Idea Visibility, Information Diversity, and Idea Integration in Electronic Brainstorming

Despite the pervasive use of electronic media for idea generation and idea sharing, the extent and quality of idea integration and use is relatively understudied. Idea integration and use depends on information saliency but little is known about how idea integration may be facilitated by user interface features that influence information saliency. This paper examines the effect of idea visibility on idea integration and how that relationship is moderated by information diversity. Our laboratory experiment showed that although the basic level of idea integration, i.e. mere reference to partners’ ideas increased when visibility increased, higher levels of idea integration decreased as visibility increased. Information diversity was found to be a significant moderator of the relationship between visibility and idea integration.