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Brainstorming on Zoom Hampers Creativity
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Brainstorming on Zoom Hampers Creativity

Bret Stetka
Scientific American, 2022
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Editorial Rating

8

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A new study shows that replacing face-to-face interaction with virtual calls somewhat impedes creative collaboration and idea generation. Scientific American outlines the intriguing findings by a team of researchers at Columbia Business School: If your team wants to be more creative, an in-person meeting is better than a Zoom call. But if you have no choice but to brainstorm online, researchers advise a simple solution that can negate the adverse effects of virtual communication on innovation.

Summary

Teams brainstorming on video calls generate fewer ideas than groups interacting face-to-face.

Virtual communication may not prevent teams from working well together, but it might impede their creativity, new research suggests. When researchers paired 602 study participants and placed them in either virtual or in-person groups, armed with the task of finding innovative uses for a product, they found in-person teams generated more ideas than virtual ones.

The notable effect of the mode of communication on idea generation surprised the researchers. But their findings back reports ...

About the Author

Bret Stetka, MD, was Editorial Director of Medscape Neurology and a writer for various media outlets, including Scientific American, Wired, NPR and The Atlantic.

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