Creativity in Asynchronous Virtual Teams: Putting the Pieces Together

Abstract

Three related experiments, involving nearly 100 teams and 400 graduate students, found that virtual teams communicating strictly asynchronously produced significantly more creative results than did teams that engaged in some amount of synchronous communication (i.e., face-to-face or synchronous electronic communication). Using these experiments, four studies are conducted to explore creativity in the asynchronous virtual teams—each from a different aspect. Study one investigates individual team member personality, study two investigates team composition, while studies three and four investigate facets of team interaction. This chapter presents key findings from each study and synthesizes results across them. The analysis highlights the importance of team members, in terms of personality, as well as the composition of teams, in influencing interaction and the resultant creativity on a team level.