Process Innovation as Creative Problem-Solving: An Experimental Study of Textual Descriptions and Diagrams

The use of process models to support business analysts’ idea-generation tasks has been a long-standing topic of interest in process improvement. We examine how two types of representations of organizational processes – textual and diagrammatic – assist analysts in developing innovative solutions to process-redesign tasks. The results of our study clarify the types of process-redesign ideas generated by analysts who work with text versus those who work with models. We find that the volume and originality of process-redesign ideas do not differ significantly but that appropriateness of ideas varies. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice in process improvement.