Exploring idea quality evolution during convergence

Isabella Seeber, Ronald Maier, Gert Jan De Vreede, Barbara Weber, Alexander Merz

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Today's organizations need to develop innovative ideas through teamwork, be it in small teams or large crowds. While organizations can swiftly gather a rich set of ideas, they are increasingly challenged with how to focus on a manageable set of ideas that are likely to serve their goals. Facilitation techniques can support convergence, a team process in which members reduce and clarify ideas, but facilitation effects are thus far largely unexplored. We conducted an exploratory laboratory experiment to address this gap involving 150 participants randomly assigned to 38 teams. We tested the associations between two facilitation components attention guidance and discussion encouragement, on convergence quality, operationalized as task relevance and extent of idea development. Our preliminary results suggest that idea quality increases from generation to convergence across treatments and attention guidance is associated with extent of development. We present plans for additional analyses and further theoretical exploration.

Original languageEnglish (US)
StatePublished - 2015
Event2015 International Conference on Information Systems: Exploring the Information Frontier, ICIS 2015 - Fort Worth, United States
Duration: Dec 13 2015Dec 16 2015

Other

Other2015 International Conference on Information Systems: Exploring the Information Frontier, ICIS 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityFort Worth
Period12/13/1512/16/15

Keywords

  • Attention guidance
  • Collaboration
  • Convergence
  • Discussion encouragement
  • Experiment
  • Facilitation technique
  • Quality
  • Team

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty
  • Library and Information Sciences
  • Applied Mathematics

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