One of the least-understood reasons why ideas are often not successful is the impact of biases.
Biases in the scientific sense are mental shortcuts which our brains take, often because this is easier and more energy efficient.
However, they can also very often result in the brain making the wrong decisions, or preferring answers and ideas which are less creative.
In this article I want to begin showcasing the various known biases which have an impact of creativity and innovation performance. It may expand over time as more biases come to light.
Where I have written in more detail about individual biases, these have also been linked.
List of biases which affect creativity and innovation performance
- Additive Transformation bias
- Ambiguity Effect
- Anchoring
- Anti-Creativity bias
- Art bias
- Authority bias
- Availability Heuristic
- Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon
- Bandwagon effect
- Bias blind spot
- Confirmation bias
- Creative Cliff Illusion
- Creative Stereotype bias
- Curse of Knowledge
- Decision Fatigue
- Declinism
- Dunning Kruger effect
- Earned Dogmatism
- Egocentric bias
- Empathy Gap
- Endowment Effect
- Functional Fixedness
- GI-Joe Fallacy
- Groupthink
- Hindsight bias
- Hyperbolic Discounting
- Ikea Effect
- Illusion of Productivity
- Impostor Syndrome
- Information bias
- In-Group bias
- Loss aversion
- Mere exposure effect
- Naïve realism
- Normalcy bias
- Not-invented-here bias
- Observer-Expectancy effect
- Optimism bias
- Ostrich effect
- Plan continuation bias
- Planning fallacy
- Pro-innovation bias
- Pygmalion effect
- Selection bias
- Self-serving bias
- Semmelweiss reflex
- Status Quo bias
- Sunk Cost Fallacy
- Survivorship bias
- Law of Triviality
- Ugly Baby bias
- Zero-risk bias
- Zero-sum bias
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Nick Skillicorn
Chief Editor, Founder & CEO at Improvides Innovation Consulting
Creativity & Innovation expert: I help individuals and companies build their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you can develop the next breakthrough idea which customers love. Chief Editor of Ideatovalue.com and Founder / CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Author / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the most influential innovation bloggers.
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