The impact of connecting with Professional Virtual Forum, team member and external person on R&D employee creativity

Accessing external knowledge is an important part of work for Research and Development (R&D) employees to get high creative performance. Currently, Professional Virtual Forum (PVF) in internet is becoming an important virtual knowledge source for R&D employees. However, up to now the impact of R&D employees' connect with PVF on their creativity still waits to be explored. Furthermore, the interactive effects of connect with PVF and person-to-person knowledge sources on creativity are not clear. This paper empirically studied the 163 R&D employees came from 16 companies in China, and the results turned out that the R&D employees' frequency of connect with PVF and intra-team, as well as with external person all significantly improved their creativity. Frequency of connect with PVF moderated the relationship between centrality of intra-team knowledge network and employee creativity, in such that when the frequency of connect with PVF was higher, the positive influence of centrality of intra-team knowledge network on employee creativity was also higher. Suggestions for future study on PVF and creativity are discussed.