Group creativity in the wild: When building on ideas enhances the generation and selection of creative ideas

Long‐standing wisdom holds that building on ideas is beneficial for group creativity. We empirically verify this recommended practice. We analyse creativity sessions of nine groups of professionals tasked to synthesize new ideas into one final creative concept. Linkography and quantitative analysis are used for analysing the impact of building on ideas on group creativity. First, the results indicate that building on ideas does not lead to more novel, feasible, or useful ideas. Second, our study shows that building on ideas is beneficial only if the ideators build upon the “right” ideas. Ideators generate more novel ideas only when they build on novel ideas. Moreover, our research reveals a trade‐off: Building on novel ideas leads to more novel but less feasible ideas while building on familiar ideas leads to less novel but more feasible ideas. Finally, we find that stimulus ideas (i.e., ideas that are built upon) are more likely to be selected and integrated into the final concept. Taken together, our results indicate that building on novel ideas enhances the generation and selection processes. Implications for theory and research on creativity in organizations are discussed.