Going Out of the Box
Creativity is one of the three main elements of collaboration. It is one of what I call the “collaboration dynamics”. Which is why my interest was piqued when I recently came across a Hidden Brain podcast called the Edge Effect with a reference to a scientific work called, in short, Going Out of the Box. The research investigated whether close intercultural relationships promote creativity, workplace innovation, and entrepreneurship. Here’s what they did.
The study had 4 parts. In part 1, the researchers looked at MBA students of a ten-month period and compared the creativity of students who had dated a foreigner during the program with those who had not. Researchers asked students to complete an Alternate Use Task, Remote Associates Test, and Insight Problems at the beginning of the program and again at the end. Twenty-two percent of participants reported dating someone from another culture during the study period. This portion of the study found that students who dated people from other cultures were more creative in both in generating multiple creative ideas (divergent thinking) and in figuring out unique solutions to a defined problem (convergent thinking).
In the second part of the study, researchers asked participants to reflect back on their dating experiences, and then compared the creative performance of those who had intercultural dating experience with those who did not. Again, those participants who had intercultural experience on which they could reflect showed higher measures of creativity. Further, the presence of ‘cultural learning’, or the ability participant explicitly described learning about another culture, was a positive predictor of the number of Remote Associates Test problems the participant was able to solve correctly.
The third portion of the study looked specifically at aspects of duration and number of intercultural romantic relationships. In this case, creativity was assessed based on the ability of participants to generate creative names for marketing products. The results indicated that the length of an intercultural relationship is a positive predictor or creativity, while the number of past intercultural partners had no effect. This result supported the researcher’s theory that the depth of multi-cultural experiences is an important predictor of creativity.
The final aspect of the study involved professionals who had previously worked in the United States and then returned home and looked at the frequency in which they interacted with their American friends after returning home. The researchers found that the frequency of contact was a good predictor of workplace innovation and the likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur.
These kinds of findings substantiate what we understand from the world of collaboration. A diverse group of people is better able to put address complex issues, because of the diversity of experience they bring to the table.
For me, the study illustrates the need for a cultural perspective when we design a collaborative venture. This means that we not only look to people’s skills and experience relative to a particular problem, but we also seek out views from a variety of cultural perspectives either through participation or as part of the exploration by a collaborative group (e.g., speakers, learning opportunities). In my experience, groups will typically seek out what other jurisdictions are doing, but this is almost never done with the intent to bring in a cultural perspective.
And, we learned that deep intercultural relationships are more creative, knowing that among other things, the development of a deep relationship takes time. So, in addition to working to make collaboration intercultural, we also need to allow sufficient time the possibility of intercultural learning to occur.
Articles and research like this always fascinate me. Even though they aren’t necessarily focused on collaboration, the lessons we can learn can be applied to create even more positive and creative collaborative endeavours.
Happy collaborating!
Citation
Lu, J.G., Hafenbrack, A.C., Maddux, W.W., Eastwick, P.W., Wang, D., & Galinsky, A.D. (2017). “Going Out” of the Box: Close intercultural relationships spark creativity, workplace innovation, and entrepreneurship. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102, 1091- 1108.
Scott Millar often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. Through Collaboration Dynamics, he offers a program in High Performance Collaboration, where he guides groups to explore the nature of collaboration, inclusivity, and innovation, and acquire new abilities to create the conditions that enable groups to contribute and thrive in challenging environments.
