The originality of new product ideas in the front-end is crucial for new product development (NPD) success. To foster originality, organisations use idea sprints, where distributed and remote NPD teams working in agile develop ideas under fixed time and cost constraints, exchanging outputs virtually. These virtual transfers, via tools like email, include both product-related factors like idea descriptions and person-related factors like emotions. Emotions expressed about idea descriptions can, however, be distorted during virtual transfers, possibly influencing idea elaboration. Despite their frequent occurrence and potential impact, this issue remains unexplored in the literature. Drawing on emotions as social information (EASI) theory, we test if the expression of excitement reduces, while the expression of frustration increases the originality of new product ideas generated in idea sprints. The results of an online experiment with professional participants in the role of either team member (i.e., idea generator or elaborator) or product owner (i.e., evaluator) during a simulated idea sprint unexpectedly show that both emotions, if expressed by the generator in the virtual transfer to the elaborator, reduce the originality of the new product ideas as evaluated by the product owner. These findings enrich our limited understanding of the role of expressed emotions in virtual transfers for ideation activities in the front-end of NPD.
{"title":"Emotional Expressions in Front-End Team Work Hamper the Originality of New Product Ideas","authors":"Ann-Carolin Wolf, Theresa Treffers, Fred Langerak","doi":"10.1111/caim.70005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.70005","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The originality of new product ideas in the front-end is crucial for new product development (NPD) success. To foster originality, organisations use idea sprints, where distributed and remote NPD teams working in agile develop ideas under fixed time and cost constraints, exchanging outputs virtually. These virtual transfers, via tools like email, include both product-related factors like idea descriptions and person-related factors like emotions. Emotions expressed about idea descriptions can, however, be distorted during virtual transfers, possibly influencing idea elaboration. Despite their frequent occurrence and potential impact, this issue remains unexplored in the literature. Drawing on emotions as social information (EASI) theory, we test if the expression of <i>excitement</i> reduces, while the expression of <i>frustration</i> increases the originality of new product ideas generated in idea sprints. The results of an online experiment with professional participants in the role of either team member (i.e., idea generator or elaborator) or product owner (i.e., evaluator) during a simulated idea sprint unexpectedly show that both emotions, if expressed by the generator in the virtual transfer to the elaborator, reduce the originality of the new product ideas as evaluated by the product owner. These findings enrich our limited understanding of the role of expressed emotions in virtual transfers for ideation activities in the front-end of NPD.</p>","PeriodicalId":47923,"journal":{"name":"Creativity and Innovation Management","volume":"34 4","pages":"891-906"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/caim.70005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145426076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is transforming the way people approach creative problem-solving (CPS). Whereas previous technologies were only used as creativity tools, GenAI can also be conceived as an actor taking on different roles that adds a collaborative element to individual CPS processes. So far, research on augmenting CPS with GenAI has focused on creative cognition. In this article, we use a metacognitive perspective as a unique lens to conceptualize AI-augmented approaches to CPS and explore the implications of AI-augmented creative cognition. Based on this, we propose that the collaboration with GenAI in CPS shifts a part of human attention away from executing to monitoring and controlling creative cognition. These imposed metacognitive demands have important implications for our theoretical understanding of AI-augmented CPS and how people can better actualize the creative potential of GenAI. Future research directions and empirical approaches for understanding and addressing these metacognitive demands are discussed along with practical implications for applying CPS.
{"title":"AI-Augmented Approaches to Creative Problem-Solving: A Metacognitive Perspective","authors":"Christian Hoßbach, Scott G. Isaksen","doi":"10.1111/caim.70003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.70003","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is transforming the way people approach creative problem-solving (CPS). Whereas previous technologies were only used as creativity tools, GenAI can also be conceived as an actor taking on different roles that adds a collaborative element to individual CPS processes. So far, research on augmenting CPS with GenAI has focused on creative cognition. In this article, we use a metacognitive perspective as a unique lens to conceptualize AI-augmented approaches to CPS and explore the implications of AI-augmented creative cognition. Based on this, we propose that the collaboration with GenAI in CPS shifts a part of human attention away from executing to monitoring and controlling creative cognition. These imposed metacognitive demands have important implications for our theoretical understanding of AI-augmented CPS and how people can better actualize the creative potential of GenAI. Future research directions and empirical approaches for understanding and addressing these metacognitive demands are discussed along with practical implications for applying CPS.</p>","PeriodicalId":47923,"journal":{"name":"Creativity and Innovation Management","volume":"34 4","pages":"854-869"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/caim.70003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145426128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}