Social networks and communication media for generating creative ideas

Abstract

Why some dyadic interactions are more likely than others to trigger hinder the generation of novel and useful ideas? To investigate this question, we examine the attributes of dyadic ties that influence the generation of creative ideas, and how the strength of influence changes contingently on the mix use of communication media. Our study extends previous research by examining the impacts of Simmelian advice tie, Simmelian friendship tie and communication media mix on generating creative ideas. We conducted a survey among students in a knowledge-intensive academic institution. The results show that Simmelian advice tie, Simmelian friendship tie and communication media mix help to trigger the generation of creative ideas. The impact of Simmelian advice tie on creative idea generation is weakened by communication media mix, while the influence of Simmelian friendship tie is strengthened by it. We discuss both theoretical and practical contributions of our research on these findings. © 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.