COMPUTER BRAINSTORMS - MORE HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE

Research has consistently found nominal group brainstorming (in which members work separately without communicating) to be superior to brain storming in which group members interact verbally. This article presen ts the results of an experiment that found the reverse to be true for computer-mediated electronic brainstorming. In this experiment, 12-mem ber electronically interacting groups generated more ideas than did 12 -member nominal groups, and there were no differences between 6-member electronic and 6-member nominal groups. The authors attribute these r esults to the ability of electronic brainstorming to introduce few pro cess losses (production blocking, evaluation apprehension, and free ri ding) while enabling process gains (synergy and the avoidance of redun dant ideas).