• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 1, 2013

According to the IMEX Group, in partnership with the Meetology Group, a new study to test the question, “Does meeting face-to-face improve creativity compared to virtual meetings?” showed that face-to-face sessions generate more ideas, a “marginally” higher quality of ideas, and a greater variety of ideas than either phone or video chat.

Reported by Matt Alderton of Successful Meetings, Dr. Paul Redford, a consultant psychologist leading the experiment, concluded that “A face-to-face meeting between two people who do not know each other resulted in more creative ideas than the other two methods... results were all the more notable given that the participants didn’t always share the same language and did not necessarily know each other before the experiment...”

On average, face-to-face pairs generated 30% more ideas than virtual pairs. Likewise, in face-to-face conditions, the highest number of ideas generated by any pair was 29, which was 50% more than the number generated under voice-only conditions and 70% more than the number generated under video conditions.

IMEX Group CEO, Carina Bauer, cincludes that “... the implications (of these findings) are wide-ranging for meetings and event planners and particularly those responsible for developing future direction and strategy... results... suggest that if you are a company or organization that needs to generate a high quantity of fresh, new ideas... getting a group of staff, stakeholders, or customers together in the same room will produce measurably more than other methods... not to discredit... other methods... in this age of crowd-sourcing... but if creativity or innovation is the aim, then face-to-face collaboration is more efficient and productive...”

For additional information, please visit successfulmeetings.com here.