My thoughts about the article The NEW GroupThink by Susan Cain

My thoughts about the article The NEW GroupThink by Susan Cain

Recently a student in my new online course in creativity for Drexel University: Tools for Creativity sent me Susan Cain's article titled: The NEW GroupThink.


I glanced quickly at it on Sunday night and found immediate mis-statements and I immediately wrote an attacking COMMENTS response.  The when I went to save the article for future reading as a FTP file I saw there were over 40 pages of other people's comments.  Then yesterday I received a colleague, Keith Sawyer's (author of Explaining Creativity and Group Creativity) attacking the same article.


So today I wrote several Facebook messages as I was reading Ms Cain's article


The following are all of my individual Facebook messages in one place.


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"Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all"

Is this true in your workplace or your classroom?


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"Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. "

what research?
where was it done?
who did it?


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another quote from a very poorly written article about creativity...

Consider Apple. In the wake of Steve Jobs’s death, we’ve seen a profusion of myths about the company’s success. Most focus on Mr. Jobs’s supernatural magnetism and tend to ignore the other crucial figure in Apple’s creation: a kindly, introverted engineering wizard, Steve Wozniak, who toiled alone on a beloved invention, the personal computer.

Yes Steve Wozniak, with the help of many fellow members of the HOMEBREW Club and Steve Jobs, created the Apple I, II.....it was the efforts of hundreds to thousands of people pushed by the obcessions of STEVE JOBS in orchestration with those tens to hundreds of people who worked with him and tolerated him that created what is now called APPLE, Inc.

If left alone Steve Wozniak would probably still be working at HP as a happy employee tinkering on technical things.


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ah yes Steve Wozniak may have said this in his memoirs...sharing advice for "fellow" inventors.

"...And artists work best alone .... I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone... Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

minor detail....

Not all and very few artists truly worked completely alone for very long.

Most had other artists to bounce ideas off of.

Very few disappeared to cabins on little lakes like Walden Pond and appear months later with a finished Guernica painting that no one had ever seen before.

yes some people prefer, like or appear to work alone for periods of time but not totally alone without contact or inspiration or involvement and input from other people whether equals (artists, scientists, engineers, architects, inventors)

whereas some others prefer to work mostly with teams of people they trust, are inspired by, challenged or provoked by.....much like apparently Steve Jobs tended to do with the many different groups (not sure the word team really applies) he worked with from the famous Macinstoch team to the "team" that created the iPod, iPhone, iPad and the iCloud.

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"If you look at how Mr. Wozniak got the work done — the sheer hard work of creating something from nothing — he did it alone."

still another mis-statement and interpretation..

Wozniak learned from playing other equipment and created his first computer much like many inventors. An invention. Not a product. Not a complete solution.

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“Without great solitude, no serious work is possible,” Picasso said

Ah yes tell that to anyone who has take some introvert's creative idea or concept and turned it into a finished solution or a manufactured product.

Chester Carlson had an aha. He spent time creating a work model that demonstrated his BREAKTHRU concept that he called "Xerography"

It took many scientists and technicians at the Battelle Institute and many employees at a small technical film company to tuen Carlson's "litte red box" into the first mass produced XEROX 904.

creativity happens in the minds and hands or loners
solutions that are mass produced require many introverts and extroverts to produce.

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"Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity."
Another example of the lack of knowledge or research the author of THE NEWGROUP THINKING article.

Many more research studies since the 1950s have shown that group brainstorming involving people who are trained in the use of the techiques of Brainstorming as created by Alex Osborn of BBDO in the 1930s and 40s and described in his numorous books in the 40s and 50s that are lead by trained and experienced Facilitators are EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE at stimulating creativity and creative ideas.

The author needs to contact the Creative Education Foundation, founded by Alex Osborn in the 1950s and the Buffalo State University International Creative Studies Department to learn that the very few studies that claim to "prove" that "...brainstorming session are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity." have actually been done or done well.


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"Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone."

no real problem with this statement that the author of The NEW GROUPTHINK sprinkles throughout her article as her main point.

My problem is her OUT OF CONTEXT referencing to RESEARCH that she nevers references or give complete information about.

Also she has forgotten or left out the extensive research that would discredit many of her claims.


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"But decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” wrote the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”

This same poor research appeared in Newsweek written two self-proclaimed science writers: Ashley Merryman and Po Bronson.

My request of the author of THE NEW GROUPTHINK do better research as I requested and many others did request of Merryman and Bronson when their equally invalid, incorrect article was published in Newsweek.

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here is another quote....this one I have been sharing from 


**my years of education

(BS in Architecture, 
MA in Interior Architecture 
combined with MEd in Guidance and Counseling of Gifted, Talented and Creative Individuals 
plus a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology studying 
how to teach creative thinking skills to individuals and groups or teams)

Sorry about the self-promotional bragging. I shared it to compare against the author who has written an essay/articles using individual puzzle pieces (quotes out of context from supposed research studies) to create the finished puzzle she calls her essay. Looks interesting but fairly shallow and often in correct in its claims.

Here is the quote that I believe most people will agree with.

"But it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. "

that is a valid generalization but not completely accurate about the reality of workplaces throughout the US or the World.


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