| Notwithstanding superior performance of electronic brainstorming (EBS) over Nominal and Face-to-Face brainstorming, prior group brainstorming studies point out many remaining crucial process losses (e.g., idea production time underutilization, attention blocking, cognitive inertia, cognitive interference by information overload, and incomplete use of information) that hold back group performance. Thus far, studies have focused on how to improve process gains while neglecting how to mitigate process losses that may be more efficient and effective to enhance group productivity. The proposed research introduced Verbal-EBS that combines the best of both communication modes, speaking and reading, by integrating speech recognition technology with group memory, which is one of the built-ins of existing EBS, and then investigated how to increase the idea production time and the quantity and quality of ideas. A laboratory experiment comparing the performance among Verbal-EBS, Typing-EBS, and Nominal-based EBS was used to test a set of theoretically grounded hypotheses. As prior computer-mediated studies and orality studies in communication suggested that (1) typing is slower than speaking, while reading is faster than listening, and (2) searching for good ideas to build on is possible with the support of group memory of EBS while speaking but not while writing or typing, individuals who were given Verbal-EBS treatment performed nearly twice as well as individuals with typing treatment. The results enhance our current understanding of group brainstorming that includes how and why Verbal-EBS is theoretically and practically different from traditional Typing-EBS. |
