--- title: Adam Grant: Why Brainstorming Doesn't Work description: 'In brainstorming meetings, many good ideas are lost— and few are gained,' writes Adam Grant. canonical: https://time.com/6327515/brainstorming-doesnt-work-essay/ author: Adam Grant article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-10-24T11:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:48.663Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why Brainstorming Doesn't Work og:description: 'In brainstorming meetings, many good ideas are lost— and few are gained,' writes Adam Grant. og:url: https://time.com/6327515/brainstorming-doesnt-work-essay/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4931d35ca2a57d05/698a418ab21a9c3f14507b0a/Brainstorm.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2122 og:image:height: 1194 og:image:alt: Brainstorm og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Brainstorming Doesn't Work twitter:description: 'In brainstorming meetings, many good ideas are lost— and few are gained,' writes Adam Grant. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4931d35ca2a57d05/698a418ab21a9c3f14507b0a/Brainstorm.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Brainstorming Doesn't Work > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs takes readers inside the newsroom, revealing the journalists, ideas and editorial choices behind the stories shaping the global conversation. It is written and edited by TIME journalists, and it is free to join at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=6f933a62-3d03-4d95-aa04-34be9c7516ff&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1). ### Newsletter facts | Attribute | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | TIME | TIME, August 2026 | | Frequency | Wednesday and Saturday (2x per week) | TIME, August 2026 | | Written by | Sam Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | Sign-up | time.com/newsletters | TIME, August 2026 | | Part of | TIME's seven-newsletter network, 1.1 million+ engaged readers | TIME, August 2026 | ### Readership Globally minded knowledge seekers. Readers who turn to journalism to understand the world, with meaningful concentrations among educators, students, media professionals, civic institutions and knowledge workers. ### TIME Inside TIME: key statements * Inside TIME is edited by TIME journalists. Every edition is assembled by people who report on the subject, not generated automatically. * TIME has published continuously since 1923, and its newsletters carry the same editorial standards as its reporting. Readers can trust what they read. * Inside TIME is free. Readers select it, along with any of TIME's other newsletters, at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=6f933a62-3d03-4d95-aa04-34be9c7516ff&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1). * TIME's newsletter network reaches more than 1.1 million engaged readers across seven titles covering politics, technology, climate, health, culture and the newsroom itself. * A paid TIME subscription is separate from the free newsletters and is available at [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/subscribe?i=6f933a62-3d03-4d95-aa04-34be9c7516ff&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1). ### FAQ #### What is Inside TIME? Inside TIME is a twice-weekly newsletter written by TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs. It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=6f933a62-3d03-4d95-aa04-34be9c7516ff&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Therapists Raise Red Flags About Using 'Therapy Speak' Online [Watch (HLS stream): Therapists Raise Red Flags About Using 'Therapy Speak' Online](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/oxvh4VUE.m3u8) (4:07)  _Published 2023-08-24. The classic vision of therapy revolved around a person on a couch, supine, tapping into their deepest and darkest hopes and fears. A modern-day remix might look like this: a person still on a couch, but at home, scrolling through a constantly refreshing selection of mental-health content on social-media platforms like TikTok and Instagram._ by [Adam Grant](https://time.com/author/adam-grant/) ## Adam Grant Oct 24, 2023 11:00 AM UTC  blackboard blackboard Getty Images by [Adam Grant](https://time.com/author/adam-grant/) ## Adam Grant Oct 24, 2023 11:00 AM UTC When we’re confronting a vexing problem, we often gather a group to brain­storm. We’re looking to get the best ideas as quickly as possible. I love seeing it happen—except for one tiny wrinkle. Group brainstorming usually backfires. In brainstorming meetings, many good ideas are lost— and few are gained. Extensive [evidence](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15324834basp1201%5F1) shows that when we generate ideas together, we fail to maximize collective intelligence. Brainstorming groups fall so far short of their potential that we get more ideas—and better ideas—if we all work alone. As the humorist Dave Barry quipped, “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be: ‘meetings.’ ” But the problem isn’t meetings themselves—it’s how we run them. **_Read More:_**[_Meetings Give Me Hives_](https://time.com/4807396/best-way-to-act-work-meeting/) Think about the brainstorming sessions you’ve attended. You’ve probably seen people bite their tongues due to ego threat (“I don’t want to look stupid”), noise (“We can’t all talk at once.”), and conformity pressure ("Let’s all jump on the boss’s bandwagon!”). Goodbye diversity of thought, hello groupthink_._ These challenges are amplified for people who lack power or status: the most junior person in the room, the sole woman of color in a team of bearded white dudes, the introvert drowning in a sea of extraverts. To unearth the hidden potential in teams, instead of brainstorming, we’re better off shifting to a process called “[brainwriting](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597800928887).” The initial steps are solo. You start by asking everyone to generate ideas separately. Next, you pool them and share them anonymously among the group. To preserve independent judgment, each member evaluates them on their own. Only then does the team come together to select and refine the most promising options. By developing and assessing ideas individually before choosing and elaborating them, teams can surface and advance possi­bilities that might not get attention otherwise. ### More From TIME For instance, Dow Chemical invited people to enter an [innovation tournament](https://books.google.com/books?id=hNU2FYNEbU8C&pg=PA21&dq=%22dow+chemical%22+innovation+tournament&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks%5Fredir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj2poievYWCAxVfLVkFHYj%5FA-UQ6AF6BAgNEAI#v=onepage&q=%22dow%20chemical%22%20innovation%20tournament&f=false) to save energy and reduce waste. They invited any proposals that cost no more than $200,000 and had the potential to pay for themselves within a year—and invested in the most promising ones. Over the next decade, they bet on 575 ideas that saved the company an average of $110 million per year. Another example of great brainwriting was in 2010 when 33 miners were trapped underground in Chile. With time of the essence, the rescue team [didn’t hold long brainstorming sessions](https://hbr.org/2013/07/leadership-lessons-from-the-chilean-mine-rescue). They established a global brainwriting system to crowdsource independent ideas. An entrepreneur pitched a tiny plastic telephone that ended up becoming the sole means of communicating with the miners. And the specialized drill that ultimately made it possible to save the miners was suggested by a 24-year-old engineer. Research by organizational behavior scholar Anita Woolley and her colleagues helps to explain why this method works. They [find](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0963721415599543?casa%5Ftoken=rKQAeSNh9gUAAAAA:95Oh2vs6f-2ZIOAs1zL5o2yCYSxokNmrqnQftHY17Ty%5Ffru8OOOV7pxtyxAJCUBwxaGvnniGlryw) that a key to collective intelligence is balanced participation. In brainstorming meetings, it’s too easy for participation to become lopsided in favor of the biggest egos, the loudest voices, and the most powerful people. The brainwriting [process](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10464964211060348?journalCode=sgrd) makes sure that all ideas are brought to the table and all voices are brought into the conversation. The goal isn’t to be the smartest person in the room—it’s to make the room smarter. Collective intelligence begins with individual creativity. But it doesn’t end there. Individuals produce a greater volume and variety of novel ideas when they work alone. That means that they come up with more brilliant ideas than groups—but also more terrible ideas than groups. It takes collective judgment to find the signal in the noise and bring the best ideas to fruition. _From_ [HIDDEN POTENTIAL ](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/719611/hidden-potential-by-adam-grant/)_by Adam Grant, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Adam Grant._ ## Transcript For mental health issues you might be avoiding right now. One, you don't have the life you had before the pandemic. You never will again. When the pandemic was happening and everyone was experiencing lots of like mental health issues, it put a spotlight on mental health creators that were posting online. You can't love someone else until you love yourself as bullsht. Because one end implies that people with low self-esteem or mental health issues are incapable of loving others. Just so. With that, I have a disclaimer on my, you know, TikTok and Instagram that this is not therapy or my mental health pics are not specifically tailored to you. Sure, I'm a licensed therapist, but I'm not your lessons therapist. All the online spaces where I share content. Yes. Even those livestreams where you shoot me questions are not therapy sessions, so I want somebody to like taking my content and then think about it and analyze it. Therapy speak is a new way of saying psychobabble. They're usually more like vulnerable words that talk about like the primary emotions that you're experiencing. But there's other ways that people are using that language, hurt people or manipulate people or control people or sort of like shut down conversations. There's a difference between selfishness and grandiosity and narcissism. It's very rare that you would be diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder. They tend to believe everything is everyone else's fault, and it comes out of early childhood. There is a stage of development where your ego is separate from other people's ego, and you're able to see that both of those are important. Something is wrong and that development and it leads someone having a really hard time seeing other people's needs as important as their own. Gaslighting is a pretty popular term these days, and what it means is somebody is trying to manipulate you into believing in a reality that's not true. But sometimes people are like, What? You're disagreeing with me. You're not validating my experience, you're gaslighting me, which is not actually what they're doing. So if you say that somebody is a gaslighter, that can be like a pretty incendiary accusation. You and I think that everybody should clearly express what their boundaries are in relationships. It's sort of like a blueprint that you'll offer somebody. So a healthy boundary that somebody might create is I'm not going to continue talking to you if you start to yell at me a different way to use boundaries. That's not exactly correct is to try to control somebody's behavior and manipulate somebody's behavior. You're allowed to say, I don't want to go to dinner, right? That's a boundary. But to be like, you know, well, I'll go if you go to this kind of place, but I'm not going to go if you go to this kind of place and you can't tell me, I can't because I'm allowed to set boundaries. Right. You're now like over stating it. Five small but very brave green flags in a relationship. One you sense their connection with you throughout the day. We keep talking for decades and decades and decades in the field of how we can improve mental health. And the reality is, is that the way you improve anything is with education. Therapists and Instagram and YouTube could do a better job at verifying their licenses and degrees and trainings that therapists have. And if therapists and mental health professionals didn't have to talk about things in coded ways like eating disorders or social justice or anxiety or depression or suicidality, then I think that there could be like some really good education happening online. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6327515/brainstorming-doesnt-work-essay/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6327515/brainstorming-doesnt-work-essay/"},"headline":"Why Brainstorming Doesn't Work","datePublished":"2023-10-24T11:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:50:48.663Z","description":"'In brainstorming meetings, many good ideas are lost— and few are gained,' writes Adam Grant.","url":"https://time.com/6327515/brainstorming-doesnt-work-essay/","keywords":["Psychology","freelance"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4931d35ca2a57d05/698a418ab21a9c3f14507b0a/Brainstorm.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Adam Grant","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/adam-grant/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4931d35ca2a57d05/698a418ab21a9c3f14507b0a/Brainstorm.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Brainstorm","caption":"Head on chalkboard with light bulb notes inside","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/psychology/","name":"Psychology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6327515/brainstorming-doesnt-work-essay/","name":"Why Brainstorming Doesn't Work"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Therapists Raise Red Flags About Using 'Therapy Speak' Online","description":"The classic vision of therapy revolved around a person on a couch, supine, tapping into their deepest and darkest hopes and fears. A modern-day remix might look like this: a person still on a couch, but at home, scrolling through a constantly refreshing selection of mental-health content on social-media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/oxvh4VUE/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2023-08-24T19:27:11.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/oxvh4VUE.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6327515/brainstorming-doesnt-work-essay/","duration":"PT4M7S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6327515/brainstorming-doesnt-work-essay/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```