Group Creativity and Innovation

Based on a literature review of Chinese traditional philosophies and social science research on social harmony we formulated the group harmony construct, developed a scale, and tested its validity in two studies on 167 top management groups from China. Study 1 demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity of group harmony and evaluated its predictive validity against well-established constructs of relationship conflict, task conflict, group cohesiveness, psychological safety, and conflict avoidance. Study 2 further examined the construct and nomological validity of group harmony and tested the effects of group harmony and found that, as hypothesized , group harmony enhanced group innovative performance through increasing knowledge sharing among group members. However, instead of motivating innovative performance through fostering moderate levels of task conflict, group harmony

Over the years many training methods for creativity and innovation have been developed. Despite these programs and research, further improvement is necessary, particularly in schools of technology and engineering education, where previous efforts have focused on developing solutions to defined problems, not in identifying and defining the problems themselves in ways that promote creative outcomes. This study presents initial efforts to develop an instructional program designed to teach innovation to undergraduate technology and engineering students. Results from a pre/posttest analysis using both the Torrance Tests for Creative Thinking and a survey with self-reported data indicate that the Innovation Boot Camp was successful because it (a) encapsulated innovation into a process that students could learn and apply, (b) engaged students in multidisciplinary groups, and (c) provided a hands-on, activities-oriented curriculum explicitly designed to enhance innovation. Notwithstanding, ideas for improvement and further research and development of the curriculum are described. 1

The 21st century economy often requires the innovative production of conceptual and physical artifacts. These innovations frequently are developed collaboratively within communities of workers. Previous theories about the nature of work and learning within communities have emphasized shared meaning or shared practice, but now shared innovation is required. In this paper, I describe the development of a model for conceptualizing and studying shared innovation within communities. This model was created from merging elements of social learning and creativity/innovation theories. I explain that at an intersection of these two domains is a unique kind of social structure, called a Community of Innovation, or COI. I conclude by describing the characteristics of a Community of Innovation and its implications for design and research.

Many people, organizations, institutions, and governments want and need to generate creative breakthroughs and foster creativity, but are not aware of what conversational conditions make their occurrence more likely.  The creative collaborative process is dependent upon communication. There have been few studies that have analyzed in situ group creativity with a robust communication theory capable of showing what actual kinds of conversations create new and useful meaning.  The purpose of this research was to identify conversational conditions that facilitate creative breakthroughs in collaborative workgroups.

A case study is presented of a 4-month creative collaboration between members of a design consultancy and a senior university design class tasked with designing 21st century communication products for a well-known greeting-card company client. The research design utilized a social constructionist communication theory, the coordinated management of meaning, (CMM).  Creative breakthrough moments were identified in three different interactions from questionnaires and videotaped data. Reflective interviews of all the participants also enabled insight into the creative breakthrough moments and the narrative process that developed new meaning.  The videotaped conversational patterns that produced those creative breakthrough moments were then recursively examined and analyzed with conversational analysis, CMM research methodology, and figurative language. Six specific conversational conditions were discerned as present in creative breakthrough emergence.

A reflexive pattern of critique, relationship, responsibility, idea generation, and reframing authorship enabled participants to co-evolve design narratives that made new meaning. Creative breakthroughs and new creative meaning emerged from an improvisational structure of six specific conversational conditions. By participating within this improvisational structure, group members utilized critique as a creative springboard for innovation and took fresh perspectives. These findings are counter to the dominant themes in design and sociocultural literature that nonjudgmental conditions, brainstorming, and individuals building on input are the main pathways for creativity.

This paper presents research from an ongoing study analyzing the co-creative practice of two undergraduate studio based music composers working with two peers from dance and video production. Whilst empirical research has explored joint creativity and group working processes within and across performing arts disciplines (including music), situations that bring undergraduate studio based composers into interdisciplinary collaborative creating have not previously been studied. Framed by a sociocultural theory of human activity, this research is looking at how creative achievement and the local social context for creative work is constituted through interaction. This paper explains the sociocultural methods used to build a sequential analysis of joint activity, presenting an extracted analysis before concluding with a summary of some early observations of the issues music technology students can face when creating new work collaboratively.

How do you create a system for orchestrating the generation, collection, evaluation, and implementation of novel ideas in a 2000-person corporate enterprise?


In 2006, Elizabeth COLEMAN was recruited to introduce innovation processes within IAG: the  Insurance Australia Group in New Zealand.

Beth joined IAG following her post-graduate studies in business innovation and entrepreneurship at Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland.


Beth began her career in product innovation at Texas Instruments in California, migrating her skills from her earlier teaching career in Boston. The move into information technology led Beth to develop new customer engagement programs for ComputerLand (US), Microsoft, Texas Instruments, and AutoCAD.


An invitation to join ComputerLand (New Zealand) as a specialist technology expert brought her to New Zealand in the mid-80s.  Later joining Telecom as manager of their Information Technology Support division broadened her knowledge of new business and systems development and advanced her interest in business innovation and intrapreneurship.


Beth has led several consulting teams that assisted businesses to design new systems, processes and structures informed by market research.


YOUR MISSION

Now Beth is charged with massively expanding her IAG IDEA Pipeline from its pilot deployment for a small cluster of passionate users throughout the entire IAG corporation. Beth invites your ideas.

Three earlier published reports (Erland, 1999c, 1999d, 1998) of a two school (Schools 1 & 2), 14 classroom, grades 4-8 study, reported large gains evidenced by the Brain-Based-Accelerated Learning (AL) application of The Bridge To Achievement (The BTA). Eleven BTA/AL experimental groups were compared with two control groups from School 2 having an Alternate Media Activity (AMA), and a no-treatment comparison/control group from School 1. There was a wide range of policy adherence (98% to 25%) for the eleven experimental classrooms to the 19 Executive Criteria. Analyses of academic achievement was measured by the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) and cognitive skills were measured by CogAT (subtest of the ITBS), and eight subtests, four each from The Woodcock Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-1, and The Detroit Tests of Learning Aptitude-2. This report is a follow-up investigation of two of the original three fourth grade treatment classes of School 2 (n=44); 4E1, i.e. grade 4-Experimental, class 1 (n=24), and 4E2 i.e. grade 4, Experimental, class 2 (n=20). A majority of these students had low auditory memory n=40/44. Each class had a subset of students with severe cognitive skill deficits 4E1=10, 4E2=7, two class sum: n=17/44 students. Except for one student who did not have cognitive skill deficiencies, the remaining 43 students had specific isolated auditory or visual memory encoding-decoding weaknesses. The report investigates the effect the subset of 17 low achieving/cognitive deficit students had on the score performance of the entire class as an aggregate group. Further intra-analyses looked at these 17 low students and factored out the lowest five, (4E1), and four, (4E2), from each group, classifying them as "outliers". These outliers greatly skewed the national ITBS scores by as much as 50%. Tables 12-15 show these comparisons. These two classrooms were in the top five classes that had followed the Executive Criteria policy successfully, 68%-54%. The 4E1 and 4E2 classes hovered at, or were just above, norm level proficiency for three consecutive years pre-and posttest to The BTA-Accelerated Learning (BTA/AL) intervention. Falling below norm expectation gains posttest after training would lead to the assumption that the BTA/AL treatment had not been successful. However, when these two 4E1 and 4E2 classroom were pooled posttest with the "star" high performing 4E3 class against national norm (NN) expectations, ten of the thirteen ITBS subtests for 4E1, and nine of the thirteen primary ITBS subtests for 4E2, were statistically significant showing positive trending. Furthermore, removing the nine "outliers", revealed both classrooms were now above the norms, having made gains posttest. One year longitudinally, and still pooled with the "star" 4E3 class, and with the outliers included, the 4E1 class had all thirteen primary ITBS subtests statistically significant, and the 4E2 and 4E3 classes had 12/13 ITBS primary subtests statistically significant. This indicated longitudinal ITBS score maintenance for all three experimental fourth grade classrooms. 4E1 and 4E2 were now performing at, or

Three earlier published reports (Erland, 1999c, 1999d, 1998) of a two school (Schools 1 & 2), 14 classroom, grades 4-8 study, reported large gains evidenced by the Brain-Based-Accelerated Learning (AL) application of The Bridge To Achievement (BTA). Eleven BTA/AL experimental groups were compared with two control groups from School 2 having an Alternate Media Activity (AMA), and a no-treatment comparison/control group from School 1. This report is a follow-up investigation of two of the original three fourth grade treatment classes of School 2. A majority of these students had low auditory memory. The report investigates the effect the subset of 17 low achieving cognitive deficit students had on the score performance of the entire class as an aggregate group. Further intra-analyses looked at these 17 low students and factored out the lowest from each group, classifying them as "outliers." These outliers greatly skewed the national ITBS scores by as much as 50%. These two classrooms were in the top five classes that had followed the executive criteria policy successfully, 68%-54%. The experimental classes hovered at, or were just above, norm level proficiency for three consecutive years pre-and posttest to the BTA/AL intervention. When these two classrooms were pooled posttest with the "star" high performing class against national norm expectations, 10 of the 13 ITBS subtests for one class, and 9 of the 13 primary ITBS subtests for the other, were statistically significant showing positive trending. Furthermore, removing the nine "outliers," revealed both classrooms were now above the norms, having made gains posttest. (Contains 43 references and 23 tables.) (RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.