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Raw Ideas in the Fuzzy Front End: Verbosity Increases Perceived Creativity

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  • Laura J. Kornish

    (Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309)

  • Sharaya M. Jones

    (School of Business, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030)

Abstract

At the “fuzzy front end” of an innovation process, organizations typically consider dozens, or even hundreds, of raw ideas. Selecting the best ones is a double challenge: evaluating so many ideas is a large undertaking, and the ideas in their raw form permit only noisy evaluations. In this paper, we demonstrate a further challenge to that large-scale evaluation of raw ideas. We show that verbosity raises the evaluation of ideas, that is, ideas expressed in more words are rated higher. This relationship is especially pronounced for ratings of creativity. Theory tells us that the effect of length on creativity is compounded because length cues both components of creativity—novelty and usefulness. We demonstrate how effort in reading (disfluency) and perceptions of complexity work together to explain the relationship between length and creativity. Our findings provide simple but important new directives for improving the use of crowdsourcing in the practice and study of innovation: either standardize the length of the ideas or control for length in their evaluation. Overall, we urge care with using measures of novelty or creativity when the idea descriptions vary in length.

Suggested Citation

  • Laura J. Kornish & Sharaya M. Jones, 2021. "Raw Ideas in the Fuzzy Front End: Verbosity Increases Perceived Creativity," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(6), pages 1106-1122, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormksc:v:40:y:2021:i:6:p:1106-1122
    DOI: 10.1287/mksc.2021.1300
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. J. Jason Bell & Christian Pescher & Gerard J. Tellis & Johann Füller, 2024. "Can AI Help in Ideation? A Theory-Based Model for Idea Screening in Crowdsourcing Contests," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(1), pages 54-72, January.

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