"The Crowdless Future? Generative AI and Creative Problem-Solving" by Léonard Boussioux, Jacqueline N. Lane, Miaomiao Zhang, Vladimir Jacimovic, Karim R. Lakhani

Summary

This academic paper from Organization Science explores the efficacy of generative AI in creative problem-solving, specifically comparing human-generated ideas to those produced through human-AI collaboration. The authors conducted a crowdsourcing challenge for sustainable business ideas, assessing novelty, strategic viability, environmental value, financial value, and overall quality of solutions. Key findings indicate that while human crowds excel in generating highly novel ideas, human-AI partnerships, especially with iterative, human-guided "differentiated search" prompting, yield solutions with superior overall quality and value. The research highlights the potential of AI to cost-effectively augment early innovation stages and suggests a future where human and AI capabilities are integrated for more impactful problem-solving.