Creativity in pairs: investigating the association between team member creativity and overall team creativity in dyads

Abstract

Many organizations are utilizing teams to complete tasks and innovate in today’s rapid-changing world. This study aimed to identify how individual members of a team interact to generate ideas together. Previous literature identified two main models to represent the bridge between individual and team creativity. The compensatory model claims that the average individual creativity of team members predicts team creativity, while the disjunctive model puts emphasis on the most creative team member. This study investigated these models and explored a new multiplicative model. 58 undergraduate and graduate participants completed creativity tasks derived from Guilford’s Consequences tasks individually and then in dyads (n=29). These tasks were completed across three days with additional collection of demographic, affective, cognitive, and personality data. The existing dataset was extended using multivariate normal distribution to create a simulated dataset of 200 dyads. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to analyze the predictive value of the compensatory, disjunctive, and multiplicative models. The results showed strong support for the compensatory model and in some cases the disjunctive model. However, there was a lack of support for the multiplicative model. Other variables that played a role in team creativity included average positive affect, difference in negative affect, and emotional stability. This study included a limited sample and explored only the idea generation side of creativity. Future research should use larger and more diverse sample to study multiple aspects of creativity such as convergent thinking.