Creativity in virtual design teams

Creativity is being increasingly seen as a fundamental facet of modern organizational life, where global structures and virtual organizing seem to prevail and outpace organizations’ ability to cope with organizational change. Further, in certain disciplines, such as engineering design, creativity is essential when designers engage with the conceptual phase of designing a prototype; a phase wherein they aim to maximize their ideas. Yet, despite the acknowledgement of its importance across numerous disciplines, creativity in the context of virtual teams has not been adequately discussed; let alone in the context of virtual design teams. I commenced my doctoral work by taking different literatures (creativity, design, virtual teams) to identify knowledge gaps around the creativity of virtual design teams. Following this, I conducted an exploratory case study with a student-based project, consisted of six virtual design teams, which helped me improve my understanding of the topic and shape a clearer picture of the phenomenon under investigation. My approach has been qualitative and the data have been collected principally via interviews and analysed using grounded theory and thematic analysis. I have also conducted a similar study with a different virtual design team arrangement, and next step will be to conduct my main study with industry-based virtual design teams.