When Silver is Gold: Forecasting the Potential Creativity of Initial Ideas

Published Research

Past research on idea evaluation has focused on how individuals evaluate the creativity of finalized ideas. But idea evaluation is also important early in the creative process, when individuals must forecast the potential creativity of rough initial ideas as they decide which to develop.Read More

Leaps in Innovation: The Bolt versus Bannister Effect in Algorithmic Tournaments

Working Papers

This paper explores whether innovation breakthroughs stimulate or impede future progress in individual innovation. On the one hand, one could argue that substantial improvements to the status quo might inspire advances through competition.Read More

Idea Generation and the Role of Feedback: Evidence from Field Experiments with Innovation Tournaments

Published Research

In many innovation settings, ideas are generated over time and managers face a decision about if and how to provide in-process feedback to the idea generators about the quality of submissions. In this article, we use design contests allowing repeated entry to examine the effect of in-process feedback on idea generation.Read More

Opportunity Spaces in Innovation: Empirical Analysis of Large Samples of Ideas

Published Research

A common approach to innovation, parallel search, is to identify a large number of opportunities and then to select a subset for further development, with just a few coming to fruition. One potential weakness with parallel search is that it permits repetition. The same, or a similar, idea might be generated multiple times.Read More

Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea

Published Research

In a wide variety of settings, organizations generate a number of possible solutions to a problem—ideas—and then select a few for further development. We examine the effectiveness of two group structures for such tasks—the team structure, in which the group works together in time and space, and the hybrid structure, in which individuals first work independently and then work together.Read More