Uploaded byR. Sosa
Idea generation in teams
The document discusses research into how the structure and composition of design teams impacts their creative output and process. The study examined how teams composed of members with strong social ties (friends) versus weak social ties (strangers) performed creative tasks. Teams of strangers tended to find the tasks easier, had more leadership and coordination, and produced more original solutions. Meanwhile, teams of friends had more in-depth discussions, better coordination due to familiarity, and generated solutions with better technical quality. The research suggests team creativity depends not just on individual members' abilities but also on how the team is socially connected.
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Idea generation in teams
- 1. SUPPORTING IDEA GENERATIONIN DESIGN TEAMS Ricardo SOSA and Diana ALBARRAN Design Department, Tecnologico de Monterrey
- 2. creative teamwork is increasingly crucial in education and in professional environments but there is a lack of heuristics or guidelines based on evidence
- 3. the structure ofteams may have key effects on the creative process of teams and their output
- 4. our motivation isto systematically improve teamwork practices in creative activities
- 5. background classic researchon brainstorming (‘groupthink’) more recent research on teammembers diversity and skills
- 6. our study teamformation based on the societal factor of social tie strength
- 7. social ties linksbetween nodes in a social network have a ‘strength’ based on how frequent is the link reinforced
- 8. computational simulations wehave shown that social groups facilitate or block novel ideas depending how they are socially connected
- 9. our hypothesis is…“ Teams of strong ties (teams of friends) and teams of weak ties (strangers) produce different creative processes and solutions”
- 10.
- 11. results Tw =teams of weak ties (strangers) Ts = teams of strong ties (friends)
- 12. Tw (strangers) tendto regard the task as easier to solve perhaps due to emergent coordination from extended communication?
- 13. Tw (strangers) reporta higher rate of leadership and coordination in their work bottom-up organisation instead of rapid role assignment?
- 14. Ts (friends) reportmore extended discussions of ideas coordination time is saved and team focuses on task contents?
- 15. novelty vs. qualityTw (strangers) produce more original solutions Ts (friends) stand out in technical correctness
- 16. all this maymean… team creativity not only depends on how creative are the team members the picture seems rather complex and worth investigating
- 17. working with strangers may facilitate our performance, motivate coordination, encourage exploration, and provide a setting for genuine leadership
- 18. working with friendsmay encourage focalisation, improve efficiency, and improve the quality of our work
- 19. teams of strangersmore suitable for situations that require higher degrees of creativeness
- 20. teams of friendsbetter equipped to address problems in shorter time periods where quality is preferred over originality
- 21. Acknowledgements This researchis gratefully supported by
Editor's Notes
- #11 To create teams of strong ties, the lecturer selects sets of up to 5 students with high tie values (>6), as reciprocal as possible. To create teams of weak ties, the lecturer selects students with low ties (≤5). Figure 1 shows a sample collection of scores in a matrix of 23 students. The tie between every pair of students is bi-directional, i.e., student A assigns a value to student B (tie AB) and receives a value from student B (tie BA). An average tie strength can be defined to simplify the process of team formation ((AB+BA)/2), although further refinement could be explored exploiting the divergence in bi-directional tie strength. Bi-directional tie strength is illustrated by the difference between the cumulative values of social capital in a group. In the sample case shown in Figure 1, an extra column in the right side is labelled “KNOWS” showing an average of the tie-strength scores as reported by each student. An extra row in the bottom is labelled “IS KNOWN BY” showing an average of tie-strength scores received for every student by the rest of the group. Whilst in most cases both values are fairly similar, a significant difference may occasionally exist between how a student perceives their social relation to others, and how others perceive their relation to that person.
- #13 It may be the case that in teams of strangers, leadership emerges from the extended communication required to coordinate their work, whilst students that have collaborated before tend to self-organise without the need of a leader. An extended period of team coordination may also account for the ability of heterogeneous teams to avoid rapid convergence and enable a higher exploration rate of solutions that yields more creative results.
- #14 It may be the case that in teams of strangers, leadership emerges from the extended communication required to coordinate their work, whilst students that have collaborated before tend to self-organise without the need of a leader. An extended period of team coordination may also account for the ability of heterogeneous teams to avoid rapid convergence and enable a higher exploration rate of solutions that yields more creative results.
- #15 This result may suggest that in this type of tasks, teams of weak ties spend most of their time in coordination activities, whilst teams of strong ties are able to focus on discussing the task at hand.
- #16 Fourthly, the experts’ assessments indicate a clear advantage of teams of weak ties in the originality of the final solutions, whilst teams of strong ties stood out in technical correctness.
- #20 Teams of strangers may be more suitable for situations that require higher degrees of creativeness, arguably because team mates are more likely to express their opinions, and the team is likely to explore the solution space more exhaustively.
- #21 In contrast, teams of friends may be better equipped to address problems in shorter time periods where quality is preferred over originality. Continuing this research, we aim to shed light on the best strategies to create teams both in learning environments and the workplace