The Squeak of Manufactured Ecstasy

The dry-erase marker is bleeding into its own felt tip, making a wet, squeaking sound that sets my teeth on edge. Kevin-the facilitator whose vest is exactly one size too small-is hovering near the whiteboard with an expression of manufactured ecstasy. He claps his hands together, a sound like a wet towel hitting a tile floor. “Remember the golden rule, team!” he chirps. “There are no bad ideas! We are in the safe zone. Just throw them out there. Blue sky!”

I shift in my plastic chair, the one that’s been digging into my lower back for the last 46 minutes. My mind is currently occupied by the structural integrity of a neon tube I’m supposed to be bending later tonight. When you’re working with 10006 volts and fragile glass, you don’t really do ‘blue sky’ thinking. You do ‘don’t explode’ thinking. But here I am, in Meeting Room B, watching a group of grown adults pretend that we are at the precipice of a revolution.

We are still brainstorming like it’s 1953, and frankly, it’s a miracle we’ve managed to invent anything since then.

The Myth of Multiplied Output

Alex Osborn, an advertising executive who probably had a very nice collection of hats, popularized the term ‘brainstorming’ in his book *Applied Imagination*. He claimed that group sessions could double the output of ideas. It was a lovely, democratic notion that fit perfectly with the post-war optimism of the time. The only problem is that he was almost entirely wrong.

Decades of psychological research have since shown that individuals working alone consistently produce more, and better, ideas than groups. Yet, we cling to this ritual. We love the circle. We love the Post-it notes. We love the feeling of ‘doing something together’ even when that ‘something’ is producing 116 variations of a bad concept.

Production Blocking and Self-Censorship

The failure of the group session isn’t a mystery; it’s a design flaw. It’s called production blocking. While Sarah is talking about edible lenses, I can’t be developing my own thought about polarized coatings. My brain has to pause its own creative track to process her nonsense. By the time she’s done, my original spark has been extinguished by the sheer effort of not laughing.

Then there’s evaluation apprehension. Despite Kevin’s insistence that there are no bad ideas, everyone in that room knows there are. We are social animals. We don’t want to be the person who suggests the ‘edible glass’ equivalent. So, we self-censor. We offer the safe, middle-of-the-road suggestions that won’t get us mocked in the breakroom. We trade brilliance for belonging.

The Technician’s Truth: Precision Over Feeling

I think about this a lot when I’m in the shop. Being a neon technician means spending hours alone with a blowtorch. You can’t ‘collaborate’ on a 4-foot curve of glass. If another hand touches it while it’s hot, the tension changes. It snaps.

Diluting Blame, Diluting Genius

This is why I find the modern obsession with ‘crowdsourcing’ innovation so exhausting. It’s a way to dilute responsibility. If a group comes up with a mediocre idea, nobody is to blame. But if an individual comes up with a radical one, they are exposed. Most corporate structures are designed to minimize exposure, not maximize genius. We spend $676 on catering for a session that yields nothing but a sense of vague camaraderie and a headache from the fluorescent lights.

I remember one project where they brought in 16 different stakeholders. By the time everyone had their say, the sign went from a sleek, minimalist ‘S’ to a cluttered mess that looked like a neon junkyard. It shorted out in 6 days. I had to go back and fix it alone, at 3:00 AM, in the rain. That’s when the real work happens-when the noise stops and the expertise takes over.

The Surgical Strike of Expertise

There is a profound difference between a meeting and a consultation. A meeting is a performance; a consultation is a surgical strike. When I look at the way some brands handle their clients, I see the same divide. Most places want to put you in a process, a one-size-fits-all conveyor belt of ‘options.’ But the things that actually matter-the way you see the world, literally-can’t be handled by a committee. It requires an intimate, precise understanding of an individual’s needs.

We often confuse the feeling of collaboration with the act of creation. They are not the same. Collaboration is great for execution, for moving the bricks once the blueprint is drawn. But the blueprint? That comes from the quiet. It comes from the person who isn’t afraid to sit in the silence after a bad idea is proposed. It comes from the technician who knows exactly how much heat the glass can take before it loses its shape.

The Time Cost of Nothing

I think back to Kevin and his whiteboard. By the end of the session, we had 46 sticky notes. One of them actually said ‘Synergy Spectacles.’ I looked at it and felt a physical ache in my chest. We had spent 236 minutes of collective human life to arrive at a pun that would make a suburban dad cringe.

What if we stopped? What if we admitted that the ‘safe zone’ is actually a vacuum? Real innovation is uncomfortable. It’s lonely. It’s the moment I’m holding a glass tube, sweat dripping down my neck, knowing that if I move my wrist three millimeters to the left, I’ve wasted six hours of work. There is no committee there to catch the glass. There is only the skill and the heat.

The Reality of Light

The committee doesn’t build the neon signs that light up the night; the individual does.

The loudest voice in the room is rarely the smartest; it’s just the one least afraid of the silence.

I eventually finished that sign for the boutique. I stripped away all the ‘collaborative’ additions and went back to the original sketch I made while sitting in my car eating a cold sandwich. It was simple. It was sharp. It worked because it was the product of a single, coherent vision. When the owners saw it, they didn’t ask about the 16 stakeholders. They just looked at the light.

Next time you’re invited to a ‘blue sky’ session, try an experiment. Don’t speak for the first 16 minutes. Just watch. Watch how the ideas move toward the safest common denominator. Watch how the ‘no bad ideas’ rule actually prevents the good ones from surfacing, because the good ones usually look like bad ones to the uninitiated.