Title: Measuring creative performance of teams through dynamic semantic social network analysis

Authors: Xue Zhang; Peter A. Gloor; Francesca Grippa

Addresses: Department of Mathematics and Systems Science, College of Science, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China ' MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA ' Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA

Abstract: In this project we compare communication structure and content exchanged by members of creative, interdisciplinary teams of medical researchers, physicians, patients and caretakers with their creative output. We find that longitudinal social networking patterns and word usage predict creative performance. We collected the e-mail archives of 60 members of a community of researchers working on 12 projects improving various aspects of the daily lives of patients with Crohn's disease. Our results indicate that more creative projects show a decrease in group density, while more actors are involved, and more e-mails are exchanged, suggesting that a more successful project attracts more attention from many different people. We also found that members of more creative projects use more outspoken language, which gets more focused over time.

Keywords: social network analysis; SNA; honest signals; teamwork; sentiment analysis; creativity; creative performance; team performance; semantics; communication structure; content exchange; interdisciplinary teams; healthcare teams; word usage; Crohn's disease; medical researchers.

DOI: 10.1504/IJODE.2013.057014

International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering, 2013 Vol.3 No.2, pp.165 - 184

Published online: 26 Jul 2014 *

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