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Synchronous, face-to-face interactions such as brainstorming are considered essential for creative tasks (the old normal). However, face-to-face interactions are difficult to arrange because of the diverse locations and conflicting availability of people—a challenge made more prominent by work-from-home practices during the COVID-19 pandemic (the new normal). In addition, face-to-face interactions are susceptible to cognitive interference. We employ crowdsourcing as an avenue to investigate creativity in asynchronous, online interactions. We choose product ideation,a natural task for the crowd since it requires human insight and creativity into what product features would be novel and useful. We compare the performance of solo crowd workers with asynchronous teams of crowd workers formed without prior coordination. Our findings suggest that, first, crowd teamwork yields fewer but more creative ideas than solo crowdwork. The enhanced team creativity results when (1) team workers reflect on each other’s ideas, and (2) teams are composed of workers of reflective, as opposed to active or mixed, personality types. Second, cognitive interference, known to inhibit creativity in face-to-face teams, may not be significant in crowd teams. Third, teamwork promotes better achievement emotions for crowd workers. These findings provide a basis for trading off creativity, quantity, and worker happiness in setting up crowdsourcing workflows for product ideation.
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Tacking Amid Tensions: Using Oscillation to Enable Creativity in Diverse Teams
Diverse teams may potentiate greater creativity through divergent thinking. Yet research suggests these teams face a dilemma: the very features that make them promising are associated with persistent communication challenges that threaten their effectiveness. We turn to the literature on dialectical tensions to argue that a process of oscillation, consisting of repeated alternation between moments of divergence, emphasizing the differentiation of perspectives, and moments of convergence, emphasizing integrating ideas to produce coordination, may mobilize the tension between differentiation and integration effectively. We explore the utility of our framework by applying it to the experiences of a diverse cohort of researchers who engaged in a purposefully designed oscillatory process to generate research projects related to climate resilience. Our multimethod evaluation of this case indicates that oscillation was effective for creative idea generation. This work contributes to both practice and scholarship in interdisciplinary teamwork support, creativity, and organizations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1745889
- PAR ID:
- 10210613
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
- ISSN:
- 0021-8863
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 002188632096024
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886320960245
