[Study] When collections of creatives become creative collectives: A field study of problem solving at work

Question:
how the locus of creative problem solving shifts, at times, from the individual to the interactions of a collective?

Research methods:
The model is grounded in observations, interviews, informal conversations, and archival data gathered in intensive field studies of work in professional service firms.

To understand how social interactions shape new perspectives on problematic situations and
uncover potentially relevant past experiences, the field study relied on ethnographic-research methods, which allow the researcher to uncover the perspectives of the people in the organization.

The research design collected data from five sources: (1) interviews with key informants, (2) project postmortems, (3) observations of work, (4) tracking of particular projects (whether “live”
or retrospectively), and (5) documents and technological artifacts of the organization.

Overall:

Generation of creative solutions draw from—and reframe—the past experiences of participants in ways that lead to new and valuable insights.

Model of collective creativity that identifies the precipitating roles played by four types of social interaction: help seeking, help giving, reflective reframing, and reinforcing.

• Help seeking describes activities that occur when an individual who either recognizes or is assigned a problematic situation actively seeks the assistance of others. 

• relied heavily on formal brainstorming meetings
• Monday morning meetings in which people would discuss the particular projects and problems they were working on 
• weekly meetings where they would discuss the status of current projects, and people in these meetings would often solicit help that focused on coming to a collective understanding of their particular problems
• when people had problems (or simply needed a break from their work) they would walk the halls asking questions and waiting for a head to pop up over a cubicle wall and begin a conversation
• Set up at least two introductory brainstormers [brainstorming meetings] to get the best minds in the company, the collective consciousness of the office, working on your problem
• Help giving, conversely, represents the willing devotion of time and attention to assisting with the work of others. 
• returned the message from an unknown colleague in San Francisco that day, but spent considerable time helping with that colleague’s request despite an already busy schedule
• willingness to give his time and attention ultimately 
• Reflective reframing represents the mindful behaviors of all participants in an interaction, where each respectfully attends to and builds upon the comments and actions of others. 
• The locus of creativity in the interaction moves to the collective level when each individual’s contributions not only give shape to the subsequent contributions of others, but, just as importantly, give new meaning to others’ past contributions
• relevant new ideas and insights and such reframing of a problematic situation come about not simply because the right people were brought in to help on a project, or because they actively contributed, but also because the participants in the process were able to mindfully consider those contributions and change their previously held conceptions of both the problem and relevant solutions???
• And, reinforcing reflects any interesting solutions they might have found. 
• help that is given may be viewed as criticism or an attempt to gain ownership of ideas—reducing opportunities for reflective reframing and also, ultimately, the likelihood of future help seeking or giving.

Bibliography:
Hargadon, A. B., & Bechky, B. A. (2006). When collections of creatives become creative collectives: A field study of problem solving at work. Organization Science, 17(4), 484-500.