Generating creative ideas through crowds: An experimental study of combination

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

The crowd is emerging as a new source of innovation, and here a new way of organizing the crowd to produce new ideas is discussed: an idea generation system using combination in which participants synthesize new designs from the efforts of their peers. A crowd generates designs; then another crowd combines the designs of the previous crowd. In an experiment with 540 participants, the combined designs are compared to the initial designs, and to a control condition in which fresh idea generation rather than combination is used. The results show that designs become more creative in later generations of the combination system, and the combination produces more creative ideas than the fresh idea generation. The model of crowdsourced idea generation discussed here may be used to instantiate systems that can be applied to a wide range of design problems. The work has pragmatic implications, and also theoretical implications: new forms of coordination are now possible, and, using the crowd, it is possible to build and test existing and emerging theories of coordination and design.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInternational Conference on Information Systems 2011, ICIS 2011
Pages3513-3528
Number of pages16
StatePublished - 2011
Event32nd International Conference on Information System 2011, ICIS 2011 - Shanghai, China
Duration: 4 Dec 20117 Dec 2011

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Information Systems 2011, ICIS 2011
Volume4

Conference

Conference32nd International Conference on Information System 2011, ICIS 2011
Country/TerritoryChina
CityShanghai
Period4/12/117/12/11

Keywords

  • Combination
  • Creativity
  • Crowdsourcing
  • Design
  • Idea generation
  • Innovation

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