The Creative Group Mind-Innovative Genius or Teamwork Dummy?

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The Creative Group Mind-Innovative Genius or
Teamwork Dummy?
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The challenge is clear Innovate or
evaporate! The Performance Group
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• CREATIVITY LEVELS
• INDIVIDUAL CREATIVITY
• GROUP/TEAM CREATIVITY
• ORGANIZATIONAL
  INNOVATION/SUCCESS

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CMMI Questions

• Is it better to work alone or in groups for
  creativity tasks?
• Is it helpful to work with individuals from other
  disciplines?
• What is the ideal group size for creativity
  activity?
• What is the best way to communicate in an
  innovative teamelectronically or face to face?

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CMMI Survey Percent Agreement Somewhat agree or
higher

• Brainstorming is effective--89
• People from outside disciplines hinder6
• Suspending constraints during ideation51
• Avoid criticism66
• Design teams can be more effective than
  individuals69

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Cultural Truths

• Group collaboration enhances creativity/innovation
  /learning
• Teamwork enhances productivity
• Diversity enhances benefits of collaboration

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Teamwork in Education

• Criteria three of the Accreditation Board for
  Engineering and Technology
• Skill in teamwork is a program outcome requirement

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Book Titles

• Mining Group Gold (Kayser, 1995)
• Building Team Power How to Unleash the
  Collaborative Genius of Work Teams (Kayser, 1994)
• Diverse Teams at Work Capitalizing on the Power
  of Diversity (Gardenswartz Rowe, 2003)
• Swarm Creativity (Gloor, 2006)

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Scientific Truths

• Group interaction tends to inhibit creativity
• Group interaction tends to lower productivity
• Illusion of productivity
• Diversity in groups often leads to negative
  emotions
• No consistent evidence for the benefits of
  diversity in teamwork

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Creativity Dilemmas

• Need domain expertise for creativity
• Examples or information can inhibit creativity
• Need collaboration for innovations
• Group interaction may inhibit creativity
• Need diverse talents/knowledge in teams
• Groups tend to focus on commonalities rather than
  differences

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Inhibitory Effect of Examples

• Providing examples produces fixation on features
  of the example
• Need change of context or multiple perspectives
  to overcome

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Auguste Kekule Benzene
James Crocker Hubble Repair
Kary Mullis PCR
Experimental Studies of Fixation, Incubation
Insight
Archimedes Displacement Principle
Henri Pioncare Fuschian Functions
Beethoven Canon for piano
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Idea Generation Conceptual Extension
Imagine another planet similar to Earth
What sort of life forms evolve there?
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Creature Ideas From Smith et al. (1993)
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Spill-Proof Cup from Jansson Smith (1991)

• Create, sketch, and label the parts of a new
  inexpensive spill-proof coffee cup. Do not use
  drinking straws or mouthpieces.

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Results
Seeing the example design greatly increased the
number of designs that

Have a straw or mouthpiece.
Leak.
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Conclusion

• Implicit knowledge can produce invisible impasses
  when you try to think creatively
• Have to find a way to overcome this impasse or
  get outside the box

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Osborn Brainstorming Rules

• Dont judge
• Say what comes to mind
• The more ideas, the better
• Build on ideas from others

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Osborn Predictions

• Rules help increase creativity in groups
• Groups will be more creative than individuals

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Typical Research Paradigm

• Experiments
• Short sessions
• College students
• Measures
• number of unique ideas
• quality of ideas

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Typical Research Paradigm

• Baseline comparison is critical
• Compare number of ideas of interacting groups
  with that of same number of solitary individuals
• Real groups versus nominal groups

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• Groups more creative ideas than individuals
• Groups fewer creative ideas than same number
  of individuals
• The larger the group, the more discrepancy
• Pairs of brainstormers most productive
  group
• More ideas, more good ideas

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Number of Unique Ideas Generated
DATA FROM COMPANY EMPLOYEES
Social Context
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• Average quality not different between groups
  and individuals
• Group members think that they are more
  productive and creative
• Illusion of group productivity

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Rating of Number of Ideas Generated
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Beliefs about number of ideas in brainstorming
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Group Dummy Model

• Group Dummy Principle
• lt
• Implies production losses of working in groups
• Groups less efficient than individuals
• 50 less productive

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Group Dummy Model

• Cognitive Interference
• distraction
• time competition
• multiple task interference

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Group Dummy Model

• Social Interference
• social apprehension
• social loafing
• move in direction of low performers

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Implication for Meetings

• Kill all your meetingsinterruption is the
  biggest enemy of productivity.
• Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, a company
  that creates programs to facilitate teamwork

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Teamwork Literature

• Benefits of self-managing teams
• Lot of data on factors enhancing teamwork
• Assume teams beneficial for innovation

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Intellectual Puzzle

• Teamwork and collaboration are great
• Group work is bad
• Different methods, paradigms, populations
• Different focus

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Teamwork Literature

• Real groups in organizations
• Compare impact of variables in teams
• Self-management/training important
• Typically no non-team controls
• Often measures of perception by
• participants, outsiders
• Many complex tasks are feasible only with teams
  of diverse skills

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Synchronous

• Individuals interacting in a limited time period
  on one task
• Meetings
• Lab sessions
• Brainstorming sessions
• Problem solving sessions

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Asynchronous

• Individuals interacting over a period of time on
  one or more tasks.
• As needed
• Alone/group sequences
• In person and electronic interactions
• Teamwork
• Periods of synchronicity

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Relevance of Groups Research

• Synchronous group interaction
• Asynchronous patterns
• Tasks which only teams can do

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Group Wisdom

• Basic Principle
• gt
• Example Obvious benefits of teamwork and
  collaboration.
• May involve the benefits of complementarity of
  skills and knowledge

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Production of KnowledgeWuchty et al. 2007,
Science

• Over the span of 5 decades, no. of authors
• Almost all fields increase in team size
• Teams more highly cited
• Effect is increasing over time
• Especially for highly cited papers
• Teams papers 6.3 more likely to be cited 1000
  times than individual papers in science and
  engineering

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The Search for SynergyThe Holy Grail

• Performance of groups better than a similar
  number of individuals
• No evidence with face-to-face groups
• So far no evidence with work teams

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Group Genius or Synergy

• Group Genius Principle
• gt
• Implies synergy
• Groups generate more and/or better ideas
• Teams more than sum of their parts

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Semantic network
Pants
Violin
Hat
Banjo
Gloves
Guitar
Mittens
Clarinet
Flute
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A Cognitive Model for Group Genius

• Categories of knowledge
• Diversity
• Attention
• Associational stimulation
• Memory
• Incubation/deeper processing

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Limiting the Genius Factor in Groups

• Need to multi-task
• generate, attend, process, coordinate
• lack of opportunity to generate
• lack of opportunity to process

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Optimizing the Genius Factor

• Efficient interaction paradigms
• Writing
• Electronic brainstorming
• Efficient communication
• Alternating group and individual ideation
• Task focus

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Brainwriting
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Brainwriting Study

• Two Sessions/Same Task
• Alone or Group in Session 1
• Write/Exchange Ideas
• Alone in Session 2

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Brainwriting Task
Number of Ideas
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Electronic Brainstorming

• Exchanging idea on computers
• Group decision support systems
• Access to others ideas during brainstorming

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Electronic Brainstorming
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Electronic Brainstorming

• Groups equal to or better than similar number of
  individuals
• Larger groupsmore productive
• Small groupsproductive if emphasize attention to
  others ideas
• Benefit of exchange in subsequent solitary
  brainstorming session

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Individual and Group Sequence

• Individual to group?
• Group to individual?
• Indiv/Group/Indiv
• Time/activity between sessions may be critical

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Individual and Group Sequence
Number of Ideas
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Keys To Effective Group Creativity

• Task Focus
• Task Motivation
• Effective Information Processing

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Task Focus

• Clear instructions/rules/minimize irrelevant talk
• Attending to others
• Brief breaks
• Task decomposition
• Training

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Task Motivation

• Competition
• High goals
• High performance norms
• Selected group members

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Effective Information Processing

• Writing/electronic
• Efficient communication
• Periodic priming
• Incubation opportunities
• Alternating individual and group ideation
• Brief breaks
• Diversity

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Future Directions

• Collaborative team grant
• Develop model of the group creative mind
• Group dynamics, cognitive science, computational
  modeling
• Immersive reality
• Brain imaging

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Future Directions

• Translational research in real world settings
• Meetings
• Work teams
• Collaborative learning
• Innovation in science and engineering
• Intelligence analysis

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Using Our Innovative Potential

• We use only 10 of our brains?
• We tap only __ of our group brains
• We tap only __ of our collective innovative
  potential
• Executive MBA students

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Using Our Innovative Potential

• Research on collaborative creativity can increase
  our ability to tap our individual and collective
  creative potential
• Collaboration can then enhance the innovative
  impact of individuals
• Can lead to lead to creative group synergy

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Conclusions

• Collaborative teamwork for innovation makes sense
  in terms of simple addition of talent
• Collaborative teamwork may tap only a fraction of
  the innovative potential of the team
• Applying our understanding of the creative group
  mind may suggest ways to tap this potential

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They who most effectively tap their collective
potential will win the innovation race! The
UTA Group Creativity Lab