Asia School of Business

Global Inquiry, Local Heart

Synthesizing, Patchworking, Evaluating, and Abstaining: Patterns of Creative Interaction

Authors: Frederic-Alexander Starmann, Sylvia Hubner-Benz, Michael Frese and Jomel Wei Xuan Ng

While team creativity is increasingly viewed as a process, we lack a granular understanding of the underlying team member interactions that drive idea development. In this study we ask: How do team members momentarily, as well as over time, engage with one another to shape the trajectory of an emerging product concept? Using qualitative video analysis of 314 entrepreneurial teams working on exploratory innovation, we identify four distinct patterns of creative interaction.