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On The Relationship Between Idea-Quantity and Idea-Quality During Ideation
Abstract and Figures
A great deal of research has been conducted to develop methods and techniques to improve group ideation. Most of this research focuses on techniques for increasing the quantity of ideas generated during ideation; less attention has been given to the quality of the ideas produced. This focus stems from the widely held quantity–quality conjecture, that, all else being equal, more ideas give rise to more good ideas. In this paper, we argue that cognitive inertia and scarcity of solution space may affect the relationship between idea-quantity and idea-quality as ideation proceeds, resulting in a condition of diminishing returns for additional ideas. Results of a laboratory study using fourteen groups supported the diminishing returns hypothesis. Recommendations for future ideation research are suggested.
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... Semantic nodes closer to the cue would be activated first, eliciting responses that are highly accessible but not very original; activation would require more time to reach more distant nodes with lower accessibility and higher originality (see Acar & Runco, 2014;Benedek et al., 2012;Milgram & Rabkin, 1980;Wang et al., 2017;Ward, 1969). This account implies that average originality should increase with fluency: the originality of the final ideas in a sequence should be higher when the sequence is longer (as long as activation does not reach nodes that are irrelevant to the task; Reinig & Briggs, 2008). ...
... By contrast, a few theories of creativity predict that quality does not necessarily scale with quantity. Bounded ideation theory (Briggs & Reinig, 2010;Reinig & Briggs, 2008, 2013 proposes that there are limits to the extent to which originality can increase along with total number ideas: originality may well decrease at the end of a sequence of ideas if individuals reach the limitfor exampleof their ability, the space of possible solutions to the task, or their willingness to expend effort in the task. Bounded ideation theory does not predict that average originality will necessarily be lower for the final ideas in a long series of ideas than in a shorter series, but this is a possible consequence of this view. ...
... Based on activation spreading, we would have expected the best ideas to appear at the end of long sequences, reflecting the fact that activation reached very distant semantic nodesnot in the productions of participants who proposed only a couple of ideas. This conclusion converges with prior studies finding that proposing more ideas tends to come with diminishing returns, incompatible with predictions based purely on activation spreading Kleinkorres et al., 2021;Reinig & Briggs, 2008). In fact, it is possible that activation spreading also plays a role and also contributes to the serial order effect observed here: the roles of associative and executive processes can be reconciled in dualprocess accounts ; see also Barr et al., 2014). ...
... We also investigated the effects on the number of creative ideas (Reinig & Briggs, 2008). An idea was considered creative if it scored above the sample mean on novelty (>4.9) and usefulness (>5.4) (e.g., Althuizen & Chen, 2022;Dean et al., 2006;Parnes, 1961). ...
Research has shown that exposing people to others’ ideas and the ratings of those ideas can influence their subsequent idea generation performance. In this article, we utilize a socio-cognitive perspective to study this in an online crowdsourcing context. The cognitive factor concerns knowledge activated in memory because of idea exposure, which can be used for subsequent idea generation. The social factor concerns idea ratings that may steer the search for ideas in memory in the direction of ideas that are more likely to receive approval. Our contribution to the literature concerns an investigation of the joint effect of (1) the type of ideas posted by others (i.e., common versus novel ideas) and (2) the ratings of those ideas (i.e., low versus high ratings) on subsequent idea generation performance. We find compelling evidence for an interaction effect between these two factors in four empirical studies. That is, exposure to posted ideas that are “highly-rated and novel” or “poorly-rated and common” can result in more novel subsequent ideas. Exposure to posted ideas that are “highly-rated and common” can result in a larger number of subsequent ideas. These findings have implications for product innovation managers who wish to exert more control over the number and type of generated ideas, for example, on online crowdsourcing platforms.
... Existing research shows that starting with a higher number of generated ideas increases the probability of selecting good ideas [19]. In the context of group ideation, previous studies examined the relationship between quantity and quality, and found that the cumulative number of ideas and the number of high quality ideas are generally positively correlated [20]. Based on these findings, we expect that there is also a positive correlation between idea quantity and quality in the context of idea selection in open innovation. ...
Idea selection is a critical activity in open innovation crowdsourcing projects. Yet, the generation of vast amounts of ideas makes it cognitively challenging to identify the subset of ideas that are worthy of further consideration. We conducted an experiment to explore the influence of idea quantity and idea homogeneity on idea selection outcomes evaluated by crowds in the form of teams and nominal groups. We found that higher idea quantity is positively associated with idea selection quality and negatively associated with satisfaction with process. Further, team idea selection quality outperformed individual idea selection quality in both homogeneous information groups and low idea quantity groups. We did not find significant differences between group idea selection quality and individual idea selection quality in the heterogeneous information groups and high idea quantity groups. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.
... The solution space for a problem also varies in case of open-ended or closed-ended problems. Whilst a theoretically unlimited number of feasible solutions is possible for the open-ended problems, the closed-ended problems usually have a limited number of workable solutions (Reinig and Briggs, 2008). Quantitative research in the field of the companies-internal crowdsourcing-based ideation is rare. ...
The internal crowdsourcing-based ideation within a company can be defined as an involvement of its staff, specialists, managers, and other employees, to propose solution ideas for a pre-defined problem. This paper addresses a question, how many participants of the company-internal ideation process are required to nearly reach the ideation limit for the problems with a finite number of workable solutions. To answer the research question, the author proposes a set of metrics and a non-linear ideation performance function with a positive decreasing slope and ideation limit for the closed-ended problems. Three series of experiments helped to explore relationships between the metric attributes and resulted in a mathematical model which allows companies to predict the productivity metrics of their crowdsourcing ideation activities such as quantity of different ideas and ideation limit as a function of the number of contributors, their average personal creativity and ideation efficiency of a contributors’ group.
... The use of brainstorming is not surprising in the sense that it is simply one of the best-known problem-solving techniques and is both analytical and creative (Rawlinson 2017). However, the analysis of failures, effects and causes is supposed to identify all potential failures but also to highlight relevant root causes and to take into account interdependencies among various failure modes and effects. ...
In industry, the failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) methodology is one of the main tools used for reliability management in product design and development. However, the academic literature highlights several shortcomings of the FMEA methodology. Therefore, the main purposes of this paper are the analysis of the weaknesses of FMEA, the improvement of the method, and the implementation of a new methodology able to support quality and reliability management in a more efficient way. Motivated by these objectives, a formal new methodology is proposed by extending the classic FMEA methodology through C-K design theory. To test the effectiveness of the proposed approach and analyze the acceptance of this method by users, a case study is conducted in STMicroelectronics, one of the European leaders in the semiconductor industry.
Purpose
Consumers seldom consider end-use consumption (reuse or upcycling) when products reach the end of their lifecycle. This study shows that end-use consumption can be encouraged if individuals are primed to think creatively, engage in end-use ideation (imagine end-use) and become inspired by more original ideas.
Design/methodology/approach
Three studies were carried out. Study 1 tested if creativity priming resulted in more effective end-use ideation (greater number of ideas and more original ideas) compared to environmental appeals and no intervention. Study 2 tested the effectiveness of creativity priming in a longitudinal setting. Study 3 demonstrated how creativity priming and end-use ideation could be practically executed using product packaging.
Findings
Creativity priming represents an effective intervention to stimulate end-use consumption with particularly positive results amongst less creative consumers. However, it was not the number of generated ideas, but their originality during end-use ideation that triggered inspiration.
Research limitations/implications
This study demonstrates which interventions are more effective in changing consumer behaviour in favour of more sustainable practices.
Practical implications
Increasing environmental degradation requires consumers to change their behaviour by re-consuming products. This study shows that consumers can adopt end-use if they are primed to think creatively, imagine end-use consumption and generate more original ideas.
Originality/value
Creative thinking has been leveraged at product development stages, but not at the end of products’ lifecycle. This study integrated creativity priming, consumer imagination and inspiration theories to explain the underlying mechanism behind end-use consumption to scale up its adoption by consumers.
This study investigates the relation between idea generation outcomes and resulting design solutions in an educational setting. The study offers the Refined Novelty and Explored Variety (RNEV) technique as an outcome-based assessment technique. This technique is used against the idea generation outcomes of 45 students obtained through the Morphological Chart method, comprising 3185 sketches. The ideas are categorized into a genealogy tree for visualizing the solution spaces of the students, and their novelty and variety scores are calculated. The correlation is investigated between the scores and the final jury grades assigned for the success of the resulting design solutions. Results show that there is a significant positive correlation between the novelty and variety scores of the ideas, and the final jury grades.
One of the reasons why products are replaced is as a consequence of changes in the users’ personal life. Adaptable or upgradable products have the advantage that, to some extent, they counter dissatisfaction in products that still work by improving functionalities or adding new ones. So, to develop adaptable products, designers have to consider the potential changes in the users’ personal life during the earlier phases of the design process. This work presents a list of scenario creation-type questions which promote design ideas that consider changing needs (QuChaNe). To check the effectiveness of this list of questions, an experiment with 28 designers was conducted. In the experiment, the designers applied the proposed list of questions to generate ideas for products. The same task was carried out using no prescribed method as a control group for comparison purposes. The results show that the use of the list of scenario creation questions leads to the generation of more ideas for changing needs and with higher quality. This finding implies that designers could use these questions to generate ideas for changing needs as a previous task before applying design for adaptability (DFA) or upgradability (DFU) methods. This would ultimately lead to more adaptable products.
Organizations must be creative continuously to survive and thrive in today's highly competitive, rapidly changing environment. A century of creativity research has produced several descriptive models creativity, and hundreds of prescriptions for interventions that demonstrably improve creativity. This paper presents the cognitive network model (CNM) as a causal model of the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to creative solutions in the human mind. The model may explain why creativity prescriptions work as they do. The model may also provide a basis for deriving new techniques to further enhance creativity. The paper tests the model in an experiment where 61 four-person groups used either free-brainstorming or one of three variations on directed-brainstorming to generate solutions for one of two unstructured tasks. In both tasks, people using directed-brainstorming produced more solutions with high creativity ratings, produced solutions with higher average creativity ratings, and produced higher concentrations of creative solutions than did people using free-brainstorming. Significant differences in creativity were also found among the three variations on directed-brainstorming. The findings were consistent with the CNM.
Idea quality is the most important indicator of group brainstorming performance. Yet, little electronic brainstorming (EBS) research has assessed idea quality directly. This article provides a closer look at EBS and nominal brainstorming groups in terms of idea quality. This study employed an unbalanced repeated measures experimental design to compare the quality of ideas generated by small groups using four brainstorming technologies (nominal, verbal, EBS-anonymous, and EBS-non-anonymous). In the experiment, three conditions thought to improve the effectiveness of EBS groups were also manipulated. The results indicated that overall, nominal brainstorming groups generated ideas at least as good, if not better, than EBS groups. Furthermore, the three conditions manipulated did not improve the quality of the ideas generated by EBS groups.
The high productivity of electronic brainstorming groups has been attributed to several factors, one of which is anonymity. The authors assessed the role of anonymity by randomly assigning brainstorming groups to one offour conditions: anonymous electronic, nonanonymous electronic, verbal, and nominal. The authors found some evidence that more controversial ideas were produced by members of anonymous electronic groups than by members of the other groups. The authors also found clear evidence that anonymous brainstorming groups produced more nonredundant ideas than did nonanonymous brainstorming groups.