Set your brain on Innovation
Understand how slow/fast thinking can help you better innovate

1. Introduction
We all know it, you can not be creative on demand. “Go ahead, be innovative now! “. It does not work.
Our great ideas manifest themselves in the shower or while walking, doing something other than worrying about it at the moment. However, we have known for a long time how to create the best conditions for a group to generate new ideas. Today the neurosciences confirm and clearly explain the merits of the brainstorming rules.
Designers’ experience has resulted in the “Design Thinking” method which incorporates these rules and lays down the principles and conditions for making innovation on demand (and for the user). We may also refer to divergence and convergence, concentration and relaxation (as in the shower).
And yet, that does not always work.
The facilitator, whose responsibility and talent is to create the most favorable conditions, must be watchful towards the slightest variations in the energy and dynamics of the group. He must know how to play on pressure and relaxation so that the energy remains positive, and brings the participants to their best creative potential.
This article explores, in the light of what neuroscience tells us about our behavior in groups and under the pressure of time and challenges, how we can be more watchful towards what promotes creativity within a group. The simple little exercise below illustrates the fast and slow thinking that governs our behavior in order to become aware of it and to keep only the best part of it.
We must know how to use our instinct while remaining vigilant not to make too hasty choices. We must know how to concentrate and analyze without falling into the excess of reflection. In any case, we must be attentive to the conditions in which we use our thinking (our brain) to make the best of it.
Exercise
Take a look at this video that displays words in color. As they appear, say aloud the font color of the colored words as quickly as you can (Say the color, not the words !).
2. Analysis
Now, come back to what you’ve just experienced an reflect. How did it go ? Easy at first ? And then ? Reflect on how you felt, how you reacted.
The first sequence was quite easy as the words matched the color of their fonts. It was routine work and it was fast and easy to play.
In the second part, something was different. The words didn’t match their font color anymore. Your brain detected something wrong. A problem. You went from routine or automatic mode to reflexive mode. It took longer. It demanded some intellectual effort, some more energy. Like if your brain had to activate additional circuitry or processes that obviously took longer. Even though the sequence had been slowed down in this second part, you had more and more difficulty to catch up.
After a short while, you decided to adapt and to develop a strategy to improve your performance. You probably found the trick to not read the words and decided to focus on the color only. You may even have intentionally blurred your vision to make it easier. But it didn’t last long, you were missing some more energy on the end and you recognized that more training would have made it.
You’ve just experienced the difference between fast thinking and slow thinking and also adaptation
The terms fast thinking and slow thinking were introduced by the Nobel prize Daniel Kahneman who described in his book « Thinking, Fast and Slow » our two main thinking modes: system 1 fast, instinctive and emotional, and system 2, slower, more thoughtful and more logical. In his book he describes how our decision making works and how our emotions can influence it.
Our system 1 allows us to be quick and instinctive but can be too emotional.
Our system 2 is more rational but at the risk of being a little too much.
Knowing how to use the best of both is the key to creating the best conditions of inventiveness and collaboration.
3. Fast thinking
Fast thinking is when you are running in automatic mode. When everything you do is familiar, when it has been acquired after some learning and practicing (like reading words and decoding colors). Everything that has been acquired does not need to mobilize all our of your brain. You run your automatic pilot and your brain can then spend its energy for something worthy.
Remember how much it cost you to learn how to drive in the beginning. How hard it was to check your mirrors, press the clutch pedal, select the first gear, turn on the signal, look over your shoulder, everything in a row, and how little thought this requires you today.Today we do all this automatically and can dedicate our mind to something else.
Fast thinking is good for creativity
Fast thinking is good because you’re throwing away your ideas spontaneously, which is exactly what we need here. Your expertise expresses itself without your judgement or the self-censoring that you might impose to yourself involuntarily. You are expressing almost unconsciously all that you brain has registered for years in your domain of expertise. Even things that you thought you had forgotten !
This is what the group expects from you at this moment. That’s why they invited you to join this brainstorming session and to contribute to this multi-disciplinary group. The time constraint imposed by the facilitator helps you stay spontaneous because it doesn’t give you time for overthinking, judging, filtering or rejecting ideas. Referring to the creative thinking diamond, fast thinking is when you diverge.

Fast thinking can be bad for creativity
Fast thinking is nothing but your automatic mode, your routine work, the things that you’ve been doing the same way for many years. You know how to do it fast and it doesn’t cost you much. You are efficient but there is nothing less innovative, imaginative than your routine work, on the other hand. This is just not what we need if we want to think out of the box.
The time constraint imposed by your boss as he just asked you to fix a problem quickly prevents you from looking at alternatives and sticks your plane to the ground when you should probably be taking off.
Let’s make it short, there is good and bad fast thinking
Note that in this article good and bad do not refer to any moral judgment like fighting between good and evil. We are simply weighting the positive or negative impact on creativity under certain conditions.
There are moments where fast thinking helps producing new ideas and others where it leads you to the opposite and make you circumvent the basic rules of brainstorming and collaborative working.
Different factors, the environment, the social or the working context can influence the way you are going to use your fast thinking.
You may want to detect when fast thinking is running while you should probably be reflecting at the expense of producing an additional effort.
In a group it is the facilitator’s role to manage the energy of the group and the individuals to get their best.
4. Slow thinking
Slow thinking is good for reflection
It is the perfect process to classify all that’s been produced during a brainstorming session. After great ideas have been generated, they need some categorization, prioritization or rationalization. Slow thinking is when you converge (in the creative thinking diamond). Slow thinking demands more energy and may require the facilitator to boost the group after a playful ideation session. Because it’s necessary to keep the momentum and to come back to serious work for a while in order to strike when the iron is hot.
Slow thinking can be bad for reflection
It can be triggered when something unusual or unpleasant is happening. A situation perceived as a danger by your brain, whether it is vital or simply a social threat, like destabilizing your beliefs or your position in the group. Slow thinking takes place when a challenge is imposed to you, when your credibility or integrity is at stake. You may even be thinking to much and trigger knowledge biasses, argue, counter-attacks, which in any case will be counter-productive for the group.
Let’s make it short, there is good and bad slow thinking
Reflecting, classifying, converging is a productive activity while arguing, ruminating, skewing, whether intentionally or not, may be detrimental to the group. Again, it is key to understand that when reflecting takes place under favorable conditions it benefits the group and the project.
Different factors, the environment, the social or the working context can influence the way you are going to use your slow thinking.
5. You will want to learn
And then, if you repeat this experience, for example if you are interested in strengthening your mind by decoding colored words, you will want to learn. You will want to save your brain the pain to call the reflective cortex circuits once again. Slow thinking took you to reflect, analyze, find patterns, combine what you already knew with these new situation and learn until this knowledge is fully acquired and does not mobilize your high-consuming slow thinking brain anymore. Information has finally become knowledge, you’ve got a new routine and your brain can work faster.
6. Conclusion
It can be interesting to make the difference between fast and slow thinking and to be able to understand when the conditions are met to take the full advantage of both during, say, an innovation workshop, collaborative work or complex problem solving.
The facilitator and each of the participants are asked to be attentive to what can impact the group’s performance, to detect what can make the difference between spontaneity and routine, concentration and rumination and to share it with honesty and goodwill within the group in order to create a fully creative experience.
As a facilitator, I use this exercise as an ice-breaker to introduce these few rules of vigilance and to enhance goodwill within the group: spontaneity not emotivity, reflection not rumination.
