Background
In an increasingly globalized world, the growing competition increases the relevance of innovation for companies, institutions and even countries in order to stay competitive. It could be shown that any human being is capable of creative thinking and that results of creative processes can be improved both in quantity and quality by applying creativity techniques (Isaksen, 1998) (Diehl et al. 1987). Computer-based Creativity Support Systems (CSS) are being developed in order to level out some drawbacks of group creativity processes, such as production blocking, evaluation apprehension or social loafing (Nunamaker et al. 1991).
While there is reasonable amount of research that clearly reveals the performance benefits from the usage of electronic creativity support tools (CST), they have not yet displaced nor joined the usage of non-electronic creativity support tools and in particular verbal brainstorming (Dennis et al. 2004).
Alan R. Dennis and Bryan A. Reinicke (2004) point out that there are a variety of stakeholders with different interests, goals and incentives on the usage of creativity support systems, such as the organization as a whole, group leaders, managers or the participants of creativity processes. They present arguments and empirical evidence that not all users are primarily concerned with the productive performance (for example the number of ideas generated) when deciding on the method and tools for idea generation but other criteria as group and individual wellbeing are taken into account. Therefore, they conclude, that creative collaboration is likely to also fulfill other task then idea generation such as social exchange or social comparison.
Sutton and Hargadon (1996) point out that such collaborations are viewed “as fun and a vacation” and a chance “to relax with their coworkers, eat, and apply a variety of skills and knowledge to the solution of extremely difficult problems”.
Alan R. Dennis and Bryan A. Reinicke (2004) also show that perceived and measured productivity or usefulness of creativity tools are often inequivalent. This could be due to a distorted perception or different criteria for usefulness (e.g. quality instead of number of ideas or the above-mentioned other criteria).
Barker (2002) gives an extreme example in his article “the art of brainstorming” and claims that brainstorming sessions should be fun. He advises to "read a poem, open yourself to eccentricity, listen to someone else's story, laugh" in order to stimulate creativity. At status quo these advices are hardly associated with sitting in front of a computer.
Research gap:
Further research is needed in order to find out about the needs and criteria of the important stakeholders concerned with creativity support tools and methods. The goal is to identify the relevant features and evaluation criteria to be taken into account when designing or improving creativity support tools and hence to avoid focusing on less decision-relevant criteria, such as the number of generated ideas, which may improve the overall results, but are not the main criteria for stakeholders to choose or introduce a creativity support system. Usefulness of CSS has to be redefined in order to better balance the interests of different stakeholders and increase the adoption within organizations.
There is a need to examine what factors affect the perceived usefulness of creativity support tools. For this, two stakeholder types will be mainly addressed: users of creativity support systems and decision makers on the introduction of CSS, in order to evaluate their expectations regarding the creativity sessions and the benefit of CSS.
Research questions:
Technology that supports a creative process needs to be designed to fit an ecosystem of stakeholders and users with various goals and expectations. In order to improve CSSs and increase their acceptance and usage in organizations, we have to answer following questions:
The main research question we want to address is:
What are the decision-relevant factors for the adoption and continuous usage of CSS in time-limited, goal-oriented ideation workshops?
For that, we need to examine and further understand several elements of the ideation process: * How do highly innovative companies conduct group ideation processes? * Who are the most important stakeholders regarding the introduction and continuing usage of CSSs within an organization? * What are their roles in the process? * What incentives do they have? * What do these different stakeholders expect from the creative process? * What are their goals when applying CSS?
(may be differing by process step) * What factors affect their perceived usefulness of a CSS? * What problems or drawbacks actually occur with currently employed CSS? * What prejudices or assumptions do stakeholders have about different CSSs? * Are there any assumptions being made on participant’s requirements? Have participants been asked about their opinions? And have assumptions been proven to be true?
Finally, any patterns for the selection and deployment of CSS at successful, innovative companies will be pointed out.
Finally, propositions will be given as a basis for further research on how the perceived value of CSSs can be increased so that CSSs are applied more often.
Objectives:
The aim of this Master’s thesis is to first outline the current state of research on Creativity Support Systems (CSS) and to then analyze their employment in innovative companies. Research on CSS is criticized for focusing too much on efficiency and productivity as evaluation criteria for CSS (Dennis et al. 2004)(Hewett et all 2005) Nakakoji 2005).
Therefore the goal of this thesis is to examine the subjective motivation of the different stakeholders on CSS for the use or avoidance of computer-based creativity support systems. The thesis will elaborate the requirements of the different stakeholders regarding CSS and what they perceive as useful. The goal is to find appropriate evaluation criteria that represent the subjective needs of the stakeholder around css. This will be transformed into propositions for what factors have a major impact on the employment of CSS, which consequently need to be improved in order to fulfill the varying needs and requirements of the major stakeholders in creativity processes.
Creativity is a highly complex process, with multiple dimensions, many domain- or industry-specific and user-specific characteristics (Hewett et all 2005). CST have different strengths and weaknesses in different milieus (number of users, industry domain, convergent/divergent phase). In order to get comparable results it is important to narrow down this multidimensional taxonomy and look at a specific section with comparable usecases.
The thesis will focus on the divergent phase in ideation processes and more specifically on group creativity processes with 5-15 persons in time-limited and goal-oriented workshops. We focus on time-limited workshops in order to have results and experiences that can be evaluated and compared. In addition these workshops are common best practices in the industry. Most research on CSS focuses on this type of creative processes, but it has not yet considered subjective stakeholder specific evaluation criteria.
Methodology:
This thesis will follow a case study approach with semi-structured qualitative interviews. Thereby, a rich set of data can be collected in little time which is suited to give a good overview about potential causalities in the early stage of a research. The interviews target decision makers on the structural setup of ideation sessions (as specified above) and the potential employment of CSS within them, as well as participants of these ideation sessions and potential other stakeholders. If the decision makers on the structural setup of the ideation sessions do not have the possibility to influence the decision on whether or not software is employed, the responsible for these decisions may additionally be interviewed.
The sample will be adapted during the research so that it comprises companies that consciously decided to employ CSS in ideation processes as well as companies that consciously decided against these tools.
The semi-structured qualitative interviews will be supported by quantitative surveys, field observations and expert interviews. Therefore innovation consultancies might be a valuable extension to the aforementioned cases. In order to get comparable results, the sample is supposed to only include companies that have a structured approach towards ideation and that purposely and steadily foster innovation with goal-oriented ideation workshops. For all of them, new idea generation and product innovation has to be an important part of their strategy and operations. Digitalization exceedingly enables new business cases and products and increases competition by reducing transaction costs. It therefore highly fosters disruptive innovations. This is certainly true for all industries that are highly affected by digitalization..For the purpose of this thesis, we decided to approach the 50 most innovative companies (as in the BCG rankings of 2014). In order to reduce anomalies through domain-specific characteristics in creative processes we decided to first approach a very specific industry within the list, the automotive industry. It is highly affected by digitalization and innovative products are of strategic importance. The ideation processes are highly elaborated, goal-oriented and structured (as in our specifications). In addition, the geographic proximity of several of these companies allows for in-depth case study research. We will approach these companies in random order, until we reach five heavy-users and five non-users of CSS tools. In case the number of respondents is not sufficient, we will proceed approaching closely related industries within the BCG list of most innovative companies, as for example automotive suppliers.
Company List:
BCG 50 most innovative companies 2014
Priority 1: Automotive Companies
Tesla Motors
BMW
Ford Motor Company
VW
Daimler
General Motors
Audi
Fiat
Toyota
Priority 2: Direct Automotive Hardware Supplier, Airplane Manufacturer
Airbus
Boeing
Philips
Siemens
IBM
Intel
LG Electronics
General Electric
Priority 3: Wider supplier, Services with links to the automotive industry
Apple
Google
Samsung
Microsoft
Sony
HP
Dell
3M
Huawei
Oracle
Hitachi
Cisco Systems
Prioirity 4
Amazon
Facebook
Coca-Cola
Nike
Royal Dutch Shell
SoftBank
Procter & Gamble
Xiaomi
Yahoo
McDonalds
Salesforce.com
Fast Retailing
Wal-Mart
Tata Group
Nestlé
Bayer
Starbucks
Tencent
BASF
Unilever
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Barker, R. "The Art of Brainstorming," Business Week (3796), August 26 2002, pp. 168-169.
Diehl, M. ; Stroebe, W.: “Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: To- ward the solution of a riddle.” In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53 (1987), S. 497–509
Nunamaker, Jay ; Dennis, Alan ; Valacich, Joseph ; Vogel, Douglas ; George, Joey: “Electronic Meeting Systems to Support Group Work.” In: Communications of the ACM 34 (1991), Nr. 7, S. 40–61
Isaksen, Scott G.: “A Review of Brainstorming Research: Six Critical Issues for Inquiry / Creative Problem Solving Group.” Buffalo, New York, 1998. – Forschungsbericht
Florian J. M. Forster “Computerunterstützung von kollaborativen Kreativitaätsprozessen” Diseratation Technische Universität München, 2010
Tom Hewett, Drexel University
Mary Czerwinski, Microsoft
Michael Terry, Georgia Tech
Jay Nunamaker, University of Arizona Linda Candy, University of Technology, Sydney Bill Kules, University of Maryland Elisabeth Sylvan, MIT „Evaluation Methods and Metrics“ - Creativity Support Tools: A workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation; June 13-14, 2005, Washington, DC
Kumiyo Nakakoji, University of Tokyo,„Seven Issues for Creativity Support Tool Researchers“ - Creativity Support Tools: A workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation; June 13-14, 2005, Washington, DC
Alan R. Dennis and Bryan A. Reinicke, „Beta versus VHS and the Acceptance of Electronic Brainstorming Technology“ MIS Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp.1-20 