Thinking Inside the Box: Why Virtual Meetings Generate Fewer Ideas

For creative collaboration, sometimes you can’t beat a face-to-face meeting

Even if the pandemic abates enough for a return to normal, all evidence indicates that a substantial share of Americans will continue to work from home, relying on videoconferencing to team up.

Yet, while the ease of gathering virtually has made the shift to widespread remote work possible, a new study finds that on-screen meetings have a significant drawback: They hinder creative collaboration.

The study, co-authored by Jonathan Levav of Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Melanie Brucks of Columbia Business School, finds that in-person teams generated more ideas than remote teams working on the same problem.

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Another viewpoint on Virtual Meetings

I wonder what the results of such a study would be if you have a virtual meeting WITHOUT the video cameras on each participant? In my experience, virtual team meetings where there is one person sharing a computer screen - maybe with slides, maybe as a white board, whatever is pertinent- and the rest of the team are participating only via audio are very productive. This allows participants to move around, to look at other references, etc without feeling like they are being "watched". This makes it much more comfortable to participate in discussions. Would be worth testing before making the broad conclusion that in person meetings are more productive than virtual ones.

Exactly

That's exactly what I was thinking. In my company, online meetings generally do not use cameras. People share content via screen-sharing but the personal videos are off. I think this approach makes participants more comfortable to let their eyes wander and not worry about how they look to the rest of the group.