IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00491685.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Problem Structure and Team Diversity on Brainstorming Effectiveness

Author

Listed:
  • Svenja Sommer

    (GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Stylianos Kavadias

    (college of management - Georgia Institute of Technology [Atlanta])

Abstract

Since Osborn's Applied Imagination book in 1953 (Osborn, A. F. 1953. Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York), the effectiveness of brainstorming has been widely debated. While some researchers and practitioners consider it the standard idea generation and problem-solving method in organizations, part of the social science literature has argued in favor of nominal groups, i.e., the same number of individuals generating solutions in isolation. In this paper, we revisit this debate, and we explore the implications that the underlying problem structure and the team diversity have on the quality of the best solution as obtained by the different group configurations. We build on the normative search literature of new product development, and we show that no group configuration dominates. Therefore, nominal groups perform better in specialized problems, even when the factors that affect the solution quality exhibit complex interactions (problem complexity). In cross-functional problems, the brainstorming group exploits the competence diversity of its participants to attain better solutions. However, their advantage vanishes for extremely complex problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Svenja Sommer & Stylianos Kavadias, 2009. "The Effects of Problem Structure and Team Diversity on Brainstorming Effectiveness," Post-Print hal-00491685, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00491685
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1090.1079
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Karan Girotra & Christian Terwiesch & Karl T. Ulrich, 2010. "Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(4), pages 591-605, April.
    2. A. M. S. Al-Raqadi & A. Abdul Rahim & M. Masrom & B. S. N. Al-Riyami, 2016. "System thinking in single- and double-loop learning on the perceptions of improving ships’ repair performance," International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management, Springer;The Society for Reliability, Engineering Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM),India, and Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, vol. 7(1), pages 126-142, December.
    3. Laura J. Kornish & Karl T. Ulrich, 2011. "Opportunity Spaces in Innovation: Empirical Analysis of Large Samples of Ideas," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(1), pages 107-128, January.
    4. Daniel A. Lerner & Richard A. Hunt & Ingrid Verheul, 2017. "Dueling Banjos: Harmony and Discord between ADHD and Entrepreneurship," Working Papers 2017-07, Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business.
    5. Hirunyawipada, Tanawat & Paswan, Audhesh K., 2013. "Effects of team cognition and constraint on new product ideation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(11), pages 2332-2337.
    6. Glenn Dutcher & Cortney S. Rodet, 2022. "Which two heads are better than one? Uncovering the positive effects of diversity in creative teams," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 884-897, November.
    7. Tian Heong Chan & Haibo Liu & Steffen Keck & Wenjie Tang, 2023. "When do teams generate valuable inventions? The moderating role of invention integrality on the effects of expertise similarity, network cohesion, and gender diversity," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(6), pages 1760-1777, June.
    8. Sheng, Margaret L. & Hartmann, Nathaniel N., 2019. "Impact of subsidiaries' cross-border knowledge tacitness shared and social capital on MNCs' explorative and exploitative innovation capability," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 25(4).
    9. Barry L. Bayus, 2013. "Crowdsourcing New Product Ideas over Time: An Analysis of the Dell IdeaStorm Community," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 226-244, June.
    10. Manouchehrabadi, Behrang & Letizia, Paolo & Hendrikse, George, 2022. "Democratic versus elite governance for project selection decisions in executive committees," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 297(3), pages 1126-1138.
    11. Hasan, Sharique & Koning, Rembrand, 2019. "Conversations and idea generation: Evidence from a field experiment," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    12. Lakshminarayana Nittala & Sanjiv Erat & Vish Krishnan, 2022. "Designing internal innovation contests," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(5), pages 1963-1976, May.
    13. Steven D. Silver, 2021. "Dynamics of Negative Evaluations in the Information Exchange of Interactive Decision-Making Teams: Advancing the Design of Technology-Augmented GDSS," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 23(6), pages 1621-1642, December.
    14. Nektarios Oraiopoulos & Stylianos Kavadias, 2020. "Is Diversity (Un-)Biased? Project Selection Decisions in Executive Committees," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 22(5), pages 906-924, September.
    15. Rieger, Verena & Klarmann, Martin, 2022. "The effect of cooperative team culture on innovation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 1256-1271.
    16. Mohsen Jafari Songhori & Madjid Tavana & Takao Terano, 2020. "Product development team formation: effects of organizational- and product-related factors," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 88-122, March.
    17. Natalicchio, A. & Messeni Petruzzelli, A. & Garavelli, A.C., 2017. "Innovation problems and search for solutions in crowdsourcing platforms – A simulation approach," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 64, pages 28-42.
    18. Anne-Gaëlle Maltese & Sara Gil-Gallen & Patrick Llerena, 2023. "Disentangling the role of surface and deep-level variables on individuals’ and groups’ creative performance: A cross-level experimental evidence," Working Papers of BETA 2023-19, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    19. Kevin J. Boudreau & Nicola Lacetera & Karim R. Lakhani, 2011. "Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 843-863, May.
    20. Siebelink, Remco & Hofman, Erwin & Halman, Johannes I.M. & Nee, Ingo, 2021. "Roadmapping: (Missed) opportunities to overcome strategic challenges," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 501-512.
    21. Xiaoyang Long & Javad Nasiry & Yaozhong Wu, 2020. "A Behavioral Study on Abandonment Decisions in Multistage Projects," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 1999-2016, May.
    22. Joel O. Wooten, 2022. "Leaps in innovation and the Bannister effect in contests," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(6), pages 2646-2663, June.
    23. Grund, Christian & Harbring, Christine & Thommes, Kirsten, 2015. "Cooperation in Diverse Teams: The Role of Temporary Group Membership," IZA Discussion Papers 8761, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    24. Svenja C. Sommer & Elliot Bendoly & Stylianos Kavadias, 2020. "How Do You Search for the Best Alternative? Experimental Evidence on Search Strategies to Solve Complex Problems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(3), pages 1395-1420, March.
    25. Kim, Yongjae, 2017. "The effect of process management on different types of innovations: An analytical modeling approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(2), pages 771-779.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00491685. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.