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Title: Enhancing Creativity as Innovation via Asynchronous Crowdwork
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.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1908374
PAR ID:
10356535
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
WebSci '22: 14th ACM Web Science Conference 2022
Volume:
14
Page Range / eLocation ID:
66 to 74
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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