Collaboration: the key to creativity

What kinds of connections provide the biggest benefits in terms of knowledge acquisition, and create the right conditions for developing individual creativity? This is the topic of heated debate among experts, an imperative issue with major implications for managing teams and people.

Is it better to operate in a “bonded” environment, i.e. a closed network with very strong connections, or in a “bridging” environment with an open social network where “brokering” or mediation is the go-to approach for making and growing connections? Much of the debate on this question is based on an underlying assumption: that the structural characteristics of social networks inside organizations are reflected in the level of collaboration among their members.

But new studies are pushing the envelope and challenging this structuralist approach in seeking to pinpoint possible organizational designs that effectively foster knowledge acquisition and creativity in organizations.

Considering how willing people are to engage in interpersonal collaboration in an organization, can this modify the effects produced by closed (bonded) networks or open (bridging) networks in terms of knowledge acquisition and individual creativity? We recently ran a study to explore this question.

Our research is based on the idea that the network structure of an organization (whether closed or open) does not immediately bring about specific benefits for the actors embedded in that network, but instead offers opportunities for those benefits to emerge. What’s more, with our study we wanted to demonstrate that the benefits of networks are contingent on the fit between their structural characteristics and the concrete, collaborative attitudes of network actors. This means that we can consider the level of collaboration as one of the key triggers that transform potential opportunities generated by networks into concrete advantages in terms of knowledge and creativity.

We tested this idea in our study which involved 93 people who work for the same organization, a Danish chemical company that we called ChemDan. We collected our data via an online questionnaire to analyze the organizational network, and we included tools for individual self-assessments and managers’ assessment of behaviors.

The results of our research (which we also substantiated with a significant number of robustness checks) show that the role of collaboration is actually a key condition for generating creativity in networks. So our study represents a step forward on the path to understanding the mechanisms by which networks generate positive impacts on knowledge acquisition and creative outputs.

The managerial implications of our work are multiple, considering that managers’ decisions impact the formation and evolution of employee networks, as well as the creation of a collaborative climate at a company level. Here are the most salient:

• Don’t run the risk of adopting strategies with networks without carefully observing both the abilities of employees to capitalize on opportunities. Consider the cultural context and the values of the organization too.
• Keep in mind that when managers try to build a collaborative environment based on trust by facilitating social interactions, people still might not collaborate or trust one another, even when they are densely interconnected. To produce positive effects, social networks must be immersed in organizational contexts characterized by values and mechanisms that encourage collaboration, trust and knowledge mobilization.
• Make sure not only that employees have the chance to grow both networks (closed or brokered), but that these structures are not dissonant with the level of collaboration in the organization.

One final practical consideration from the employees’ perspective that emerges from our findings is the need to be aware of the positions that people hold in the social structure and in the larger social environment. Consistency between the two is necessary to enable employees to fully realize the creative potential associated with a specific network position.