Ar. Dennis et Js. Valacich, GROUP, SUBGROUP, AND NOMINAL GROUP IDEA GENERATION - NEW RULES FOR A NEW MEDIA, Journal of management, 20(4), 1994, pp. 723-736
How should a group organize itself to generate ideas? Should all group
members work together as one intact group, should they form several s
maller sub-groups that work independently, or should all members work
separately as individuals without communicating? Research with verbal
media presents a clear answer: all members should work separately with
out communicating. This paper examines this question for computer-medi
ated idea generation. In two separate studies, intact groups generated
more ideas (with higher quality) than those working as individuals or
in several smaller sub-groups. We attribute these differences to redu
ced blocking, and different social processes adopted in the different
sized groups.