In May 2022, an academic research paper titled “Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation” was published in Nature (one of the most prestigious scientific publishers). They tested how the transition from in-person to online interaction affected innovation (measured by collective idea generation) and concluded that video calls were bad for brainstorming.

The media derived: “Zoom is a creativity killer.”

But, as (online) facilitators, we have first-hand experience with remote teams’ creativity and effective collaboration. But, we haven’t had hard evidence proving the study wrong.

My guests on today’s bonus episode, Elise Keith (CEO of Lucid Meetings, Author and Meeting Innovator) and Dave Mastronardi (CEO of the Gamestorming Group) have the ambition to test the hypothesis that online work killed creativity through a global mega experiment. As they kick off the project with a Symposium, Elise and Dave joined me to share their vision, drivers and open questions.