Interview: Paul Paulus on Group Creativity

Paul Paulus is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Arlington. Paul Paulus's research interests revolve around Group Creativity: On the one hand, creative processes are often conceptualized as individual-level phenomena. On the other hand, complex problems in innovation management often need the collaboration of various experts to create novel solutions. Interestingly, although common sense suggests that individuals are more creative in a group context, research indicates that this is oftentimes not the case. The question on how to structure creative processes in groups in such a way that groups can actually benefit from their creative potential is therefore crucial. Paul Paulus has spent much of his academic career addressing this intriguing question. He and his research team have discovered many factors that influence group creativity and have been able to demonstrate conditions under which group interaction enhances creativity. For the past eight years he has been working with a multidisciplinary team to better understand the cognitive, neural and social factors that underlie the group creative process (Paulus etal., ). They are presently funded on a three year project to investigate innovation processes in networks.