Stimulating Creativity through Collaboration in an Innovation Laboratory

Nowadays globalized society and knowledge-based economy need people with creative thinking in all areas (engineering, medicine, art, entrepreneurship, and education). Thus, current studies are turning their attention to find new ways to stimulate creativity over individual or groups. In the present research, we hypothesized that the creativity can be enhanced if it is used social interaction abilities for knowledge sharing and collaboration. We present a collaborative application that provides users with an environment where they can share ideas and they can collaborate to choose those ideas that are most suitable for the intended use. This application provides to users a shared, web-based platform to enhance creativity. In this platform, users are gathered in a Social Group in which they can share ideas, comments, documents and links around. This application is part of a physical environment which provides users a number of tools to stimulate their creativity. If problems arise in the creative process, then the application provides facilities for a coordinator who can use different methods to unlock brainstorming progression.