Prof. Reto Hofstetter
Marketing lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Management at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. His current research focuses on consumer behavior in the digital world, open innovation and crowdfunding. His research has been published in leading academic journals in their field and he has been a guest writer for Forbes magazine, Harvard Business Review and National Geographic
In 1714, the British government offered a monetary reward to anyone who could invent a practical method for determining longitude at sea. In recent times, such open innovation contests have presented a wide range of challenges—some silly, like inviting consumers to shoot a funny Doritos commercial, and some meaningful, like a competition to design a football helmet that would better prevent brain injuries that offered a prize of up to $2 million. Challenges of this type are designed to fuel the spirit of competition, so they also often allow competitors to see the submissions of others while working. But new research shows that when such competition is not carefully managed, competition can kill creativity.
Challenging the dominant theory
In two real-world studies and three laboratory experiments, participants who presented with many competing ideas or thought about competition before starting the creativity task did less well than others. In one of the studies, 540 participants were tasked with coming up with ideas for pillows and retail marketing campaigns. They were shown some sample ideas and told they were submissions from other contestants. The contestants in one group were presented with ten such “submissions”, and the contestants in the other group were presented with only two. Experts judged the submissions on originality and usefulness. The participants who were presented with two ideas scored 4.4% higher on average than the scores of those who were presented with ten ideas. The difference may seem small, but it can be substantial when it comes to a large investment in innovation, the researchers say.
In the lab experiments, the researchers asked participants to come up with creative everyday uses for bricks, and presented them with competing submissions. Also in this experiment, the more submissions people saw, the lower their creativity scores. A particularly dramatic decrease was in participants who were presented with 50 ideas of others. A follow-up study found that the performance of innovation experts deteriorated even more than that of novice inventors. When participants were told that the ideas presented were only examples and not real submissions, there was no decline in performance.
“We looked at the number of ideas generated, their innovation and other aspects of creativity – and they were all worse when competition came into play,” says Reto Hofstetter, a professor of marketing at the University of Lucerne, who led the study. “Competitiveness seems to be hurting performance.”
This surprised Hofstetter and his team. This runs counter to the “recombinant growth theory,” which holds that other people’s ideas drive innovation because people can build on pieces of other people’s work, or put them together in new ways. For example, drugs like insulin and penicillin have improved over the years as scientists have developed new and better technologies to make them.
Ideas of others limit thought
Several factors may explain why a heightened sense of competition may override the recombinant effect. First, intense competition can increase participants’ stress, which often impairs cognitive performance. Second, thinking about others competing for a prize reduces participants’ belief in their ability to win it themselves and reduces their motivation. Thirdly, and this is the most significant factor, the contestants tend to see the submissions of the competitors not as a source of inspiration but as a limitation on their thinking.
“The creative process requires the removal of inhibitions and the free flow of ideas,” says Hofstetter. “Watching other contestants’ ideas stalls this process, as people focus on differentiating their ideas instead of using elements of them.”
Compete without feeling like you’re competing
Companies can take several steps to avoid these pitfalls:
● Limit visible competition: In all studies, presenting only a few submissions maintained motivation and reduced feelings of handicap.
● Present only the most original submissions: Paradoxically, when participants were presented with highly creative examples, they felt less constrained than when presented with more routine examples. Especially original ideas are usually less overlapping, so competitors who are exposed to them are less likely to feel that their thoughts have already been explored.
● Group the submissions: The competitive aspect can be mitigated even more by grouping submissions thematically, instead of presenting them one by one (the common default). When 100 submissions were divided into five categories, for example, the participants did not suffer a loss of creativity, because they only picked up five limiting elements, not 100. This tactic, along with the recommendation to present only the most original ideas, will add costs because they require more work, but the researchers predict that technology may soon make it easier.
● Emphasize the odds: Contest organizers can reduce the competitive nature of the language they use. Phrases such as “only the best idea will win” and “you are competing against others” particularly hurt creativity among the contestants who participated in the study.
● Obfuscate the identity of submitters: One study showed that drawing attention to other contestants by displaying their usernames or avatars next to their submissions increased contestants’ anxiety.
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