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Team innovation requires that teams use effective approaches to the innovative processes. This involves problem construction, idea generation and their evaluation, selection, and development. As they are considering a problem for creative efforts, team members need to discuss the various ways they can conceptualize the problem (problem construction). This will facilitate the subsequent collaborative ideation processes. Effective collaborative ideation requires efficient means of exchanging ideas, some degree of task relevant diversity, and a high level of motivation. The evaluation and selection process in teams tend to focus on feasible ideas. We outline some of the procedures that will enhance the probability that the highest quality ideas will become part of the innovation development process.

In creativity research a typical problem is that of assessing the novelty of ideas or solutions generated by many people to open ended problems. For datasets larger than a few hundreds, human assessment of novelty becomes time consuming and error prone. Existing novelty detection methods such as: distance based text similarity or language model approaches do not work well for small datasets. Moreover, when compared to human novelty ratings, these approaches fail to capture the same cognitive processes or biases. We are proposing a novel cognitive model inspired by a leaky accumulator decision making models for detecting novel ideas from short text. The model is applied on a collection of ideas generated in a group brainstorming experiment. It evaluates an idea term by term and it accumulates surprise and relevance. The final novelty decision is taken at the end of each idea by means of a threshold. An important component of the model is a small domain dataset which is used to evaluate the surprise of a term’s context compared to common domain knowledge. The model is compared with other methods: feature based classifiers, tf-idf similarity distance, and pretrained language models (ULMFIT).

Three experiments were designed to test the efficacy of ideation procedures that involved alternation of individual and group idea generation sessions (hybrid brainstorming) as compared to traditional individual and group ideation. The hybrid condition led to the best performance in terms of number of ideas generated. This effect was strongest in comparison to the group condition. A meta-analytic comparison involving all three experiments indicated that the hybrid condition outperformed both the alone and the group conditions. Since after each group idea exchange session there was an enhancement in the number of ideas generated in the alone session, the pattern of performance in the hybrid condition supported the cognitive perspective of group creativity (Nijstad & Stroebe, 2006; Paulus & Brown, 2007). Social cues in the form of the co-presence of other participants in the alone condition, the addition of practice sessions to all conditions, and an additional phase did not change the pattern of results. The results of the experiments support the original suggestion by Osborn (1953) that the most effective brainstorming process is one that involves a variation in individual and group ideation.

Teresa Amabile’s groundbreaking work on the social perspective of creativity provided inspiration to those interested in investigating group influences on creativity. The subsequent empirical and theoretical developments in that field are quite consistent with the componential model of creativity. This chapter highlights these connections and directions for future research.

Team creativity involves a number of phases. In this chapter, we focus on three that have received the most research attention – problem identification and construction, idea generation, and idea evaluation and choice. We examine in detail the key social and cognitive processes that influence the outcomes of these three phases. We discuss how the basic principles we have outlined provide a solid basis for leading teams to greater success in the creative collaboration process in work settings. We also suggest how the research and principles we have highlighted can be applied to design thinking and propose a number of directions for future research.

It is often presumed that diversity of group members will enhance group creativity. However, the evidence for this has been mixed. This chapter summarizes the state of the science in this area and provides an integrative framework based on the categorization elaboration model of van Knippenberg and colleagues. It focuses on the factors that influence the expression of diverse perspectives, attention to such expressions, the elaboration of the shared ideas, and how these lead to creative outcomes. It evaluates the importance of identity factors in this process and discusses the potential impact on both divergent and convergent creativity. It notes some of the gaps in the literature and suggests future directions.

Group creativity research has a relatively short history. Although there is a long tradition of research on individual creativity, for many years there was little acknowledgment of the creative potential of groups. In recent years this has changed, and this book provides a comprehensive overview of this work on group creativity. This chapter provides a brief history of the research on group creativity. It also summarizes the key contributions of each chapter, dealing with the impact of individual characteristics or behavior, basic processes or theoretical approaches, various contexts in which group creative occurs, and various applications of group creativity. Finally, we highlight common themes, and suggest directions for future research.

This chapter reviews the extensive literature on brainstorming to determine potential best practices. It presents the major theoretical perspectives and highlights their relationship to the various factors that influence the effectiveness of brainstorming. It examines the utility of verbal brainstorming, electronic brainstorming, and brainwriting for generation of creative ideas. It evaluates the effects of instructions, breaks, facilitators, training, tapping semantic categories, turnover, and group size. It also notes the gaps that exist in the literature and future research directions. It is clear that there is now considerable evidence to guide effective brainstorming and produce performances in groups that exceed those of comparable sets of solitary brainstormers.

The issue of prison confinement has been a volatile one for a long time. This chapter aims to evaluate the various perspectives on prison confinement, and examines the major justifications for incarceration and the related empirical evidence. It deals with the psychological effects of long-term prison confinement and examine the variables that influence reactions to prison confinement, such as the characteristics of inmates, the physical environment, and the type of institution. Clinical programs could be designed for sex offenders and those suffering from various psychological problems. Programs designed to deal with the educational and job-skill deficiencies of many inmates might increase their chances of successful adjustment to society upon release from prison. The elevated indications of stress in the beginning of the prison term may reflect emotional reactions to the disruption of a prior lifestyle, family separation, and the uncertainties involved in being a resident in a new environment.

This study tested creativity of small electronic brainstorming (EBS) groups as a function of the homogeneity and heterogeneity of assigned sub-topics (categories) of a broader problem over time. A total of 168 participants were exposed to categories of high or low degree of relatedness, and their performance was tracked over time in group and e-nominal paradigm. Findings revealed that the EBS groups became more creative and exhibited slower productivity loss compared with the e-nominal groups over time. The assignment of homogeneous categories enhanced the average originality of ideas, over time especially for the EBS groups. The findings have implications for theoretical as well as practical perspectives for creative processes in small virtual brainstorming groups.

As organizations are becoming increasingly dependent on collaborative teamwork there has been a major shift in focus from individual to team based innovation. Value is increasing in promoting team level creative competence in students. Hence, this chapter examines research on creativity with a special focus on collaborative creativity and its application in the context of education. We discuss the theoretical basis for collaborative creativity, different techniques for generating ideas in groups, the process of selecting the best ideas, and the role of culture and diversity in collaborative creativity. We then review the literature on collaborative creativity in various education disciplines. Finally, we make research- based recommendations on ways to promote as well as enhance collaborative creativity and innovation in educational settings.

Past research examining group creativity has focused almost exclusively on the divergent process of ideation. However, we recognize that group innovation is also dependent upon convergent processes such as idea selection and implementation. In the present chapter we review the existing theory and research relevant to both the divergent and convergent processes of effective group innovation. We place particular focus on the ways in which facilitating conditions may impact each innovation phase (divergent and convergent), whether similarly or uniquely. Finally, we present a theoretical model in which we propose various intervening factors that may link productive group ideation to optimal idea selection and implementation.

Semantic analysis of text corpora is of broad utility, including for data from conversations, on-line chats, brainstorming sessions, comments on blogs, etc. – all of which are potentially interesting sources of information and ideas. In the present paper, we look at data from a large group brainstorming experiment that generated thousands of mostly brief statements. The ultimate goal is to detect which statements are semantically atypical within the overall corpus. In contexts such as spam detection or detection of on-line intrusions, autoencoders have been used successfully to separate typical from atypical data, and we consider this approach in the present paper. Texts are embedded in a semantic space obtained through topic analysis, and an autoencoder network is used to reconstruct each embedded text. The results show that, while difficulty of reconstruction is related to quantitative measures of atypicality in the embedding vector space, it is not well correlated with novelty assignments made by a human rater. However, this is not the case when the data is first clustered in the embedding space: The reconstruction error for each data cluster indicates that some clusters represent more novel data than others, and that the inverse size of the cluster and the mean reconstruction error of the texts in the cluster capture this well. In particular, autoencoders that enforce dimensionality reduction improve discrimination. The results also show that, in the reconstruction process, the autoencoder implicitly discovers the same clusters in the data that are discovered explicitly by an optimized k-means approach.

Teamwork has been a growing feature of modern organizations, and much of today’s innovation occurs in the context of collaborative teams. In this chapter we discuss the various factors that may influence group creativity and offer suggestions to achieve creative synergy in organizational teams. We review the literature on individual differences in creativity and the research on group composition for collaborative creativity. We discuss the factors that will influence the degree of impact individual differences and the personality factors and cognitive orientations that influence group processes and group creativity. We highlight a number of ways in which the effects of individual differences may not be simply additive within groups and that ideal group composition may vary for different phases of the creative process. We propose a contingence/configural model to predict the effects of group composition on creativity.

Sharing ideas efficiently and effectively in groups is a challenge groups and teams face on a daily basis. In typical face to face meetings, many factors can serve to inhibit a full sharing of ideas and thus the development of effective decisions and plans. To overcome the limitations of face to face meetings, computer based group decision support systems have been developed to facilitate both idea exchange and evaluation. Evidence suggests that such systems can lead to beneficial outcomes. However, unless they are utilized appropriately, even electronic meetings may not effectively tap the intellectual and creative potential of groups. The authors will critically evaluate the theoretical and practical issues involved in the use of this technology and make recommendations for using electronic systems for e-planning.

In this chapter, we present an overview of some major topics and themes explored in the research on team creativity. We discuss the strengths and limitations of some primary methodological approaches to the study of creativity in teams, including short-term team settings, long-term team settings, and case studies. We also explore some of the major theories of collaborative creativity, which to varying degrees focus on contextual and organizational factors, as well as motivational, cognitive, and social processes involved in enhancing innovation in teams. We evaluate the sometimes conflicting findings from research on team size, participative safety, conflict, affective processes, and supportive versus constrained environments. At a broader level, we discuss interteam and network dynamics as they impact team innovation. Finally, we summarize some areas of research that seem to have conflicting or paradoxical effects, suggesting areas of future research focus.

In this chapter, we explore a variety of issues related to creativity and innovation in group and intergroup contexts. We draw a distinction between creativity in individuals versus groups and discuss some of the major theories of group creativity. We describe the search for creative synergy in group creativity and the paradigms designed to enhance collaborative creativity. We evaluate the research that has examined the role of different types of diversity on group creativity, and we consider the role of various constraints to the creative process. We discuss how certain intergroup and interteam contexts and factors can impact innovation in groups. Finally, we point out some limitations of the research in these areas and suggest potential areas of future research.

Three studies examined the role of prior consideration of categories on a brainstorming task. Participants were asked to generate abstract categories before they brainstormed either in groups or individually in Experiment 1. It was expected that generating categories before ideation would be beneficial. However, it was found that category generation harmed the group ideation process. Prior category generation reduced clustering of ideas within categories for groups, which might have led to a decrease in productivity. The last two experiments examined whether groups would benefi tb y brainstorming one category at a time because this might increase clustering. It was found that sequential category brainstorming helped increase productivity during the ideation process and increased clustering. These studies demonstrate that a prior categorization phase can facilitate subsequent brainstorming because it enhances subsequent clustering of ideas within categories.

A number of studies on electronic brainstorming have found that large electronic groups can facilitate the number of ideas generated relative to control groups of similar numbers of solitary performers (nominal groups). Thus far there is no clear evidence for the basis of this facilitative effect. The most likely explanation is that group members benefit from exposure to the wide range of ideas in large groups. Since most electronic brainstorming studies appear to divide the presented ideas into subfolders to avoid overloading participants with too many ideas, this practice may be important for demonstration of a benefit of exposure to a large number of ideas. The present study was designed to assess the role of number of ideas and number of folders on individual idea generation and to eliminate some alternative interpretations for the group size effect. Participants performed an idea generation task on computers while being exposed to either no ideas, 28 ideas, or 112 ideas. The 28 and 112 ideas were presented in either one, four, or eight folders. The results indicated that only the number of ideas factor was important for facilitating idea generation.

When groups gather to generate creative ideas on a particular topic, they can consider many aspects or components of the problem. Because such a multitude of alternatives can be overwhelming, groups may find it helpful to focus on specific aspects or categories of the problem. However, it is not clear whether it is best for group members to focus on the same components of the problem at the same time or whether it is better for group members to focus on different components of the problem. Furthermore, the impact of this type of focus may depend on the extent to which the different components of the problem are closely related semantically. It may be easier to generate ideas in semantically related areas but semantically unrelated areas may stimulate generation of more creative ideas. The present study provided a comprehensive test of the effects of task components or category assignment and the degree of relatedness of the assigned categories on the creativity of groups. Groups that were jointly assigned a small set of categories to focus on at the beginning of their session generated more ideas, explored more categories and exhibited higher clustering of similar ideas than the groups whose members were assigned their own unique category. The groups assigned with low related categories surveyed more categories than those assigned with categories of high relatedness. This study suggests that interdisciplinary or diverse groups or teams should have some common focus in the initial phase of their creative sessions and focus on unrelated aspects of the problem in this phase.

The present study examined attitudes toward diversity as a moderator of outcomes of diversity in workgroups. Two studies were conducted that focused on the development of the Attitudes Toward Diverse Workgroups Scale (ADWS) and on the impact of diversity attitudes on task performance and psychological reactions in actual face-to-face diverse brainstorming groups. The first study supported the internal consistency and stability of the ADWS and revealed that it was related, in the predicted way, to the Big Five and general prejudice. The second study revealed that high scores on the productive and affective dimensions of the ADWS enhanced brainstorming performance (quality of ideas) in actual diverse groups and positive psychological reactions to the group experiences, respectively.

Conceptual combination has been advocated as an important component of creativity, but relatively little research has investigated its importance. Two experiments were designed to extend previous research on the relationship between performance on conceptual combination tasks and subsequent performance on creativity tasks. Both experiments involved the generation of category exemplars and manipulated the type of conceptual combination experience and whether the items presented were related or unrelated to one another. In the first experiment, this was followed by a brainstorming task (divergent thinking) and in the second experiment by a creative problem solving task (convergent thinking). Contrary to expectations, the condition that required conceptual combinations did not enhance the generation of the number and originality of exemplars. As predicted, exposure to unrelated items led to more original products than related ones. The conceptual combination task with related items was predictive of performa...

Two experiments were conducted to explore the process of building on ideas in brainstorming. Although this is presumed to be an important role of brainstorming, this has never been explored experimentally. In one experiment individual and group brainstormers generated ideas which were subsequently presented to these same individuals and groups to combine and build on for additional ideas, either as groups or individuals. The combination process was influenced by whether the participants had previously brainstormed alone or in groups and the phase of the combination period (early vs. late). In a second study participants were presented lists of rare or common ideas to combine and build on either as individuals or groups. Although groups generated fewer combinations than nominal groups, they generated more novel and feasible combinations when combining rare ideas. These findings indicate that groups are able to benefit from the exchange process in building on each other's ideas and are interpreted in the context of past research on idea generation and evaluation in groups.