Team Creative Processes: The Importance of Complementary and Shared Mental Models

Past research suggests that knowledge diversity is utilized during creative processes, divergent and convergent thinking, to come up with novel and useful solutions. Whereas research examining the relationship between knowledge diversity and process outcomes has been mixed, differentiating knowledge into mental models may help explain team creative processes and outcomes. Herein, two types of mental models, complementary and shared mental models, are related to team creative processes. Complementary mental models are those knowledge structures held by team members that have unique role-specific task-relevant content. Shared mental models are those knowledge structures held by team members that contain similar content. These mental models provide a finer-grained perspective of knowledge and show how each team member´s knowledge may contribute to divergent and convergent creative processes and outcomes. Further, a framework relating mental models and creative processes is presented and potential facilitation approaches are discussed.