Creativity in Virtual Teams: Bridging the Gap Between Professional Wisdom and Scientific Insights

Abstract

Following the growing body of scientific literature dedicated to the effects of virtual tools and environments on creative processes, we were interested in examining how professional creativity facilitators perceive these technologies and the extent to which they might support their dissemination. To this end, we conducted a workshop with 19 professional facilitators in which they could experience creativity in a virtual environment. Their ratings of the potential impact of such tools on session facilitation, on sociocognitive processes of creativity and on group motivation were collected twice: before and after the virtual session. The results show that their perception of the potential benefits of virtual environments decreased after the test. They mentioned many limitations of the technology with regard to usual facilitation process. Moreover, their expert perception of the creative process sometimes appeared contradictory to scientific results obtained in the domain. We discuss these results and provide design perspectives to make virtual technologies more acceptable and usable for creativity facilitators, in order to allow more population to benefit from their positive effects on group creativity.

Immersive Virtual Environments’ Impact on Individual and Collective Creativity

“…These results are in line with a more recent study (Buisine & Guegan, 2019) that allowed independent or internal consultants (from various companies) specialized in group facilitation for collaborative creativity sessions to experience teamwork in a virtual environment (avatar manipulation, navigation in the environment, interaction with team members, idea generation and discussion through instant messaging). They were instructed to visit the four target virtual places, explore them, discuss the pros and cons of each environment and imagine what kind of creative session they could conduct there with what kind of customer.…”

The Meaning of Silence in Personal Communication: Spiral of Silence or a Stimulant of Creativity?

“…Restricted, turbulent and mainly digital reality represent an interesting avenue for studying the meaning of silence in communication with reference to creativity and innovation. The digital environment can help discover the creative potential of individuals, but also to give meaning to remote teamwork (Buisine & Guegan, 2019). We would expect that results provided in the current study may differ in digital context.…”

Serendipity and Digital Media Entrepreneurship Teams in Remote Work Ecosystems

“…Short et al (1976) have developed a robust framework regarding social connectivity and digital communication forms. In addition, many academics have also researched remote team collaboration, such as Aragon and Williams (2011), Buisine and Guegan (2019), Humala (2015), Nemiro (2004), Stubbs and Baghurst (2014).…”

“…Along with knowledge sharing and team trust, extensive studies have examined remote team creative collaboration (Aragon & Williams, 2011;Buisine & Guegan, 2019;Humala, 2015;Nemiro, 2004;Stubbs & Baghurst, 2014). However, some studies have demonstrated that team creativity is reduced when collaborating remotely versus collocated (Aragon & Williams, 2011;Stubbs & Baghurst, 2014).…”