When leaders, consultants and managers require ideas, they automatically tend to herd people into a room and conduct a (usually ineffective) brainstorming session. One reason for their ineffectiveness is a failure to consider the impact of group size.

There is a pervasive belief that creativity is enhanced in larger groups. However, significant data indicates that large groups are detrimental to creative output. Some of the arguments against large groups are:

a) The sum of ideas produced by individuals acting alone is greater than the sum of ideas produced by those same individuals when acting as a group.

b) Large groups dilute ideas.

c) Symptoms of group think increase as a group gets larger due to the illusion of invulnerability, unquestioned belief in the group