A debate you frequently hear in business circles is whether working online or in-person is more creative. The short answer? Both. Or neither. It’s solely dependent on how the meeting is structured and managed.

When it comes to creativity, a recent study found that online interactions result in less creativity than face-to-face. The reason: When online, people mostly stare at the screen rather than letting their eyes wander around, which sparks more divergent thought. But the flaw with this study was that the conditions that actually result in creative thinking were not set; not in the online nor the in-person experiments. So, even though the in-person interactions were slightly more creative, neither were very creative at all in the absolute.

Effective creative thinking requires adherence to specific guidelines. If done casually, without guidelines, it won’t be effective, regardless of online or in-person.

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