Collaborative Knowledge Creation and Problem Solving: A Systems Design Perspective

The current paper builds on the assumptions that creativity occurs in a social context that fosters collaborative behavior and that group creativity support mechanisms are essential for building a collaborative group environment. Applying a situationalist view of creativity we believe that group collaboration is an evolutionary process that encompasses ideation, integration, evaluation and selection. Individuals cooperate to share and integrate their ideas on a particular task, and compete to maximize their objectives. We hypothesize that, as with genetic algorithms, there should be a balance between competition and cooperation among members so that the fittest ideas survive and the inferior ones fade. We use a series of simulation studies and laboratory experiments to examine these factors and their joint effect on the quality of group collaboration processes. The paper is based on theories of group decision support systems and genetic algorithms, and incorporates previous studies on creative tasks.