New findings from Binghamton University reveal surprising insights into the best ways to organize people for idea generation. This research could transform how companies foster creativity and innovation within teams.
Managers often grapple with the challenge of organizing employees for optimal idea generation. Recent research from Binghamton University sheds light on this dilemma, revealing unexpected insights into whether large or small groups, similar or diverse team compositions, and open or restricted communication channels yield the best creative outcomes.
Led by Shelley D. Dionne, a professor and dean of Binghamton’s School of Management, and Hiroki Sayama, a SUNY Distinguished Professor in Binghamton’s School of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, who have both been exploring complex group dynamics for nearly two decades, the study delves into how various clusters of people tackle creative tasks.
The research, published in the journal npj Complexity, sheds new light on the effectiveness of different team structures.
The study, conducted between 2018 and 2020, involved 617 students who collaborated anonymously using an online interface resembling Twitter on two tasks: creating a marketing slogan for a new laptop and writing a fictional story.
The participants worked in clusters of 20 to 25 people, contributing ideas over 10 days and interacting with their peers by commenting on or liking suggestions.
Language analysis of initial self-introduction essays helped group students by shared views or backgrounds. Some groups communicated freely within the entire group, while others connected only with their immediate “neighbors” in a ring-shaped chart.
The study found that broad communication, surprisingly, stifled idea diversity.
“If you connect all the participants in the social networks so that everybody can see everybody else’s ideas in the timeline, the experiment clearly showed that it killed idea diversity,” Sayama said in a news release. Instead, participants with limited interactions produced more creative ideas.
Conversely, wider communication expanded happiness but diminished idea quality.
Moreover, groups with diverse backgrounds tended to produce more conservative ideas, as expertise led individuals to vet and steer discussions toward safer alternatives. Remarkably, random group connections were most likely to produce the best ideas.
Comparing idea generation to evolutionary processes, Sayama added, “When two people are talking to each other, you are one island and I am another island. There is a channel that connects the two islands, and the ideas we are exchanging are like birds or fish or insects moving back and forth.”
Effective idea generation is akin to biodiversity, where ideas either thrive or perish based on their adaptability.
Dionne emphasizes the interdisciplinarity strength of the research.
“Relating idea generation to evolutionary processes enabled the research team to use a common framework when deciding how to test assumptions, but the common framework was merely a starting point,” she said in the news release. “Without each team member bringing their unique expertise to the investigation, we may not have been able to drill down into understanding collaborative actions in social network structures.”
While the findings challenge conventional approaches to team organization, Sayama acknowledges the complexity of implementation in real-world settings. Future directions may explore simpler strategies to adapt these insights within company contexts, aiming to balance idea diversity and project objectives.
Although the research was briefly paused due to the pandemic, Dionne reflects on the exciting potential of their discoveries, adding, “When I look back to 2018, ‘artificial intelligence’ honestly was not being widely discussed in management literature, let alone employed as an analytic tool. I knew once we could be together again that we had a unique opportunity to push the field forward.”
The paper, titled “Effects of network connectivity and functional diversity distribution on human collective ideation,” is not the final word.
“There are lots of different messages that each person who reads this paper can take from the findings,” Sayama added. “This is definitely not the conclusive end of the project — it only opens up many other directions that we hope we can pursue.”
These insights from Binghamton University could potentially transform organizational strategies, fostering more effective and innovative idea generation within corporate environments.