Unintentional Outcomes as a Catalyst for Brainstorming

Abstract

Companies increasingly engage in ideation exercises both with their employees and the public. One field experiment with Marketing and Sales employees at a candy company and four laboratory studies demonstrate a novel strategy to promote ideation quantity and quality. They reveal that prompting people to reflect on a history of their own unintentional outcomes in different domains can promote subsequent ideation in brainstorming tasks. This occurs because reflection on one’s unintentional outcomes can incite motivation to regain threatened control. We demonstrate this effect in various domains and in several different contexts that have practical implications for both organizational managers and individuals. Further, we identify a theoretically driven moderator of this effect, showing that the promotion of ideation occurs subsequent to control threats in domains perceived as relatively malleable, in which there is an expectation that control can be regained, but does not in domains perceived as relatively non-malleable.