AN EMPIRICAL-EXAMINATION OF THE VALUE OF CREATIVITY SUPPORT SYSTEMS ON IDEA GENERATION

Because organizations seek more innovative ways to compete, the abilit y of their employees to generate new and valuable ideas becomes a fund amental survival skill. To the extent that computer software might enh ance the creative performance of individual users, organizations might ultimately apply such tools to enhance the creative performance of th eir employees. A controlled laboratory experiment was performed to det ermine whether two popular creativity support applications significant ly enhanced the creative performance of individual users. The results suggest that responses generated with software support are significant ly more novel and valuable than responses generated by pen and paper. The results also question the previous creativity research practice of not directly controlling for idea fluency prior to experimental manip ulation. It is hoped the findings from this investigation can be used to improve individual creative performance, further research concernin g factors relevant to creativity, and guide future ICSS development ef forts.