Jared Curhan, MIT Sloan School of Management
Jared Curhan, MIT Sloan School of Management
OB Seminar (Curhan)
OB Seminar (Curhan)
16 May 20163:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Open to public
When Criticism Enhances Creativity in Brainstorming: The Moderating Role of a Competitive
Context
Location:
Baker Library | Bloomberg Center 102
Organizer:
Historically, scholars and practitioners have asserted that criticism is harmful for group brainstorming because it incites intragroup conflict. However, recent research has challenged this assumption, suggesting that criticism might actually enhance creativity by fostering diverse perspectives. Reconciling these two seemingly contradictory theories, we hypothesized that a competitive context for brainstorming moderates the effect of criticism on the number and creativity of ideas generated. To test this theory, we conducted a field experiment involving 100 group brainstorming sessions in the context of a controversial urban redevelopment project. Results confirmed our hypothesis. When brainstorming was conducted with the sole purpose of inventing ideas (a cooperative context), instructions encouraging criticism resulted in more ideas and in more creative ideas than did instructions discouraging criticism, whereas when brainstorming was conducted with the ultimate purpose of selecting a best idea (a competitive context), encouraging criticism resulted in fewer ideas and in less creative ideas. Tests of moderated mediation suggest that encouraging criticism resulted in more intragroup conflict in the competitive context, but not in the cooperative context, and that this difference in conflict accounted for differences in creativity. We discuss implications for theory, future research methods, and the practice of brainstorming.