Is a Return To Office a Return To Creativity? Requiring Fixed Time In Office To Enable Brainstorms and Watercooler Talk May Not Foster Research Creativity

Research brief

By Tianna Xu, Advait Sarkar, and Sean Rintel.

Takeaway: Research creativity runs on elastic time (slow incubation through long solitary focus and rest, punctuated by problem-oriented discussions with colleagues when the work needs them). So fixed weekly office days can undermine creativity, while brainstorms and watercooler chats, the usual case for them, were not reported as drivers of it.

Why this matters

What was known

Co-present brainstorming and serendipitous watercooler talk are often cited as reasons to mandate office time, and hybrid work has been well studied for office workers, but little for scientific researchers. Any discussion of creativity in remote work inexorably devolves into a discussion of the efficacy of the brainstorm and how these are difficult to do remotely. (§5, p. 9)

What this paper adds

We look at scientific researchers specifically, rather than office workers in general, and ask what drives their creativity in their own words. Through their accounts, we then examine the two arguments most often made for fixed office days (brainstorms and watercooler talk). What we have found is that collaboration isn't about being together. Time apart makes us better collaborators; time apart makes us more creative together. (§6, p. 10)

Who it matters to

Research organisations and managers setting hybrid and return-to-office policies, and HCI researchers and designers of scheduling and collaboration tools. both organizational practice and tools need a refresh to find a way to use innovation culture to drive time and space administration, not the other way around (§5.1, pp. 9–10)

Research questions

• Does scientific research creativity, as a subset of innovation more generally, rely solely on intensity of collaborative activity, or are there other modes and times that are relevant?
• Is a weekly cadence the most effective for creativity, and to what extent are inclusiveness issues crucial to whatever cadence is most desirable?

Method and data

Design

Semi-structured interviews about hybrid working experiences and perceived creativity onsite versus offsite.

Setting

Research labs in industry and academia in the UK, China and New Zealand. Participants could choose where to work, had at least two months' hybrid experience, spent 40% or more of their time on research and worked in collaboration with others.

Participants / data

24 researchers (12 men, 12 women) from several disciplines and varying levels of seniority across 7 research labs, recruited by purposive sampling.

Duration

One-hour interviews over Microsoft Teams, September 2021 to October 2021.

Analysis

Inductive thematic analysis: independent coding of all transcripts, then collaborative grouping into themes.

Findings

• Six things drive creativity. Asked what makes them creative, the researchers we interviewed named six factors. These were long uninterrupted focus time, active rest away from screens, a diverse information diet, tools such as whiteboards for externalising ideas, motivation and autonomy, and problem-oriented discussions. #

  “I need blocks of time [...] a 30-minute meeting in the middle of my afternoon [...] can ruin the work that I'm doing that day”

• Discussion beats brainstorming. No one described open-ended brainstorming as important to their creativity. Nearly every participant instead cited problem-oriented discussions. These are focused conversations that use everyone's expert judgement to define a problem and agree what to do, rather than deferring judgement to generate many ideas. #

  “I can produce much more efficient outcomes through more deliberate discussion with my colleagues. In my experience it's not the spontaneous discussions that you have”

• It works remotely, except the whiteboard. Problem-oriented discussions can happen over video or even asynchronously, in shared documents and online whiteboards. The main obstacle participants reported was making shared sketches and notes together in real time: #

  “You can't see what people are talking about. You can't follow people where they are on the whiteboard is very confusing.”

• No single office rhythm fits. Participants worked well at very different cadences, from two or three days a week in the office to once every two months, choosing where to work to suit tasks, deadlines and family needs. We argue that an enforced weekly cadence undermines these core benefits of hybrid work. #

  “when the deadline is approaching, they will choose not to come to the company, but to stay at home.”

• Watercooler talk builds trust, not ideas. Chance conversations in the office helped build trust and a sense of community, but participants did not report them as driving productivity or creativity. To be productive they need an existing relationship and shared expertise, which most chance encounters lack. #

  “it sounds like every day you would have super productive discussions all the time. That's of course not how it works.”

• Co-located group creativity is largely a myth. Reading these accounts against Wallas's model of creativity, we argue that research ideas grow slowly, over days to years, from solitary focus, rest and varied reading, punctuated by discussion. Hybrid and remote work make this arrangement easier than full-time office work. #

  “The researcher's mind is a crucible in which a diverse information diet must simmer, perhaps for years, before the right connections are made.”

Questions this paper answers

Is brainstorming a good way to generate research ideas?

Probably not, because research ideas must stand up to judgement of their novelty and rigour, and brainstorming's deferred judgement works against that. Researchers describing their own creativity never cited it as a driver. Earlier studies link brainstorming to groupthink and to obvious ideas from the edge of a problem. (See §4.2, p. 6; §5, p. 9.)

Do chance conversations at the office spark new ideas?

Rarely, by researchers' own accounts. A chat only helps the work when people already know each other and share expertise, and colleagues who meet both conditions usually talk by plan anyway. Chance encounters are better valued for trust and community than for creativity. (See §4.4, p. 8.)

Why might requiring office time reduce creativity?

Because it can take away the real drivers, such as long uninterrupted focus, rest, a change of scene and the freedom to work where a task demands. Some researchers stay home as a deadline nears. In exchange, it offers brainstorms and chance encounters that do little for research creativity. (See §4.2, p. 5; §4.3, p. 7; §5, p. 9.)

Contributions and implications

• Drop the weekly cadence and explore longer, elastic cadences in which time together is driven by productive and social goals. The simplest way would be to drop the weekly cadence and explore longer and elastic cadences in which time together is driven by goals (§5.1, pp. 9–10)
• Organisations should invest in long-term, systemic creativity rather than co-location in the hope that brainstorming will increase it. An organisation that wants to improve its creativity would be much better advised to invest in this systemic form of creativity (§5, p. 9)
• New collaboration technologies alone will not solve the problem. HCI may need to help managers and employees discuss what affects research creativity. HCI may need to explore how to facilitate discussions between managers and employees that promote understanding of the factors affecting research creativity (§5.1, p. 10)
• Hybrid work needs strategies for intentional remote conversation, so less relies on uncertain and unevenly distributed watercooler talk. any discussion of hybrid work should involve strategies for more intentional productive remote conversation (§4.4, p. 8)

Limitations

• We found no significant differences between industry and academic researchers, but differences may still exist and need larger or more targeted studies. Nonetheless, potential differences in creativity perspectives or practices may still exist between the two groups. (§3.2, p. 4)
• Our study does not itself show direct evidence against brainstorms. That argument draws on previous studies. While our study does not show direct evidence against brainstorms, many previous studies and meta-analyses do. (§5, p. 9)
• The value of productive watercooler talk may differ across work cultures. The importance of productive watercooler talk may be higher in some work cultures than others. (§4.4, p. 8)

How to cite

Tianna Xu, Advait Sarkar, and Sean Rintel. 2023. Is a Return To Office a Return To Creativity? Requiring Fixed Time In Office To Enable Brainstorms and Watercooler Talk May Not Foster Research Creativity. CHIWORK 2023. https://doi.org/10.1145/3596671.3598569

This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text. Page numbers refer to this PDF.