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Shifting to remote work can help groups generate better ideas-and more of them.
The COVID-19 pandemic put professionals in a box - a virtual one. Overnight, managers and their teams shifted from in-person brainstorming and ideation sessions to those taking place electronically via Zoom, WebEx, and other tools.
You might assume that major changes in how we work are taking a large toll on business creativity, in light of the loss of more spontaneous face-toface connections and interactions. One of my most outspoken executive students - a young, data-driven manager at a technology consulting company - seemed to be making that assumption when he asked how I thought virtual work "thwarted" creative processes like those his teams engage in with their clients, such as defining problem scope, exploring solutions, prototyping, and testing. My answer surprised him: Based on research I and others have conducted over the past couple of decades, I believe that the shift to remote work actually has the potential to improve group creativity and ideation, despite diminished in-person communication.1
Remembering What Really Drives Creativity
Scholars define creativity as the production of novel and useful ideas.2 Novel, in this context, means statistically rare and unique; useful means that some stakeholders see practical value in the ideas. In business, innovation is the realization of creative ideas as products and services. Think of the creative process like a river, starting with the upstream generation of ideas, often seemingly outlandish ones; proceeding to the testing and refinement of certain ideas midstream; and eventually moving downstream to the full development of chosen ideas.3
Virtual collaboration needn't hinder any of that, nor is it at odds with the following well-established ideas about what drives creativity.
Creative ability isn't fixed or inborn. Creativity is influenced by factors under one's control. In one study, for example, some participants were told that raw talent and ability determine creative outcomes, while others heard that factors such as motivation and persistence drive creativity.4 Both groups then completed a creativity task scored by judges who didn't know what participants had been told. The group that believed creativity was under their control significantly outperformed the other. The conclusion from many such studies is that mindset matters. And you don't need to collaborate in person...