Imagine you have to stabilise a wobbly structure made of Lego bricks. Most people add bricks. The simpler solution would be to remove one. This reflex – adding – lies behind a large proportion of the innovation problems I see in organisations.
What the Additive Bias does to organisations
In 2021, a study published in Nature by Adams and colleagues systematically demonstrated this: people prefer adding over removing – even when removing is the obviously better solution.
A process has become too complex? Add a coordination role. A strategy is not working? Add another initiative. A meeting is inefficient? Add an agenda template. Never cut. Always supplement.
Innovation culture does not emerge through new programmes. It emerges when we stop unlearning what people naturally bring.
Why LLMs make the same mistake
The Additive Bias is not only human. It is also machine. Studies show that Large Language Models also prefer to add rather than reduce when revising texts and solving problems. This means: when we deploy AI as an innovation partner, it brings the same bias. It is not solved. It is amplified.
How children overcome the Additive Bias
Children have no trained solution patterns and no investment in the existing solution. A child facing a wobbly Lego structure tries everything: add, remove, rebuild from scratch. That is the KIDULT moment: the willingness to discard solutions that work – because there might be better ones.
Three exercises against the Additive Bias
Three exercises against the Additive Bias
The subtraction question. Before proposing a solution, first ask: what could I remove? What would have to go for the problem to dissolve rather than be solved?
The blank sheet experiment. Once a quarter, take a process in your team and start on a blank sheet. Not improve. Rethink.
The 10% cut rule. For every new initiative that is added, something existing is removed. The reflex this rule trains is more valuable than the rule itself.
Innovation does not emerge from adding. It emerges from removing the self-evident – and seeing something that was not visible before. That requires exactly what children can still do and adults have unlearned: the willingness to start again from scratch.
This topic is central to the KIDULT keynote. Enquire directly →