Scientifically
valid research conducted by the IMEX Group in partnership with the
Meetology® Group has found that face-to-face meetings significantly
outperform both video and
voice-only when it comes to generating creative ideas.
The
results from the Meetology® Laboratory experiments, which were
conducted during IMEX in Frankfurt in 2012, clearly demonstrate that
working together face-to-face generates more ideas, plus a marginally
higher quality and a greater variety of ideas, compared to
undertaking the same task either on the phone or via video link.
Speaking
about the initial results, Consultant Psychologist, Dr Paul Redford,
who was instrumental in planning and managing the research, stated:
“Whenever you conduct a new experiment there’s always a concern
that you might not find anything of statistical significance. You
hope for it, of course, but the results and the data are outside your
control. So, I was genuinely surprised to find that our Meetology®
Laboratory experiments at IMEX produced clear, robust results. A
face-to-face meeting between two people who do not know each other
resulted in more creative ideas than the other two methods. The
statistics show there is a significant difference in the number of
creative ideas generated, a marginal but notable difference in the
quality of those ideas and also a greater variety of ideas produced.
These results were all the more notable given that the participants
didn’t always share the same language and did not necessarily know
each other before the experiment.”
The
live experiment was scientifically devised by IMEX partners, The
Meetology® Group, to test the question “Does meeting face-to-face
improve creativity compared to virtual meetings?” Given that most
meetings involve some discussion of thoughts, ideas or creative
solutions, IMEX and the Meetology® psychologists decided it would be
worthwhile to try to understand the factors that affect idea
generation and creative problem-solving as success in these areas is
fundamental to healthy organisations. The results show that, on
average, the face-to-face pairs of participants generated 30% more
ideas than the virtual pairs. Applying a world-recognised test of
validity (Cohen's D effect measure), this was shown as a
statistically significant medium to moderate size effect. Similar
results were also apparent in the maximum numbers of ideas each pair
generated. In face-to-face conditions, the highest number of ideas
generated by any pair was 29, which was 50% more than the number
generated under voice-only conditions and 70% more than were
generated under video conditions.
Commenting
on the results, IMEX Group CEO, Carina Bauer, said: “These findings
are very exciting for the whole industry and their implications are
wide-ranging for meetings and event planners and particularly those
responsible for developing future direction and strategy. As with
many research studies we are left with outstanding questions, which
all need further exploration. However, these results appear to
suggest that if you are a company or organisation that needs to
generate a high quantity of fresh, new
ideas then getting a group of staff or other
people – perhaps stakeholders or customers – together in the same
room will produce measurably more than other methods. This is not to
discredit the part that other methods can play, especially in this
age of crowd-sourcing, for example, but it does suggest that if
creativity or innovation is the aim, then face-to-face collaboration
is more efficient and productive.”
The
Meetology® Group CEO, Jon Bradshaw, commented: “The meetings
industry can learn so much from the world
of psychology and
behavioural science. How people behave is directly related to the
outcome of the meeting and our team found this experiment fascinating
to undertake. Whilst we in the industry argue that you can’t beat
face-to-face meetings here is now some proof to that argument.
However, this experiment left us with questions as well as answers
and we look forward to working with IMEX to dig even deeper into
those new issues that it raised.”
