Improving cultural understanding and sparking creativity through the application of the CSS in an intercultural and primarily Chinese research team
The central role of creativity in product engineering is evident in the generation of solutions with high innovative potential. Even in times of artificial intelligence being creative is still a skill in which the human outperforms the machine. Product engineering activities often take place in dist...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge University Press
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Design Science |
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| Online Access: | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2053470125100139/type/journal_article |
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| author | Annika Bastian Feng Luo Tangbin Xia Albert Albers |
| author_facet | Annika Bastian Feng Luo Tangbin Xia Albert Albers |
| author_sort | Annika Bastian |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The central role of creativity in product engineering is evident in the generation of solutions with high innovative potential. Even in times of artificial intelligence being creative is still a skill in which the human outperforms the machine. Product engineering activities often take place in distributed environments, which elevates the importance of creative tasks due to the unique challenges these settings present. Furthermore, these distributed environments frequently involve intercultural teams. With intercultural team settings come additional benefits but also challenges. To support the creative processes of intercultural, distributed product engineering teams, the cultural synergy spectrum (CSS) method has been developed. The CSS method is designed to assist distributed product engineering teams with being creative while being culturally sensitive. To achieve this goal, mutual understanding is enhanced, and learning within the team is promoted. Using five phases to lead the participants through a creative process, the CSS starts with a warm-up, followed by building a knowledge baseline. The third phase is targeted at cultural learning, after which the creativity phase starts. Here, the actual problem-solving takes place. The final phase is for reflection and feedback. This study seeks to validate the CSS method’s effectiveness through application in a partially distributed team. Two teams, consisting of mechanical engineers in a research group at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, collaborated to address a practical problem using this method. The team is primarily Chinese as a follow-up to previous validation iterations that were done with teams with more diverse backgrounds, but who lived in Germany. To ensure that this bias due to the intercultural experience of living in another country is overcome, this study is performed with researchers in China with little intercultural experience. The CSS was applied successfully, proving that the CSS is suitable for the partially distributed or hybrid setting in which it was applied and for the team that applied it. The participants made use of the option to include additional tools and improvements to the method, like a more comprehensive warm-up. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-d910f2949c9f4337bc7b0f0a552c876c |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2053-4701 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Design Science |
| spelling | doaj-art-d910f2949c9f4337bc7b0f0a552c876c2025-08-20T03:15:34ZengCambridge University PressDesign Science2053-47012025-01-011110.1017/dsj.2025.10013Improving cultural understanding and sparking creativity through the application of the CSS in an intercultural and primarily Chinese research teamAnnika Bastian0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4436-9902Feng Luo1Tangbin Xia2Albert Albers3https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5432-704XIPEK – Institute of Product Engineering, https://ror.org/04t3en479Karlsruhe University of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, GermanyState Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, https://ror.org/0220qvk04Shanghai Jiao Tong University, SJTU-Fraunhofer Center, Shanghai, ChinaState Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, https://ror.org/0220qvk04Shanghai Jiao Tong University, SJTU-Fraunhofer Center, Shanghai, ChinaIPEK – Institute of Product Engineering, https://ror.org/04t3en479Karlsruhe University of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, GermanyThe central role of creativity in product engineering is evident in the generation of solutions with high innovative potential. Even in times of artificial intelligence being creative is still a skill in which the human outperforms the machine. Product engineering activities often take place in distributed environments, which elevates the importance of creative tasks due to the unique challenges these settings present. Furthermore, these distributed environments frequently involve intercultural teams. With intercultural team settings come additional benefits but also challenges. To support the creative processes of intercultural, distributed product engineering teams, the cultural synergy spectrum (CSS) method has been developed. The CSS method is designed to assist distributed product engineering teams with being creative while being culturally sensitive. To achieve this goal, mutual understanding is enhanced, and learning within the team is promoted. Using five phases to lead the participants through a creative process, the CSS starts with a warm-up, followed by building a knowledge baseline. The third phase is targeted at cultural learning, after which the creativity phase starts. Here, the actual problem-solving takes place. The final phase is for reflection and feedback. This study seeks to validate the CSS method’s effectiveness through application in a partially distributed team. Two teams, consisting of mechanical engineers in a research group at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, collaborated to address a practical problem using this method. The team is primarily Chinese as a follow-up to previous validation iterations that were done with teams with more diverse backgrounds, but who lived in Germany. To ensure that this bias due to the intercultural experience of living in another country is overcome, this study is performed with researchers in China with little intercultural experience. The CSS was applied successfully, proving that the CSS is suitable for the partially distributed or hybrid setting in which it was applied and for the team that applied it. The participants made use of the option to include additional tools and improvements to the method, like a more comprehensive warm-up.https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2053470125100139/type/journal_articlecross-cultural teamsvirtual teamsintercultural product engineering teamsculture-sensitive problem-solving supportcreativity in product developmentcreative potentialdistributed development settings |
| spellingShingle | Annika Bastian Feng Luo Tangbin Xia Albert Albers Improving cultural understanding and sparking creativity through the application of the CSS in an intercultural and primarily Chinese research team Design Science cross-cultural teams virtual teams intercultural product engineering teams culture-sensitive problem-solving support creativity in product development creative potential distributed development settings |
| title | Improving cultural understanding and sparking creativity through the application of the CSS in an intercultural and primarily Chinese research team |
| title_full | Improving cultural understanding and sparking creativity through the application of the CSS in an intercultural and primarily Chinese research team |
| title_fullStr | Improving cultural understanding and sparking creativity through the application of the CSS in an intercultural and primarily Chinese research team |
| title_full_unstemmed | Improving cultural understanding and sparking creativity through the application of the CSS in an intercultural and primarily Chinese research team |
| title_short | Improving cultural understanding and sparking creativity through the application of the CSS in an intercultural and primarily Chinese research team |
| title_sort | improving cultural understanding and sparking creativity through the application of the css in an intercultural and primarily chinese research team |
| topic | cross-cultural teams virtual teams intercultural product engineering teams culture-sensitive problem-solving support creativity in product development creative potential distributed development settings |
| url | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2053470125100139/type/journal_article |
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