This is the last of 3 articles this week describing hybrid meetings- the good, the bad, and the disappointing.

We’ve discussed various methods to develop creative ideas over the decades.  But, it seems that this pandemic- where we work remotely- has reduced our ability to conceive of exciting, useful, creative concepts to develop.  And, it’s not just our firm that think so- many firms have found a decreased ability to come up with creative concepts.

Well, our perceptions may not be that far off from the truth.  Drs. Melanie Brucks (Columbia) and Jonathan Levav (Stanford) just published the results of their studies on creativity during the pandemic.  The study, “Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation“, was published in Nature this past week.

In a nutshell, they found that we develop fewer creative ideas when we meet virtually.  But, our meeting virtually does not preclude us from fostering those creative ideas to fruition.  These results were the opposite of what the researchers expected; they were of the opinion that our ideas flowed just as freely as before, but we were more reluctant to adopt those new technologies.

The study involved some 602 folks in a laboratory setting.  Paired up, the couples were tasked with developing creative ideas in 5 minutes and then cull through those ideas in the next minute to discern the best suggestion.  Oh, and half the pairs met in person; the other half employed video conferencing software.  The researchers determined the number of ideas generated and the quality of the best suggestion after the 6 minute test periods.

The virtual teams did produce fewer ideas on average- 14.74 versus 16.77 when folks met face to face.  Moreover, those ideas that emanated from the virtual teams were less creative.   But, the virtual teams better discerned the relative qualities of those ideas compared to those who met in person   

(The same tests were effected at a telecommunications infrastructure firm, using 1490 engineers, across five countries.  The results were similar at all five locations.)

A second set of tests were then effected with 151 subject pairs, with additional monitoring.  The researchers found that the virtual teams spent 91.4 seconds looking directly at their partners; the real-life teams only spend 51.7 seconds focused on their partners.  (In other words, the more focused connection did not inspire more creative results.)

Now, we have also found that when we want to develop maximal creative ideas, our team needs to be larger than just two folks.  Generally, we always have less than 10- with 5 to 7 folks being the optimal creative team.  This may also influence the results that Brucks and Levav found.

But, it is obvious for firms like ours- and other teams that need to develop new ideas to propel their firms to the next great idea- virtual offices are not going to be the satisfactory environment.  We will still rely on in-person meetings, getting our folks in the same room to come up with ideas.  Once we’ve come up with a slew of ideas,  then we can use remote work to choose the best alternatives and bring them to fruition.

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