Discerning creativity: a group process perspective on idea selection

Groups struggle to identify creative ideas, often gravitating towards more mediocre ideas even when better ideas (i.e., ideas that are more novel and useful) are available for selection. While this issue has been well-documented, how to overcome the problem is not yet well-understood. In this essay, we advocate for the utility of using structured processes to aid groups in selecting more creative ideas and offer one example of such a structured process that practitioners can use to improve the odds of groups finding those ‘diamonds-in-the-rough’. The process is theoretically grounded and designed to overcome the very obstacles that have been suggested by previous research to impede the selection of creative ideas in groups. Our six-step process is easily implementable and applicable in a variety of contexts in which selection bodies have to make decisions under uncertainty.