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Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , The impact of mixed-anonymity on brainstorming performance: Evidence from field experiments(Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2026-07-21); ; Generating innovative and valuable ideas is essential for organizational competitiveness, and structured ideation formats are widely used to support creativity and idea generation of individuals, teams, and organizations. One such format is nominal brainstorming, in which participants generate ideas independently rather than through group interactions. Previous research has produced mixed results regarding the impact of anonymity in such individual idea-generation settings. Anonymous formats may reduce evaluation apprehension but can also lead to free riding, while non-anonymous formats promote accountability yet might increase the fear of negative evaluation. To clarify these conflicting findings, this study examines a novel mixed-anonymity approach in which participants generate ideas independently and anonymously, but the identities of those with the highest-rated ideas are subsequently revealed. We investigate the effects of mixed-anonymity on individually generated brainstorming outputs in two field experiments. The first adopts a between-subject design (N = 216), randomly assigning participants to anonymous, non-anonymous, or mixed-anonymity conditions. The second follows a within-subject design (N = 192), exposing each participant to all three conditions. In both studies, participants engaged in nominal brainstorming tasks. Ideation outcomes were measured by quantity, novelty, and user value. Additionally, we assessed evaluation apprehension and free riding as potential mediators. Our between-subject experiment did not demonstrate significant differences in idea quantity, novelty, or user value among the three anonymity conditions. Conversely, the within-subject experiment revealed significantly higher idea novelty under mixed-anonymity conditions compared to anonymous and non-anonymous conditions, but no significant effects on idea quantity or user value. Contrary to initial hypotheses, the proposed mediators, evaluation apprehension and free riding, did not explain these results. These findings refine the current understanding of anonymity in nominal brainstorming by showing that mixed-anonymity does not yield consistent effects across experimental settings. Overall, this study indicates that the role of mixed-anonymity in individual idea generation is contingent, not as straightforward as existing theorizing based on evaluation apprehension and free riding would suggest.Publicationtype: Journal Article22 11 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , Crowding-out or crowding-in? The effects of idea evaluation on evaluators’ idea generation(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), 2026-04-24); ; Organizations rely on their employees to produce many high-quality ideas for the improvement of products, processes, and strategies. Evaluators such as managers and technical experts need to not only assess these ideas but also face expectations to contribute ideas of their own. We investigate this task duality by asking how idea evaluation activities affect evaluators’ ideation performance. Although much of the creativity and innovation literature points to a crowding-out effect, some theoretical arguments support idea crowding-in. Using data from a multinational firm’s idea management system and a difference-in-differences framework, we find robust evidence of substantial idea crowding-in: Evaluators’ likelihood of idea generation increases by 205% on the day that they evaluate ideas and remains elevated for the following two weeks. Extensive analyses support knowledge recombination as the key mechanism: By exposing evaluators to unfamiliar knowledge, idea evaluation creates new opportunities for recombination and idea generation. The ideas that evaluators generate postevaluation are 19% more valuable (but not more novel) than those they generate outside the postevaluation window. We contribute to innovation scholarship by identifying a hitherto overlooked effect of idea evaluation: triggering idea generation among evaluators.Publicationtype: Journal Article8 13 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , HOOU an der TU Hamburg: Jahresbericht 2025(Technische Universität Hamburg, 2026); ; ; ; In diesem Bericht stellt die Hamburg Open Online University an der TU Hamburg (HOOU@TUHH) ihre Arbeit im Jahr 2025 vor.Publicationtype: Project Deliverable57 25 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , The role of creativity and innovation in the quality of our lives, the planet and scienceThis editorial is the first in a new set-up, in which we, as the editorial team of Creativity and Innovation Management, share with our community and wider readership our experiences, views and perspectives, expectations or questions we may have. The intention is to publish such an editorial every half year. The topic of this one: creativity, innovation and quality.Publicationtype: Journal Article57 20 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , Opening the floodgates : How big companies can reap the benefits of internal crowdfunding(Elsevier, 2025-01-01); ; ; Digital technologies enable employees at all levels to participate in distributed decision-making. We examine the design principles, benefits, and challenges of a new type of distributed decision-making: internal crowdfunding. We build on a five-year case study of internal crowdfunding contests at Siemens AG to deepen our understanding of the design principles of internal crowdfunding and its potential for corporate innovation. Based on this data, we discuss the three design choices in internal crowdfunding (contributors, configuration, and control), find four key benefits (decentralization, cross-collaboration, institutionalization, and intrapreneurship), and identify three key challenges (dealing with rejected ideas, evaluation biases, and implementation and follow-on funding) and potential actions by managers to overcome them. The paper contributes to both the emerging literature on internal crowdfunding and the literature on distributed decision-making.Publicationtype: Journal Article59 33 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , When necessity is the mother of disruption: Users versus producers as sources of disruptive innovationThis study investigates the sources of disruptive innovation. The disruptive innovation literature suggests that these do not originate from existing customers, in contrast to what is predicted by the user innovation literature. We compile a unique content-analytical dataset based on 60 innovations identified as disruptive by the disruptive innovation literature. Using multinomial and binomial regression, we find that 43% of the sample disruptive innovations were originally developed by users. Disruptive innovations are more likely to originate from users (producers) if the environment has high turbulence in customer preferences (technology). Disruptive innovations that involve high functional (technological) novelty tend to be developed by users (producers). Users are also more likely to be the source of disruptive process innovations and to innovate in environments with weaker appropriability. Our article forges new links between the disruptive and the user innovation literatures, and offers guidance to managers on the likely source of disruptive threats.Publicationtype: Journal ArticleScopus© Citations 2 39 182 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: without files , Unexpected Interruptions, Idle Time, and Creativity: Evidence from a Natural Experiment(2024-01); Interruptions are common in organizational life and last from seconds and minutes to hours and days. We rely on a quantitative abductive strategy to determine how extended work interruptions shape employees’ creativity. We start by studying how surprising interruptions that cause idle time affect employees’ creative performance. We do so by exploiting a natural experiment—a supply chain shortage that caused unexpected stops in production plants—to show that individuals exposed to such an interruption produce 58% more ideas than uninterrupted employees in the three weeks after the interruption. We corroborate this effect in a replication and extend it to idea quality. Investigating the effect’s causes, we then show that we do not find the same effects for two other interruption types: for unexpected interruptions without idle time (i.e., intrusions), we find a negative effect on creative performance because employees forcefully disengage from their work and switch their attention to the interrupting task. For expected interruptions with idle time (i.e., planned breaks), we also find no positive effect on creative performance because employees discretionally disengage from work and focus on nonwork and leisure goals. We consider and evaluate three different theoretical explanations for our findings: attention residue, cognitive stimulation, and recovery. We end our abductive process by putting attention residue forward as the most likely explanation. Finally, we suggest three propositions based on our findings and discuss our contributions to the literature on interruptions and creativity in organizations.Publicationtype: Journal Article251 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , Does familiarity with an idea bias its evaluation?(Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2023-07-01); ; Although many organizations strive for radical or disruptive new ideas, many fall short of their goals. We propose that a primary reason for this failure is rooted in the individuals responsible for innovation: while they seek novel ideas, they prefer familiar ones. While prior research shows that individuals are biased against ideas with high objective novelty, it has overlooked the role of subjective novelty, i.e., the extent to which an idea is novel or unfamiliar to an individual idea evaluator. In this paper, we investigate how such subjective familiarity with an idea shapes idea evaluation in innovation. Drawing on research from psychology and marketing on the mere exposure effect, we argue that familiarity with an idea positively affects the evaluation’s outcome. We present two field studies and one laboratory study that support our hypothesis. This study contributes to the understanding of cognitive biases that affect innovation processes.Publicationtype: Journal Article76 68 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: without files , Reviewing excellenceCreativity and Innovation Management has grown substantially over the last couple of years, both quantitatively and qualitatively. From 2016 to 2021, the number of submissions has grown from 287 to 395. Most of the growth was realized in Asia: The number of submissions from that continent increased from 72 in 2016 to 193 in 2021. The rest of the world remained (close to) stable: 215 in 2016 and 203 in 2021. Equally important, the Thomson ISI Impact Factor increased from 1.423 in 2015 to 3.051 in 2021 and further to 3.644 in 2022. This is not where our ambitions end, though. We want to be the ever-better outlet for authors researching, and practitioners working in, the fields we cover. Editing a journal with the ambition to continuously increase its quality while dealing with a substantial growth requires teamwork—teamwork among the editors and the editorial office, teamwork between the editors and their reviewers and, as surprising as this may sound, teamwork between the authors and their reviewers in a top-quality reviewing process. The purpose of this piece is to present and discuss some reviewing standards. In particular, we aim to share with our reviewers what we think is an excellent reviewing process. Furthermore, we formulate our ideas about what it is that makes a review an excellent one. The title of this piece is deliberately ambiguous. It denotes that Creativity and Innovation Management strives for reviewing excellence—as in an excellent reviewing process. It also denotes that we reach for the stars and hope to one day receive and, hence, review only excellent submissions.Publicationtype: Journal Article54 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: without files , Distributed decision‐making in the shadow of hierarchy: How hierarchical similarity biases idea evaluationCompanies are increasingly opening up decision-making, involving employees on all levels in distributed – and purportedly ‘hierarchy-free’ – decision processes. We examine how hierarchy reaches into such ‘democratized’ systems, arguing that it is a source of homophily that biases idea evaluation decisions. Using a data set from internal crowdfunding at one of the world's largest industrial manufacturers, we show that idea evaluators overvalue hierarchically similar others’ ideas. Competition in the form of lateral closeness dampens this bias, whereas uncertainty in the form of novelty amplifies this bias. We contribute to the literatures on decision biases in centralized vs. distributed innovation and on structural similarity as a driver of employee behaviors.Publicationtype: Journal Article101