1. Dr Martin Wale

2. The Nature of Creativity Institute of Personality Assessment & Research, 1956- 62 Personality tests, problem solving, etc. “The most creative people tended to be socially poised introverts”

3. The New Groupthink “Innovation – the heart of the knowledge economy – is fundamentally social.” Gladwell “None of us is as smart as all of us.” Bennis On-line collaboration – Linux, Wikipedia, etc.

4. Brainstorming (Osborn’s rules) 1. Don’t judge or criticize ideas 2. Be freewheeling. The wilder the idea, the better 3. Go for quantity. The more ideas, the better 4. Build on the ideas of fellow group members

5. But it doesn’t work! Working alone vs working in groups (3M) Individuals working alone produced more ideas of equal or higher quality than those working in groups Confirmed by many studies Performance gets worse as group size increases Except for online brainstorming

6. Why doesn’t brainstorming work? Social loafing Production blocking Evaluation apprehension

7. fMRI scans Playing alone Activity in occipital & parietal cortex, frontal cortex Playing in group & agreeing with wrong answer Less activity in frontal cortex More in occipital and parietal cortex Agreeing with the group actually changes perception Playing in group and disagreeing with answer Heightened activity in amygdala Unpleasant, fear of rejection

8. Putting it together 1/3 of the population are introverted They are a valuable creative resource Given space to work Implications for how we work Implications for schools, etc.

9. What do you call a quiet extrovert? High functioning!

10. Thank you! http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html