Abstract
Most organizations need to evaluate novel ideas to identify their value. However, current idea evaluation research and practice hinder creativity by primarily facilitating convergent production (narrowing down ideas to a few tangible solutions) but discounting divergent production (the development of wildly creative and novel thoughts patterns). In this paper, I challenge this dominant view on idea evaluation by presenting a new theory I call dynamic idea evaluation and exploring the theory through a group creativity support system (GCSS) prototype. I designed the GCSS prototype as an idea portal that uses the knowledge created from the evaluation process to facilitate both convergent and divergent production. I designed the GCSS using an inductive and theory-building design science research (DSR) approach and interpretively analyzed it through an exploratory study in a Danish IS research department. I found that the GCSS demonstrates the ability to facilitate both divergent and convergent production during idea evaluation. Moreover, I add four design requirements and process architecture to help designers to build dynamic idea evaluation into this class of systems.
DOI
10.17705/1CAIS.04306
Recommended Citation
Ulrich, F. (2018). Exploring Divergent and Convergent Production in Idea Evaluation: Implications for Designing Group Creativity Support Systems. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 43, pp-pp. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.04306
When commenting on articles, please be friendly, welcoming, respectful and abide by the AIS eLibrary Discussion Thread Code of Conduct posted here.
