Novel Information Discovery and Collaborative Filtering to Support Group Creativity

Abstract

Teams that innovate encounter challenges in divergent and convergent thinking processes related to the need to: 1) leverage diverse internal and external knowledge, and 2) produce something that is both novel and valuable. Integrating the extant literature, we describe these challenges and propose a new approach to solving issues related to divergent and convergent thinking in groups in an innovation context. Specifically, we design group processes to support divergent and convergent thinking, including the use of several information technology (IT) tools to support them: 1) a novel-information discovery tool to foster computer-supported divergent thinking and sensemaking, and 2) a collaborative-filtering tool to foster computer-supported convergent thinking and sensegiving. Findings indicate that the novel-information discovery tool increases efficiency and effectiveness in the divergent thinking process and that the collaborative-filtering tool supports convergent thinking by focusing the group's attention on ideas that might otherwise be neglected. Combining these two IT tools with group processes for divergent and convergent thinking has important implications for both research and practice.