Researchers and practitioners have an abiding interest in improving tools and methods to support idea generation. In studies that go beyond merely enumerating ideas, researchers typically select one or more of the following three constructs, which are often operationalized as the dependent variable(s): 1) idea quality, 2) idea novelty, which is sometimes referred to as rarity or unusualness, and 3) idea creativity. It has been chronically problematic to compare findings across studies because these evaluation constructs have been variously defined and the constructs have been sampled in different ways. For example, some researchers term an idea 'creative' if it is novel, while others consider an idea to be creative only if it is also applicable, effective, and implementable. This paper examines 90 studies on creativity and idea generation. Within the creativity studies considered here, the novelty of ideas was always measured, but in
Ideation literature enjoys a rich and varied past.This past is also filled with a great deal of controversy and ambiguity. Until the advent of the microcomputer, the vast majority of studies focused on the use of verbally interactive groups [24] and examined the performance differences between nominal groups and interactive groups. A very robust and consistent finding in the literature is that nominal groups are more productive (generate a larger quantity of unique ideas) than are interactive groups in a verbal environment. Since the advent of the microcomputer and electronic brainstorming, the comparison of nominal and interactive groups has shed a great deal of light on why the findings from the verbally interactive groups occur [13]. Dennis and Valacich [9] have even proposed that new brainstorming rules are needed in order to maximize the potential benefits of using electronic brainstorming (EBS). Despite the advances in this field over the past decade, a debate rages on concerning the performance of idea generating groups. This paper examines previous research through the lens of ThinkLets [4] and shows how each of the results obtained in previous research can easily be accounted for, bringing clarity and order to these apparent conflicts.
Researchers have sought a better understanding of creativity for more than a century and the resulting investigations have shed a great deal of light on the subject of creativity. Approaches employed to study creativity can be grouped into four overlapping perspectives (Product, Person, Press, and Process) each with its own strengths and weaknesses. These perspectives, known as the Four P's of creativity [80], represent a framework to help organize the existing creativity literature.This paper examines the creativity literature in terms of the Four P's and argues that existing theories do not sufficiently explain a cognitive mechanism of creative solution production in a problem-solving environment.The Cognitive Network Model of creativity (CNM) aims to explain one possible causal mechanism behind the generation of creative solutions to problems. The implications of this model have the potential to influence the design of and techniques for using electronic brainstorming tools and may lead to significant gains in creativity as well as our understanding of how it occurs.
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