Can smart technology make group members more creative? The effect of interactive feedback using sociometric badges on members’ creativity

Smart technologies that provide immediate and timely feedback may unleash far greater individual creativity in teams. Yet until now, we possess little empirical research to assess whether such promise matches reality. Using interactive feedback on the participation of team members during a discussion, we examine whether interactive feedback encourages individual team members to experience a higher self-efficacy in their partake of group discussion, and thereby boost their creative potential. We conducted a laboratory study in which 176 individuals (59 groups) were randomly assigned to either the interactive feedback or control condition. In the interactive feedback condition, participants wore sociometric badges that provided real-time feedback on their relative participation rate during the group discussion. In the control condition, participants wore sociometric badges that did not provide any feedback. Results showed that individuals in the feedback condition experienced increased participatory self-efficacy, which, in turn, was related to higher individual creativity. In addition, we identified team reflexivity as a key group-level moderator such that when individuals worked in highly reflexive teams, they demonstrated a further boost in their participatory self-efficacy under the feedback condition.