Understanding the Team Process Loss Factors Impacting Creativity

Abstract

In order to understand and improve the collaborative ideation process, it is essential to understand process losses. Process losses are better researched than process gains, as researchers have thought to explain why group ideation in academic research has proven to be less effective than nominal ideation (Gallupe et al., 1991). There have been proposals for eliminating or containing process losses, for example, through electronic ideation. Process losses stem from the individual, team-level, and organisational traits that decrease the team’s ability to conduct an effective creative process to lower than the nominal creativity of the assembled team members (Mullen et al., 1991; Stroebe & Diehl, 1994). Recognising the process losses and gains that occur during the creative process, especially during shared idea production, is important to limit losses and boost gains. Limiting both would likely be helped by understanding the underlying causes of both gains and losses, while some process losses are well known, such as groupthink.