Research Note. Electronic Brainstorming: Illusions and Patterns of Productivity

In a recent article in Information Systems Research, Pinsonneault et al. (1999) present a thorough and compelling summary of theoretical factors that act to enhance and impair productivity in electronic brainstorming (EBS) groups as contrasted with traditional verbal brainstorming groups and nominal group brainstorming. They assume that all theoretical factors are equally important and remain constant, and therefore add the factors together to conclude that, from a theoretical standpoint, there should be no difference in idea generation performance between EBS and nominal groups. They also present an equally thorough summary of previous empirical research comparing EBS and nominal group brainstorming to which they add additional empirical data from their own study. Their analysis suggests that there have been no clear patterns in the empirical research because nominal groups outperform EBS groups as often as EBS groups outperform nominal groups.' They then conclude that group participants and "many researchers may also be under the