Managers at every level within corporations, huge ones, face a common challenge: determining the optimal way to organise employees to foster the best creative outputs. The question remains whether it’s more beneficial to assemble large or smaller groups or mix individuals with similar or differing backgrounds.
Recent insights from Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York, have shed light on these questions, with some findings that might surprise many. Over nearly two decades, Professor Shelley D. Dionne—currently the dean of Binghamton’s School of Management—and Distinguished Professor Hiroki Sayama have delved into the complexities of group dynamics and their impact on organisational performance. Their latest findings have been documented in a new study published in npj Complexity, focusing on how different group compositions handle creative challenges.
Contributors to this research include a mix of graduates and academics from Binghamton, such as Yiding Cao, Yingjun Dong, Minjun Kim, Neil G. MacLaren, Sriniwas Pandey, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus Francis J. Yammarino. Between 2018 and 2020, they orchestrated experiments involving 617 students from the university. These students collaborated anonymously via a digital platform similar to Twitter to create a catchy marketing slogan for a new laptop or write a fictional story. Within their groups, which ranged from 20 to 25 members, participants would log on daily for over ten working days to submit and refine ideas.
Before these experiments, the researchers conducted language analyses on self-introduction essays from the participants to determine if grouping by similar viewpoints or backgrounds influenced the creative process. The communication structure within these groups varied; some participants could engage with their entire group, while others were restricted to interacting with only those next to them in a ring-shaped organisational model.
The quality of the resulting ideas was assessed by PhD candidates specialising in marketing or management for the slogan task and by staff from the university’s communications and marketing division for the storytelling exercise. Interestingly, the researchers noted several counterintuitive findings. For instance, when all participants in the social networks could see each other’s ideas, the ideas’ diversity was reduced. Conversely, increased communication among participants enhanced their happiness despite the isolation felt by those who interacted less but generated higher-quality ideas.
When diverse individuals were grouped, the ideas tended to be more conservative, influenced by the participants’ varying areas of expertise, which nudged the group towards safer, more universally acceptable ideas. Random connections among participants, however, were most likely to yield the best ideas, according to Sayama. He likens the process of idea generation to evolutionary biology, where ideas are akin to organisms in an ecosystem, adapting and thriving or failing based on environmental pressures.
The researchers believe implementing such a detailed experimental framework in a standard office setting poses challenges. Using artificial intelligence to analyse participants’ backgrounds and contributions is not typically feasible in most workplaces. Nonetheless, managers can distil this research into a simple guiding question about their objectives: whether to foster biodiversity of ideas or to protect and nurture a singular concept.
Dionne points out that the study’s strength lies in its interdisciplinary approach, applying theories from evolutionary biology to explore how networks influence creative tasks. While the study provides a foundation, it also opens up new avenues for further exploration, underscoring the non-conclusive nature of the findings but their potential to inspire further research.
The research team was interrupted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which shifted their focus to urgent public health decision-making. This hiatus meant a delay in analysing the wealth of data collected. However, as the situation has stabilised, the publication of their findings marks a significant advancement in understanding the dynamics of creativity within organisational structures, especially concerning the use of modern analytical tools like artificial intelligence, which was not widely discussed in management studies back in 2018. As they resume their research, the team remains excited about the potential to push the boundaries of this field further.
More information: Hiroki Sayama et al, Effects of network connectivity and functional diversity distribution on human collective ideation, npj Complexity. DOI: 10.1038/s44260-024-00025-9
Journal information: npj Complexity Provided by Binghamton University