**2. Collaborative creativity and interaction quality**

Sternberg, Lubart, Kaufman, and Pretz [9] emphasized that creativity is important for society, but points out that research on problem-solving, abductive reasoning, cognitive flexibility, or functional fixation studies important aspects of creativity without using the word creativity.

Facilitation of creativity needs to activate both competencies, skills, and enabling conditions for creativity, as well as reconsider the effects of the creative activity, its reinforcing function, cognitively as well as socially, also in relation to what creativity accomplishes, the outcome of creativity [8]. Thus, the development of theory related reflexivity on creative experiences and competence as well as training of required skills in innovation processes needs to activate both the pre-requisites and predictors of creativity.

Three factors of creativity constitute criteria for assessment of creative responses in three dimensions 1) fluency, that is, number of responses/suggestions/ideas during a specified time period), 2) flexibility, that is, the number of different responses/suggestions/ideas during a specified time period and 3) originality, for example [10–12], is assessed on criteria of a qualitative nature based on perceptions of deviations from the ordinary [13, 14].

In general, people are expected to be flexible when encountering new situations, new requirements, and new problems, adapting to new technologies and communicating in diverse cultural settings. Cognitive flexibility is important for living, working, and learning in our rapidly changing world [15]. Social flexibility can be practiced and trained by giving and receiving information that develops new insights into other people's opinions and perceptions, it is the ability to be critically susceptible in social interaction and exchange for alternative possibilities [16, 17]. Social flexibility is thus required for effective teamwork and a facilitator of interpersonal communication [18]. A social perspective on flexibility can be defined as the inclination to adjust one's view to suit changing interpersonal situations, an interactional trait conceptualized as "openness to others." When interactors display flexible behavior, it is perceived as social flexibility [19].

Creativity involves the interplay of several factors where the correlation between social interaction processes and the characteristics of interacting individuals needs to be addressed together [20, 21]. The generation of original initiatives is a result of divergent thinking processes whereas the blending of several deviant initiatives and the assessment of this combinational outcomes' appropriateness is regarded as a convergent thinking process [22, 23].

Chrysikou [24] maintains that generative processes that evoke originality are characterized by spontaneous, emergent bottom-up processes, whereas convergent processes are controlled, top-down processes focusing on a particular goal or result, rather than producing original content.

For research on social interaction creativity, it is particularly interesting that divergent thinking and broadened attention are mutually interconnected with prosocial behavior [25, 26]. In addition, this broader attention divergence is mutually related to underlying generic cognitive processes for social interaction and decision-making, c.f., executive functions [27, 28].

#### **2.1 Social interaction and exchange: Group creativity**

The need for skills for social interaction and exchange does not diminish in a distributed way of working such as digital meeting tools. The digital meeting tools do not function as designers expect as long as the interactants (users, participants) do not understand what social interaction quality consists of and how dialog and exchange of ideas can be developed. Furthermore, in an increasingly digitized and automated working life, the abilities associated with creativity will be increasingly in demand [29, 30].

We first need a distinction regarding 'social group', a term which in the innovation literature is used interchangeably as 'organizational teams', and then define social interaction in that context. Definition of group: important distinction between dyadic versus group interaction, a group consists of more than two interactants [6], that is, we are not dealing with dyadic interaction. Definition of interaction: more than "performing some actions in synch with each other", that is, the quality that emerges during iterative exchange (such as in idea generation and creative problem solving) is related to the shared content and intersubjective understanding of that specific content. Definition of "interaction quality" [31, 32]:

There are different types of tasks and there are different levels of interaction quality as well. According to Sawyer [33] a work task complexity is defined in terms of how many operations that team members are required to work on together face-toface, while a non-complex task can be performed more linearly without interacting face-to-face, such as via mail contact where each performs his part and sends to the next team member to add their part in the whole. An additive interaction characteristic is when every single group member's contribution is collected and put together to find out similar and deviant opinions to reach consensus. That is something that all members can agree upon—which often tends to be the lowest common denominator. But, to develop content through the pool of interaction and results or solutions based on all members' continuous contributions is not an additive process. And, from a group-creativity point of view the evolving content, the result, will probably be both new, unexpected, and useful as well as created from a genuine combination. Thus, it thereby meets all aspects of general definitions of creativity. In addition, Austin & Devin [34] used the ensemble concept to describe a specific quality of group interaction, often manifested in artistic ensemble interplay.

#### *2.1.1 Group creativity*

Group creativity can be described in terms of alterations between the individual's creativity (divergence) and developed shared group ideas (convergence). Group creativity includes both the production of new ideas and the stability to be able to integrate them into a solution or an innovation. The integration process of group ideas can be described in terms of circularity and emergence, at the collective level, ideas, and structures emerge through interactions between individuals and these collective structures influence the interactions between individuals. This iterative

self-organizing group process is collective creative agency: an engagement of actors who, through the ongoing meaning-making of group members' initiatives and interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, develops creative actions and decisions as an interactive response to the problem posed by change [4, 35].

This view on group interaction and idea exchange was developed in a study on working groups at five companies in mid-Sweden [36, 37]. To describe and present research results regarding group interaction and emerging group ideas, a diagrammatic visualization is well suited [38]. In these diagrams, the intensity of a group's exchange of ideas can be described and related to its capacity for self-organization and decisionmaking. In studies of group creativity, intensity can correspond to the concept of fluency at the individual level and the number of different group ideas during the same group session corresponds to the concept of flexibility at the individual level [36, 39].

#### **2.2 Predictors of creativity or collaboration**

#### *2.2.1 Body movement*

My research has involved artistic processes in both music and theater. The theater's methodology for establishing an ensemble of actors through physical movement and dance can be used as a tool to understand what creative processes in groups can be [40]. Artistic processes can also exemplify the potential of human interaction in terms of interactional qualities and abilities to listen and respond. One such example is how the collective ability to improvisation can support the self-organizing capabilities of groups [4, 41]. Another example of how rhythmic movements to music enhance school children's idea generation and problem-solving capabilities [42].

#### *2.2.2 Originality takes abrasion*

Creativity in work is the process of engaging practices that generate useful novelty. Organizations need to promote creative attitudes and provide open structures that can absorb resulting innovation. Core competencies in creative processes, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and exchange, during teamwork are central to establishing distinctions between human-technology-artificial intelligence (e.g. [29, 30, 43]). Abilities that combine originality and usefulness in different ways characterize a creative agent. Original (different, deviant, unknown) actions need to be able to be used (meaningful, appropriate) functionally. Understanding and embracing this originality as appropriate and potentially valuable change is correspondingly an expression of creative agency capability. This creation and incorporation of new ways of doing things are not frictionless, the new is often perceived as questioning and criticizing, sometimes destructive. But the constructive contribution of creativity is to come up with alternatives to what it criticizes, this is the convergence of creative processes. Interactants, i.e., group members, need creativity for divergent differences to interact.

Creativity's laborious transcendence processes, balancing divergence and convergence, are often driven by enthusiasm and disruption—enthusiasm opens up to the new and discovering, while what threatens existing understandings and accustomed practices is perceived as disruptive. The new ideas criticizing the prevailing, that is, idea generation by definition means that all proposals and ideas cannot be combined. This critical function and even destruction as a result of the old needing to give way to the new is often overlooked aspect of creativity. Innovation seeks energy, drive, and an attractive work environment in creativity but is often surprised by criticism,

slowness (incubation), and destruction. This ambiguous effect of creativity at the workplace utilizes idea generation to develop the workplace climate [44].

#### *2.2.3 Dialog and intersubjective ideas*

How creativity emerges over time in different types of workplace-specific situations is a central question. A result of creativity in social interaction is the development of shared understanding in relation to innovation capabilities through dialog seminar methodology [41]. Findings from this study contributed to the understanding of attitudes and approaches that establish and maintain group dialog that develops intersubjective understanding. A consequence was that intersubjective understanding, emerging group ideas need to be made explicit and visualized, primarily for the group members'/participants' sensemaking and re-understanding of what is going on and thus act constructively and contribute to the continued development of the group ideas [45].

With this perspective and purpose as a starting point, a conceptual framework was developed that later came to be known as "GroPro" including a number of associated "tools" for training the creative abilities of groups [4]. This project was driven by the belief that creativity and group creativity can be learned and trained [39].

#### *2.2.4 Interaction quality: Group flow*

The psychological experience called flow can occur during the performance of challenging activities in which the difficulty of the task is matched to the skill level of the person [46]. Characteristics of the flow experience include high but subjectively effortless attention, a sense of control, loss of self-awareness, and altered experience of time and enjoyment [47]. Flow experiences have predominantly been investigated in individual performers, there is a growing research interest in the quality of shared flow experience in social contexts, that is, group flow [48]. Sawyer [33] defines group flow as *"an optimal collective experience that occurs when members develop a feeling of mutual trust and empathy, in which individual intentions harmonize with those of the group."* When team members experience this synchronized state of flow, this can be considered a sign of increased performance and enhanced team-level effectiveness [49]. This type of self-reinforcing circularity between the group and its individuals is common in accounts of social interaction and group dynamics [2, 3, 50].

Van den Hout and colleagues [49] posit seven prerequisites and four predictors of team flow experiences. The prerequisites for team members' experiences of this collective quality of interaction are shared values and mutual recognition, (1) collective ambition and motivation. Alignment between members, (2) individual goals, and (3) the teams' goal. Team members' skill levels should be comparable, some of which are unique to each team member and (4) the team should be able to integrate those skills. Establishing communication and feedback (5) each team member develops broadened perspectives which thereby set the conditions for listening and exchanging, to agree on activities for achieving the common goal. Creating a safe environment requires the elimination of unnecessary and unacceptable risks while allowing for and acknowledging the possibility that any team member may fail, which in turn gives teams (6) the freedom they need to take necessary risks by making them feel it is safe to take action. Team members keep one another on task by using task-oriented behavior, accountability, and (7) mutual commitment to achieving the common goal [6, 16, 49, 51].

The four characteristics of team flow are (1) intense collaboration between team members as they strive towards the collective ambition and the achievement of their

#### *Collaborative Creativity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110608*

goals. Interpersonal concentration on the shared activity and holistic focus, a shared sense of unity, that the team has merged to form (2) a cohesion of blending egos. Team members' awareness of (3) constantly and effortless synergistic accomplishments, the willingness to be vulnerable and interdependent on one another, and finally shared confidence and (4) mutual trust that the team can achieve its common task [33, 49].

As Pels et al. [48] point out group performance should be assessed considering the specific task framing the situation and constitute the basic criteria relevant to the specific interaction quality. However, the differing collective aspects should be seen as separate pieces of a single puzzle that come together to form the whole. With this approach, the definition of group flow becomes the integration of several interacting factors, as follows: Group flow is a shared experience of states represented by (a) positive interactions, (b) a high collective competence, and (c) a collective state of mind consisting of positive relationships between group members, often resulting in (d) optimal collective performance and creativity [48].

#### *2.2.5 Interaction quality: Flow synchronization*

Flow synchronization is a psychological mechanism stimulating the group members to interact with each other, and to work on shared goals collaboratively to reach a challenging interdependent task [52]. This specific quality of interaction can develop when the interactants have experience working together in an intensive exchange of initiatives, ideas, and opinions [32].

Predictors of group members' experience of flow synchronization are (a) that they know the purpose of the task and (b) share a common strategy to reach agreed goals. Group members help each other, (c) integrate their initiatives with consistency, (d) motivate themselves, and (e) learn from each other. In addition, when they (f) reflect on the experience of working together, they realize how much they have developed during the activity and how they influenced each other's performance [53, 54]. Thus, the coordination effect of interactional functioning has been highlighted in the studies of flow in a social context.

The flow synchronization has been operationalized with the 28-item Flow.

Synchronization Questionnaire [52], which collects the experienced components of the interaction during a shared flow situation. The questionnaire identifies five components: (1) effective cooperation and partnership evaluate the common activity from a personal, relational perspective. The component of (2) engagement and concentration on the task refer to the flow experience during the interdependent activity. The third and fourth factor focus on the motivational effect of the partners, related to the concept of emergent motivation [46] and the facilitating role of the partners (e.g. [55]). Coordination during the interdependent activity refers to the behavioral coordination of the cooperative partners, supporting the synchronization mechanism [54].

#### **2.3 Prerequisites for interaction quality**

#### *2.3.1 Openness*

The personality trait Openness is one of five factors in the well-established framework called the Big-Five, which is used to assess individuals' personality characteristics. Each factor, i.e., trait, is based on empirically derived personality traits which in turn are a cluster of several more specific aspects which in turn comprise a large number of even more specific characteristics [15, 56].

The experience of being engaged in an activity depends mainly on the existing degree of openness. For example, group members who have an open attitude tend to experience a greater effect from several days of training activities in improvisational approaches [57]. In social groups, engaging in creative problem-solving tasks [58] and openness to experience includes intellectual curiosity, reasoning and imagination, artistic and esthetic motivation, as well as emotional and fantasy richness [15].

Openness to others is associated with creativity and flexibility in thinking and acting [19]. Flexibility in thinking is related to divergent thinking, such as "jumping" between categories to avoid functional fixation, i.e., getting stuck in predefined categorizations or "downpipe"-thinking. Openness is thus a prerequisite attitude for divergent and flexible as well as for improvisational, self-organizational, activities in a group [58].

#### *2.3.2 Mindfulness/mindlessness*

Personal characteristics such as the personality trait openness to experiences correlate with mindfulness, engagement, and concentration in collaboration and self-efficacy. Actively engaging in reconstructing one's impressions of the environment, for example, the behavior or suggestions of other group members and paying attention to what this may mean for one's understanding of what the group as a whole strives to create, for example, a group idea, is a mindful approach which is one of the prerequisites for collaborative creativity. This approach enables own interpretations and conscious manipulation which in turn can constitute creative contributions to the group's interdependent task ([59], p. 4). From a creativity perspective, Mindfulness is a composite of four components: (1) novelty seeking, (2) commitment, (3) producing novelty, and (4) flexibility.

Mindlessness on the other hand refers to when the individual mindlessly forms a cognitive commitment to the information and freezes its potential meaning. Alternative meanings or uses of the information become unavailable for active cognitive use [60].

Research on mindfulness in organizational contexts refers to this decidedly Western notion of mindfulness in terms of a socio-cognitive approach [61]. Weick and Sutcliffe are drawing extensively on Ellen Langer's research and describe mindfulness as a rich awareness of discriminatory detail generated by organizational processes [62]. Valdesolo et al. stress the benefit of training group members' perceptual sensitivity towards the other group members' actions as this promotes performance in interdependent tasks [60].

In this socio-cognitive perspective, mindfulness becomes central to the mutual creation of meaning [63]. A mindful perceptual sensitivity towards others can thus be regarded as a prerequisite for interaction and exchange in social groups. Langer uses the concept of "sideway perception" relating to interaction theory regarding considering interactants (group members) actions, that these actions are not arbitrary but always express meaning, cf. intersubjectivity, [64].

In addition, from a sociocultural perspective on creativity, an attitude of mindfulness group members can interpret interactants' actions as multifaceted with several different meanings [65, 66]. Prerequisites for collaborative creativity are then openness for others, flexibility for divergence exchange, mindfulness in interaction, intersubjective creation of meaningful creativity, and improvisational attitude.

#### *2.3.3 Improvisational attitude*

For making the group collaboration to eventuate into creativity all group members have to be present in whatever is going on, aiming their focus on whatever emerges out of the

social interaction. This corresponds to "improvisational attitude" defined as "being mindfully in the now" [59]. When the interactants are aware that their collaboration continuously produces some emerging content, they can relate the group interaction to what the group produces as an outcome related to the task. We denote the emergent content "group idea" [67]. This implies that constructive and creative group effort is built on group members' awareness and ability to focus on whatever emerges through their interaction [68].

Sawyer outlines four rules or principles for constructive group improvisation [33]. Here follows our translation into four competence areas for collaborative creativity as a development of Sawyer's principles of group improvisation:

The basic competence for collaborative creativity is that the interactants train themselves to execute a "Yes, and.." attitude. The "Yes…"-part is the foundation of collective creative performance. The "and…"-part is the contributing dimension that supports the so-called "Group Idea" to gradually develop, that is, the emergent content.

The second competence area concerns listening skills. "Listen to the group idea!" is about listening empathetically to whatever is expressed rather than pondering about which response would be the most intelligent. This conscious awareness of others is consistent with one of Alex Osborn's guidelines for constructive brainstorming: "improve through combination" [69].

The third competence area is rather about developing a basic approach for all types of improvisation, that is, openness to others. A traditional concept in creativity research is functional fixation. The facilitative prompt for collaborative creativity aims to minimize this mindless fixation and reads "Do not write the script in your head!." When this call is heeded, interactants begin to be more mindful and "stay in the moment of interaction." It involves a great deal of trust in handing over control to the group process, assured that creativity will emerge from the iterative interaction. After all, it is not possible for one person to create a group idea.

Finally, the fourth competence area is about avoiding interrupting the group members' (interactants') synchronized experience of flow. That is, do not slow down the dialogic exchange of ideas and suggestions with long justifications and explanations, but "describe by doing" instead. The intensity, that is, fluency, of collaborative creativity has a greater impact on both performance and results than laborious accounts of the excellence of a particular idea.

#### *2.3.4 The ability to combine differences and reaching alternatives*

The responsibility for achieving and maintaining the presented prerequisites can to some extent be attributed to the group's leadership and distribution of work tasks, but the working group as a collective should also take responsibility for its way of interacting and making decisions, that is, the development of interaction maturity [31]. For the analysis of the interaction maturity of work groups, we have established a conceptual framework in the form of a maturity ladder inspired by Dreyfuss & Dreyfuss' [70] five levels of competence, as follows:

First level—the Novice: Group members' actions have no particular meaning for the other members' understanding of the task or problem being solved. Second level- the Beginner: Group members' action is collected to build consensus or to find the lowest shared denominator. Third level—the Experienced: The awareness of the group idea function as an interpretation background for members' action. Different actions could be understood and given a shared meaning about the group idea. Fourth level—the Competent: A shift in interaction quality from the lower levels. The way of relating to (attitude) group members' actions have an explicit connection to the

evolving group idea and this understanding is the background from which members' action is interpreted and given meaning. Fifth level—the Expert: The team is able to completely change the way of interaction. The team realizes and refers explicitly to the inter-subjective group idea and is able to shift between different group ideas [31].
