The Impact of the Background Knowledge and the Friendship Closeness on the Team Creativity in a Realtime Creativity Support Groupware

Team creativity is a key resource for developing a successful product or service. Creativity support groupware was invented to elevate a team creativity by providing interactive data visualizations, stimulating creative ideas by applying creativity techniques, and breaking communication barriers over the geographic distances and the different time availabilities. Team characteristics, which are the traits of a team combined from the traits of individual members, have strong impacts to the team creativity through a groupware use. The team characteristics can be wisely adjusted for achieving a higher degree of team creativity. This study examined the impacts of team characteristics, i.e., the background knowledge, the difference of background knowledge, the friendship closeness, and the difference of friendship closeness among team members, to the team creativity. Based on the statistic of the 90 KJ charts constructed by 30 innovation teams supported by a KJ Method groupware, the best team formation for the highest team creativity performance consists of team members who have high background knowledge in problems under consideration, and have the same level of friendship regardless the amount of its level.