ tangled problems, both in terms of quality and quantity.”
“Some problems are so complex that youhave to be highly intelligent and well informedjust to be undecided about them.”–Laurence J. Peter
Reseachers recruited 120 Sandia employees and contractors and 26 student interns through an internal online daily newsletter and word of mouth to participate in the experiment that lasted four days in August.
The participants were broken into two groups, those who worked alone and did not see the ideas of the other participants and those who worked in a group and were able to see and build on the ideas of the other members in the group via the Labs’ intranet.
Of the 120 employees and contractors, 69 contributed ideas.During the experiment, participants logged onto the website anonymously and saw the wicked problem question displayed at the top of the screen. They were asked to input their ideas – the more the better, but no name calling or abusive language.
The research was unusual because, while studies have been conducted with large brainstorming groups, most have been performed in academic settings with college students as participants. This experiment was, to the research team’s knowledge, the first done in a laboratory/industrial setting over an extended period of time, according to a Sandia release. In addition, most previous studies looked only at quantity – number of responses – while only a small number examined the quality of the ideas. The Sandia experiment analyzed both.
Responses to Hunter’s question were scored by team members according to originality, feasibility, and effectiveness, Sandia said. Responses were also analyzed by a Sandia-developed text analysis tool called Stanlley.
“We were amazed at the length and quality of the responses, both from the people working as a group and those working individually,” one researcher said. But the quality of ideas from the people responding as individuals was “significantly better across all three quality ratings.”
By the way, if you never saw Good Will Hunting, Damon’s character is a janitor at MIT who has an uncanny knack for solving wicked math problems.
