“…Despite resolving the oversimplification of team creativity in the random variation model and recognizing the necessity of exploring team creative process, the creative synthesis model neglects the reality that however complex a task is, there are always a few individuals playing a leading role in a team (Bock, 2015). These individuals do not always contribute to the highest level of individual creativity, but are often provided with rich task‐related knowledge and experience, that is, expertise (Weisberg, 2006), and are therefore titled “experts.” Although expertise has been consistently overlooked in research on team creativity (Campbell, 1960; Simonton, 1999), creativity calling for thinking outside the “lines” seems exactly opposite to expertise that represents the “lines.” However, the prominent role of individuals with specific expertise in teamwork implies expertise brings not merely an automatic mode for information processing, but a highly complex conceptual structure for the representation and reasoning of the task situation (Bunderson, Van Der Vegt, Cantimur, & Rink, 2016; Dippong & Kalkhoff, 2015; Robbins, 2017; Weisberg, 2006), and the creative association between unrelated knowledge units (Neisser, 1976; Weisberg & Hass, 2007). Experts are thus adept at generating new ideas, judging the value of new ideas, and promoting the continuous improvement and implementation of the best ones among them.…”