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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CREATIVITY AND
INNOVATION IN ORGANIZATIONS

The Hidden Barriers


and Enablers of
Team-Based Ideation

Linda Suzanne Folk


Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Innovation in
Organizations

Series Editor
Roni Reiter-Palmon
Department of Psychology
University of Nebraska
Omaha, NE, USA
​ his book series presents the latest research on creativity and innovation
T
in the workplace, showcasing the unique contribution that psychology can
contribute to workplace innovation studies both now and in future.
Addressing individual, team and organizational issues of innovation at
work, books in this series offers insight from organizational and social
psychology to cover topics with key applications to business and manage-
ment, design, engineering and other applied domains. Encompassing a
broad range of types of organization, it investigates the psychology of
creativity and innovation in non-profit enterprises, entrepreneurship, small
business, and research and development contexts, among many other
domains.
The series brings together research in creativity and organizational
innovation to investigate a range of key contemporary issues. Topics
addressed include the relationship between creativity, innovation and
organizational performance; measuring creativity in organizations; appli-
cations of creativity and innovation for top management and senior leader-
ship; and the potentially negative consequences of innovation.
Linda Suzanne Folk

The Hidden Barriers


and Enablers of Team-­
Based Ideation
Linda Suzanne Folk
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK

ISSN 2661-8478     ISSN 2661-8486 (electronic)


Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Innovation in Organizations
ISBN 978-3-031-16794-2    ISBN 978-3-031-16795-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16795-9

© The Author(s) 2022


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Dedicated to my Folks, Yvonne & Michael.
Your inspiration and support made this dream come true.
Process Gains and Losses in Organisational
Team Creativity

In 2016, a creative practitioner sought a deeper understanding of the fac-


tors that block or enable effective ideation at the team level in the creative
industries. This book attempts to make the insights from this research
accessible to academics and interested practitioners alike.
Teams are an essential part of modern organisations. The knowledge
needed to solve complex problems or create new ideas often exceeds any
individual’s expertise. However, when looking at the creative output of
teams, the quality is inconsistent and often below that of individuals. This
book will focus on the team level and explore the interpersonal dynamics,
inhibitors of collaboration, and boosters of ideation efficiency that impact
the ability of a team to generate new and valuable ideas within the context
of the creative industries.

Author: Linda Folk, PhD

vii
How to Use This Book

This text intends to make academic research on creative teams accessible


for practitioners and open a more practice-oriented perspective for stu-
dents and researchers. Chapter 1 is intended as a primer on key concepts
of creativity research that have laid the foundation for team creativity.
Chapter 2 will zoom in closer and discuss the research specific to ide-
ation as a part of the creative team process. This chapter will lay the theo-
retical foundation for much of the discussions on the hidden blockers and
enablers of team-based ideation.
Diving into the specifics of what factors have been academically linked
to the creative gains and losses framework is the vocal point of Chap. 3.
In Chap. 4, blockers intrinsic to the creative industries will be discussed,
such as innovation theatre and incentive structures that might counter-act
effective teamwork and lead to innovation theatre.
Chapter 5 will then dive into the new insights won from the author’s
research. Specifically, the overarching structures that could be linked to a
higher likelihood of creative synergy through thematic analysis will be dis-
cussed. This analysis will include the structure of the creative process, the
diversity of the team members, the size of the team, the organisational
context, specifically the psychological safety, and lastly, how motivation—
both on an individual and a team level—can impact creativity.
Taking the learnings from industry experts, Chap. 6 will make specific
recommendations for those in positions of power or influence in creative
organisations. The learnings from the previous chapters will be broken
down into actionable policy suggestions for creative leaders.

ix
Contents

1 Creativity Research Primer 1


1.1 Cornerstones of Creativity Research 1
1.2 The Emergence of Team Creativity Research 5
1.3 New Perspectives on Creativity 7
References 8

2 Ideation Research15
2.1 The Debated Value of Team Ideation17
2.2 Not a Monolith17
2.3 Team Ideation Frameworks20
2.4 Combinations of Contributions Framework21
References23

3 Understanding
 the Team Process Loss Factors Impacting
Creativity33
3.1 Groupthink33
3.2 Production Blocking34
3.3 Communication Speed35
3.4 Cognitive Interference or Cognitive Inertia35
3.5 Evaluation Apprehension36
3.6 Social Loafing37
References37

xi
xii Contents

4 Hidden
 Blockers of Ideation in Practice41
4.1 A Brief Explainer of the Creative Industries41
4.2 The Goal of a Business Is to Make Money43
4.3 Innovation Theatre44
4.4 Incentive Structures45
References51

5 Achieving Synergy55
5.1 Process: Structuring the Team-Level Process57
5.2 Leadership: Be a Guide, Not a Leader62
5.3 Team Composition65
5.4 Team Dynamics69
References76

6 Suggestions for Implementation87


6.1 Facilitate Respect, Not Closeness87
6.2 The Brief Is Essential88
6.3 Stern Empathy90
6.4 Strive to Be a Catalyst91
References92

Overall Bibliography97
List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Illustration of the combination of contributions framework after


Nijstad and Paulus (2003) 21
Fig. 5.1 Framework for collaborative ideation is based on the
combination of contributions framework 74

xiii
Introduction

This text aims to combine the existing academic research on creative teams
with a practitioner’s perspective of the practical realities of the creative
industries, supplemented by insights from two dozen interviews with
creatives.
When this author began working in the creative industries in the early
2010s, problems relating to the organisation and management of creative
teams were not obvious. Many organisations in the creative industries pro-
mote themselves as exciting and ‘fun’ workplaces (Easton & Djumalieva,
2018; Gill, 2002; Hesmondhalgh et al., 2013; Nixon & Crewe, 2004),
and although it is well documented that many problems bubble below the
surface (Eikhof & Warhurst, 2013; O’Brien et al., 2018), it is easy to
believe the hype initially.
However, over time, it crystallised that the full potential of a creative
team was rarely leveraged. Not utilising an essential resource seemed
strange. After all, the economic model of the creative industries relies on
optimising the quality and quantity of creative output. Creativity, in this
context, can be defined as being a product that is novel and fit for purpose
(Amabile, 1983; Bilton & Cummings, 2014; Burkus, 2014; Guilford,
1950, 1967; Hargreaves & Boden, 1996; Hennessey & Amabile, 2010;
Kaufman & Sternberg, 2005; Rhodes, 1961). The seemingly missed
opportunity of leveraging this creativity led to an exploration of the aca-
demic knowledge on creative teams and how to best harness the assem-
bled team’s talent, knowledge, and creativity. The wealth of academic
research and insight into creativity, ideation, and creative teams was a deep
well of knowledge and insight, many of which reflected the author’s

xv
xvi INTRODUCTION

experiences in the industry. However, by its nature, academic research will


approach creativity with clinical interest in understanding the phenome-
non. As understanding creativity in its purest form is the goal, it is only
logical that a large portion of team creativity research used laboratory set-
tings to test and confirm existing theories. One benefit of coming to cre-
ativity research after working in creative roles is the first-hand experience
of factors that could not be discovered in a laboratory setting. Having seen
and participated in many ideation processes, variables that seemed to
impact the final creative outcome and the quality of collaboration enabled
the author to propose new hypotheses relating to creative teams, which
would not have been evident from the existing literature. As valuable as a
tool as experiments are, they only allow the testing of existing assumptions
about creativity, not discovering new factors.
This evaluation does not mean that practitioner insight is more valuable
than current research methodologies. After all, the original concept of
brainstorming was created by a creative practitioner (Osborn, 1953)
whose claims on the benefits of the practice could never be proven in a
peer-reviewed study (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987, 1991; Mullen et al., 1991;
Paulus, 2000). Moreover, practitioner insights come with their own issues,
such as confirmation bias and subjectivity of experiences. A practitioner’s
evaluations are also more likely to apply to the existing structures of the
industry rather than provide absolute truths about human creativity. While
for research interest in the understanding of creativity, this might be an
issue, when it comes to gaining insights about creative organisations, this
tendency might be a benefit.
Based on industry experience, the author identified three elements of
how team creativity was broadly discussed in academia that did not align
with her industry experience:

1. The timescale of ideation in the industry often spanned weeks of


various iterative creative stages, making comparison with experi-
mental observations difficult. Even in longitudinal studies within
organisations, the research would inadvertently miss the ‘behind-
the-scenes’ discussions and preparations, that, according to several
of the interviewed industry professionals, were the essential ingredi-
ent in delivering the creative product. A number of research papers
look at how team ideation functions under specific, often time-con-
straint circumstances (Mullen et al., 1991, Pinnsonneault et al.,
1999). When interviewing practitioners and explicitly asking about
INTRODUCTION xvii

the boundaries of what they would ­classify as part of the team-level


ideation – while there were differences in the specifics – every prac-
titioner went beyond the initial ideation session in their definition.
Interviewees often struggled to name a universal starting or end
point of the team-level ideation that could serve as a clear cut
between other elements of the overall creative process. They noted
that the ‘conference-room bit’ was only a small part of a more exten-
sive process between team members, including breaking apart and
coming back together.
2. While many authors have alluded to the likely importance of team
dynamics in practice, the nature of the research often makes it
impossible to dig into the specific impact of the complex relation-
ships within a team. Based on the author’s experience and the con-
sensus of nearly all conducted interviews, the quality of interpersonal
relationships on an idea-generating team appears to impact both the
process and the output significantly. However, it does not appear to
be as simple as a more ‘close-knit’ team being more creative, but
more complex factors being at play. Researching the intricacies of
interpersonal relationships would simply not be possible in an exper-
imental setting.
3. Lastly, the context of idea generation varies between an experimen-
tal and a professional context. The context within which the ide-
ation takes place impacts several variables, such as a need to focus on
sustaining creativity for a longer time in the industry, different levels
of complexity in the creative tasks, and the pressure on the individu-
als making up the team.

There is tremendous value in researching the team-level creative pro-


cess in isolation rather than the messy reality of the creative industries,
where competing business priorities and inter-team dynamics make
nuanced observations about the team-level creative process nearly impos-
sible. However, this is an exploration of to what degree existing theories
can be applied in practice and if practitioner insights might add to the
academic understanding of team ideation.
This text should primarily serve as a creative practitioner’s perspective
on the academic research into team-level creativity. A specific focus of this
text will be the subconscious psychological blockers and unintendedly
creativity-blocking operational structures that keep teams from ideating
with creative synergy and how we can leverage the academic insights to get
xviii INTRODUCTION

the best creative performance from teams within the competitive environ-
ment of the creative industries.
Many use the terms creativity and innovation interchangeably outside
of creativity research (especially within the creative industries). In this text,
there will be made a distinction between creativity, the term for the pro-
duction of ideas, whereas innovation is considered the implementation of
these ideas (De Dreu et al., 2011; Reiter-Palmon & Harms, 2018). In
addition, there are cases of innovation being used as a more all-­
encompassing term applied to the combined idea generation and imple-
mentation (West & Sacramento, 2012).
This book will use the terminology of the macro, meso, and micro lev-
els of organisational creativity. In this context, organisational structures,
goals, and strategies are from the macro-level. The intra-team processes,
the team make-up, and the creative process will be described as the meso-­
level. The macro-level aligns most closely with the creative person within
an organisational context. This text intends to delve into the intricacies of
the meso-level organisational creativity processes.

References
Amabile, T. M. (1983). The Social Psychology of Creativity. Springer-­
Verlag New York.
Bilton, C., & Cummings, S. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of Management and
Creativity. Edward Elgar. http://0-www.elgaronline.com.pugwash.lib.war-
wick.ac.uk/ view/9781781000892.xml
Burkus, D. (2014). The Myths of Creativity: The Truth about How Innovative
Companies and People Generate Great Ideas. Jossey-Bass.
De Dreu, C. K. W., Nijstad, B. A., Bechtoldt, M. N., & Baas, M. (2011). Group
Creativity and Innovation: A Motivated Information Processing Perspective.
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5(1), 81–89. 10.1037/a0017986
Diehl, M., & Stroebe, W. (1987). Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups:
Toward the Solution of a Riddle. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
53(3), 497–509. 10.1037//0022-3514.53.3.497
Diehl, M., & Stroebe, W. (1991). Productivity Loss in Idea-Generating Groups:
Tracking Down the Blocking Effect. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology,
61(3), 392–403. 10.1037/0022-3514.61.3.392
Easton, E., & Djumalieva, J. (2018). Creativity and the Future of Skills. Creative
Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC), Written in ­Partnership with
Nesta. https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/creativity-­and-­future-­skills/
Eikhof, D., & Warhurst, C. (2013). The Promised Land? Why Social Inequalities
Are Systemic in the Creative Industries. Employee Relations, 35(5), 495–508.
10.1108/ER-08-2012-0061
INTRODUCTION xix

Gill, R. (2002). Cool, Creative and Egalitarian? Exploring Gender in Project-­


Based New Media Work in Europe. Information, Communication & Society,
5(1), 70–89. 10.1080/13691180110117668
Guilford, J. P. (1950). Creativity. American Psychologist, 5(9), 444–454.
10.1037/h0063487
Guilford, J. P. (1967). Creativity: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. The Journal of
Creative Behavior, 1(1), 3–14. 10.1002/j.2162-6057.1967.tb00002.x
Hargreaves, D. J., & Boden, M. A. (1996). Dimensions of Creativity. Journal of
Aesthetic Education, 30(1), 120. 10.2307/3333241
Hennessey, B. A., & Amabile, T. M. (2010). Creativity. Annual Review of
Psychology, 61(1), 569–598. 10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100416
Hesmondhalgh, D., Baker, S., & Baker, S. (2013). Creative Labour: Media Work
in Three Cultural Industries. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/
books/9781135146283
Kaufman, J. C., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2005). The International Handbook of
Creativity. Cambridge University Press.
Mullen, B., Johnson, C., & Salas, E. (1991). Productivity Loss in Brainstorming
Groups: A Meta-Analytic Integration. Basic and Applied Social Psychology,
12(1), 3–23. 10.1207/s15324834basp1201_1
Nixon, S., & Crewe, B. (2004). Pleasure at Work? Gender, Consumption and
Work-based Identities in the Creative Industries. Consumption, Markets &
Culture, 7(2), 129–147. 10.1080/1025386042000246197
O’Brien, D., Brook, O., & Taylor, M. (2018a). Panic! Social Class, Taste and
Inequalities in the Creative Industries [Panic! Project]. Create London and Arts
Emergency. http://createlondon.org/event/panic-paper/
Osborn, A. F. (1953). Applied Imagination. Principles and Procedures of Creative
Thinking. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Paulus, P. (2000a). Groups, Teams, and Creativity: The Creative Potential of Idea-
generating Groups. Applied Psychology, 49(2), 237–262. 10.1111/
1464-0597.00013
Pinsonneault, A., Barki, H., Gallupe, R. B., & Hoppen, N. (1999). Electronic
brainstorming: The illusion of productivity. Information Systems Research,
10(2), 110–133. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.10.2.110
Reiter-Palmon, R., & Harms, M. (2018). Team Creativity and Innovation:
Importance and Directions. In R. Reiter-Palmon (Ed.), Team Creativity and
Innovation. Oxford University Press.
Rhodes, M. (1961a). An Analysis of Creativity. The Phi Delta Kappan,
42(7), 305–310.
West, M. A., & Sacramento, C. A. (2012). Chapter 15—Creativity and Innovation: The
Role of Team and Organizational Climate. In M. D. Mumford (Ed.), Handbook of
Organizational Creativity (pp. 359–385). Academic Press. 10.1016/B978-0-12-
374714-3.00015-X
CHAPTER 1

Creativity Research Primer

This brief primer on creativity research aims to recap the cornerstones of


creativity research and sketch the field’s history.

1.1   Cornerstones of Creativity Research

Defining Creativity
Most definitions of creativity describe the phenomenon by two standard
criteria: the novelty of the product and the appropriateness to the task, or
how ‘new and useful’ the creative contribution is (Amabile, 1983; Bilton &
Cummings, 2014; Burkus, 2014; Guilford, 1950, 1967; Hargreaves &
Boden, 1996; Hennessey & Amabile, 2010; Kaufman & Sternberg, 2005;
Rhodes, 1961; Runco, 2014; Sawyer, 2006; Stein, 2014; Taylor, 1988;
Williams & Fisher, 2004). A novel and useful contribution can take several
shapes and is not limited to a product or service or the improvement of either.

The 4 P of Creativity
Creativity is widely credited as essential for human progress and civilisa-
tion (Amabile, 1983; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Sawyer, 2008; Sternberg &
Kaufman, 2018). In modern research, however, the field of creativity is

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1


Switzerland AG 2022
L. S. Folk, The Hidden Barriers and Enablers of Team-Based
Ideation, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Innovation in
Organizations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16795-9_1
2 L. S. FOLK

most often traced back to the 1950s (Boden, 1992; Guilford, 1950). In
1961, Mel Rhodes collected over forty academic definitions of creativity.
At the time, there was a limited consensus on what creativity was, and even
some backlash against creativity research, per Rhodes himself (1961), who
noted that some deemed it a pseudoscience at the time. Convinced that
creativity warranted academic interest and not suspicion, Rhodes distilled
the breadth of creativity research of the time and organised the different
components into four dimensions, which he called the “4Ps” of creativity,
namely, press, person, process, and product. There was little consideration
of collaborations, with the focus on the individual. Although there had
been some previous research into practice-led methods of stimulating cre-
ative groups at the time (Taylor et al., 1958), including brainstorming
(Osborn, 1953), this did not impact Rhodes’s approach to classifying the
pillars of creativity research.
Person, Rhodes argued, would encompass the research into the creative
person, with the examples given by him being “personality, intellect, tem-
perament, physique, traits, habits, attitudes, self-concept, value systems,
defence mechanisms, and behaviours” With much of the early creativity
research focusing on highly creative individuals, this category has been
one of the most researched areas of the field (Howe, 2001; Koestler, 1990;
Nahn, 1956; Ochse, 1993; Simonton, 1988; Vinacke & Eindhoven,
1952; Wood et al., 1991).
Rhodes describes the category process as applying to “motivation, per-
ception, learning, thinking, and communicating.” Rhodes directly cites
the four stages of the creative process identified by Wallas (1926):
Preparation, Incubation, Inspiration, and Verification.
Press refers to the relationship between the creatives and their environ-
ment. Press, for Rhodes, has two components: the climate of the specific
environment and the reaction of a person to this environment. This could
be seen as an ancestor to Organisational Creativity research today, which
refers to a subfield of research born out of academic interest in the social
psychology of creativity and how creative organisations shape creativity.
With the creative Product, Rhodes distinguishes this from the ‘pure
idea’ as he puts it: “the word idea refers to a thought which has been com-
municated to other people in the form of words or other material. When
we speak of an original idea, we imply a degree of newness in the concept.
When an idea becomes embodied in a tangible form, it is called a product”.
1 CREATIVITY RESEARCH PRIMER 3

Research in the decades following Rhodes’s categorisation of creativity


research has often focused on the person (Koestler, 1964; Sternberg,
1999; Boden, 1992). Several inquiries have been into limiting the creative
process to an individual effort (Sutton & Hargadon, 1996; Paulus &
Nijstad, 2019; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003; McFadyen & Cannella, 2004).

Creativity as System
While creativity research first developed out of psychology, the last few
decades have seen the field taking a more interdisciplinary approach, with
researchers such as Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi (1988), Sawyer
(2003), and Wolff (1993) opening creativity research up for sociological
theories and Amabile (1983) taking a business-centric approach to the
research of organisational creativity. As this research looks at idea genera-
tion in the context of the creative industries, there needs to be an under-
standing of the system.
Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi (1988) introduced the systems
model of creativity to understand the interaction between the individual
and the social and cultural factors involved in the creative process (Hooker,
Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2003). While they specified the individual
level, it is easily extrapolated to the relationship between the creative team,
their output, and the environment in which they function. Feldman,
Csikszentmihalyi, and Gardner (1994; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, 1999) fur-
ther elaborated this idea. The systems model understands creativity not as
the product of an isolated individual’s aptitude or ability but as an interac-
tion between a talented individual, a domain or area of related knowledge
or practice, and a field of experts (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi,
1988; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, 1999; Feldman et al., 1994).
At the heart of the systems model of creativity is the individual intent
on changing the current state of their domain. To accomplish something
creative, the individual must first master the existing body of knowledge,
develop skills and abilities, and internalise the standards of the domain of
quality, values, and beliefs. Once a person has mastered a domain’s rules,
symbols, skills, values, and practices, they can transform the domain, but
the result may only be labelled creative if the field evaluates it as such
(Hooker, Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2003). Gardner (1993) has cal-
culated that across various domains, the process of learning, internalisa-
tion, and incubation which precedes the individual’s creative contribution
to a domain generally takes a person about ten years (Hooker, Nakamura
& Csikszentmihalyi, 2003, Howe, 2001).
4 L. S. FOLK

The first step for an individual intent on making a creative contribution


to the domain is mastering the domain. The domain is defined by
Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi (1988) as an already existing set of
objects, rules, representations, or notations. The domain is, by necessity,
included as a component of the creative process as creativity does not exist
in a vacuum (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999) but in relation to what has come
before. Simply creating something novel is not synonymous with an act of
creativity. An idea without implementation cannot be considered a ‘cre-
ative’ product. According to Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi
(1988), the field must endorse the new idea. In the systems model, the
field is defined as a group of experts entitled to monitor and decide the
contents of the domain through their accomplishments. The research of
creativity from Guilford onwards was primarily rooted in the field of psy-
chology—and has sought to primarily understand the factors responsible
for creative people and activities from this perspective (Paulus & Nijstad,
2019). This focused on personality, developmental experiences, culture,
motivation, and cognitive skills (Mumford & Gustafson, 1988; Sternberg
& Lubart, 1999).
In this research, the systems view of creativity is essential to determine
how creativity is evaluated (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014; Hooker et al., 2003).
There are two elements to the importance of the theory: the evaluation of
the creative output in the quantitative experiment cannot be done by the
researcher as they are not part of the hypothetical system in which the
process takes place (Field & Hole, 2003). In the design of the experiment,
which will be elaborated on later, the role of the field thereby will be filled
by experts who decide on the level of creativity exhibited (Koslow et al.,
2003). In terms of the qualitative data analysis of the expert interviews,
the systems view of creativity is also essential, as it provides a framework of
how the system “reproduces” itself, with a new intake of creatives, which
in turn become creative directors and evaluate the creativity of others
through specific systems, such as industry award ceremonies (Altstiel et al.,
2020; Candy, 2013; Lee et al., 2014; Turnbull & Wheeler, 2015).
The team-level creative process alongside collaborative idea generation
has recently become an integral part of creativity research. For example,
Kurtzberg and Amabile wrote in 2000 that to “take creativity research to
the next level, researchers must now accept the challenge of dissecting
team-level creativity and understanding the components of creativity as
they occur with multiple individuals” (p. 292).
1 CREATIVITY RESEARCH PRIMER 5

1.2  The Emergence of Team Creativity Research


One of the first notable contributions to the field of team creativity was
brainstorming. Osborn, the father of brainstorming, was an advertising
executive who proposed a new way to structure and optimise creativity-­
related group processes. However, numerous academic studies (Bouchard,
1972; Bouchard & Hare, 1970; Collaros & Anderson, 1969; Gallupe
et al., 1992; Mullen et al., 1991; Pinsonneault et al., 1999; Ziegler et al.,
2000) have shown that the creative team process structured as brainstorm-
ing has not been able to exceed individual creativity. Moreover, these stud-
ies do not just show that team-based brainstorming is not more effective
than nominal idea generation but that the nominal—or individual—con-
trol group engaging in idea generation generally resulted in collectively
more and better-evaluated ideas than the test group conducting a brain-
storming session.

Theories of Creativity Linked to the Potential for Collaboration


One theory of creativity is the evolutionary search process across a combi-
natorial space, first introduced by Campbell (1960) (Jiang et al., 2015;
Simonton, 1999; Singh & Fleming, 2010; Weitzman, 1996). In the first
phase of this evolutionary search, typically called the ‘variation’ phase,
people generate new ideas through combinatorial thought trials followed
by a ‘selection’ phase, in which the best ideas are selected. Not only is the
production of ideas considered part of creativity, but the specific decision-­
making as to the quality of these ideas is also. This view of creativity allows
for transferral to shared creative processes, as Singh and Fleming (2010)
would later suggest. They stipulate that having a team level on which
variation and selection are being conducted and an individual level with
the same processes will result in more high-level creativity overall. Basalla
(1988) gave further weight to this theory, stating that novel technologies
can almost always be traced to combinations of prior technologies.
Neuroscience has supported this theory (Beaty et al., 2018). Beaty and his
collaborators used functional magnetic resonance imaging to review the
areas of the brain involved in creative problem-solving to identify if
extraordinary creativity is linked to a specific area of the brain. The research
concluded that neural circuits, which generally work in opposition, are
activated simultaneously in creative problem-solving. Extending the
6 L. S. FOLK

amount of information the individuals have access to in their combinato-


rial search through adding team-level processing could hypothetically
increase the processing power of the assembled individuals exponentially.

Team Creativity Research


Specific research on collaborative creativity has been done by Torrance
(1972), notably one of the first instances the term collaborative creativity
has been used in a research context. His research specifically focused on the
importance of group composition in educational settings. Similarly,
Steiner (1974) discussed group factors in his volume on stimulating indi-
vidual creativity. Group processes were also given special consideration in
the theory of organisational creativity developed by Woodman et al. in
1993. Sternberg’s seminal handbook on creativity (Sternberg, 1999),
while considered a milestone in creativity research (Mumford, 2003),
does mention group brainstorming as ineffective but does not further
look at collaborative creativity (Sternberg, 1999). Recently, there has
been more interest in creativity’s social and contextual factors. Amabile
(1996) noted various social factors, such as mentoring, social influences,
and social reward contexts, in organisational creativity (Amabile et al.,
1996). Similarly, Kasof (1995) highlighted the social factors important in
evaluating creativity.
A distinction has to be made between the social facilitation of creativity
and team-level creativity. Team-level creativity is the product of a shared
process that each team member contributes in some measure. The ques-
tion would be how to enable multiple people to develop a creative product
together. Socially facilitated creativity, however, continues to focus on one
individual whose social environment, including talking to others and get-
ting input from one’s environment, improves the level of individual cre-
ativity expressed by that individual. This blurred line, of course, leaves
grey areas between socially facilitated creativity and pure team-level cre-
ativity. Since the mid-1990s, research into collaborative creativity has
become more prominent (Agrell & Gustafson, 1996; Kayser, 1994; West,
2002). Nevertheless, although work teams have arguably long become the
norm in organisational contexts (Nijstad & Paulus, 2003), the research
basis for the efficacy of work teams in a creative context is not yet fully
formed (Paulus, 2000; Paulus & Paulus, 1997).
Research into organisational and social creativity has taken more and
more shape over the last few decades: an edited volume by Montuori and
1 CREATIVITY RESEARCH PRIMER 7

Purser (1999) focused on various aspects of social creativity in organisa-


tions. Several books on creative individuals have recognised the impor-
tance of social factors in creative achievement (Gardner, 1993;
John-Steiner, 2000; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). However, as Paulus and
Nijstad wrote in 2019, even though there had been increasing awareness
of the importance of social, cultural, contextual, and organisational fac-
tors in creativity, there has been no focus on the group processes of cre-
ativity. They noted this to be a severe deficit, as creative achievements
often require the collaboration of groups or teams (Dunbar, 1997;
Kanigel, 1993; West, 2002). Several significant contributions have now
been relevant to understanding collaborative creativity. However, there
have not been many distinctions between different types of group, team,
and collaborative creativity, and much of this research has developed out
of the testing of the dismissed method of brainstorming (Nijstad and
Paulus, 2003; Paulus et al., 2012; Reiter-Palmon, 2018). Notable other
contributions to the field of team or group creativity include Sawyer’s
book Group Genius, as well as Nijstad and Paulus’ first volume on the
topic (Nijstad & Paulus, 2003; Sawyer, 2008).

1.3  New Perspectives on Creativity


Over the last ten years especially, research into creative collaboration has
seen broad interest (Bermudez & Jones, 2016; Burkus, 2014; Gertner,
2012; Harvey & Kou, 2017; Mumford, 2012; Oldham & Da Silva, 2015;
Paulus & Nijstad, 2019; Reiter-Palmon, 2018; Reiter-Palmon et al., 2012;
Sarooghi et al., 2015; Turnbull & Wheeler, 2015; West & Sacramento,
2012). The current interest might be correlated to the new appreciation
of the importance of the creative team within the broader scope of organ-
isational creativity (Mumford, 2012; Reiter-Palmon, 2018).
The same timespan has also seen creativity emerge as one of the core
values of many high-profile companies, such as Apple, Netflix, and Pixar.
The increase in creativity research follows the emergence of streaming,
cinematic universes, and ‘the golden age of television’ (Waldfogel, 2017).
In addition, an IBM survey of more than 1500 Chief Executive Officers
from sixty countries and thirty-three industries worldwide showed that
even ten years ago, creativity was identified as being the most important
skill needed for future business (IBM 2010 Global CEO Study, 2010).
How organisations structure and organise themselves with maximum
creativity has been the subject of several recent non-fiction best-sellers.
8 L. S. FOLK

From No Rules Rules (Hastings, 2020), diving into the culture behind
Netflix, to Creativity Inc about Pixar (Catmull & Wallace, 2014) and The
Ride of a Lifetime (Iger, 2019), the intersection of organisational psychol-
ogy and creativity has become discussed beyond academic circles.
Researchers have approached collaborative creativity from different
areas of study and disciplines. Academics in cognitive psychology, social
sciences, business studies, information technology, and organisational psy-
chology have taken an interest in collaborative creativity (Paulus & Nijstad,
2019). For example, cognitive psychologists have examined the internal
processes within each group member and how they relate to one another
while not fully diving into the team-level context (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987).
Organisational researchers from psychology and business studies have
examined optimising organisational innovation and creativity (Amabile
et al., 1996). This approach has often resulted in framing team-level cre-
ativity as a function of the organisational systems. Information technology
has also taken an interest in collaborative creativity, especially in computer-­
supported brainstorming and virtual teams (Cooper et al., 1998).

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CHAPTER 2

Ideation Research

Csikszentmihalyi (1997), in his seminal study of highly creative individu-


als, writes: “to understand creativity, it is not enough to study the indi-
viduals who seem most responsible for a novel idea or a new thing. While
necessary and important, their contribution is only a link in a chain, a
phase in a process” (p. 7).
Some of the strands of research brought together in this text seem to
have developed independently and without knowledge of one another, as
illustrated in the variety of names for the overall (or aspects of) phenom-
enon such as ‘the fuzzy front end of innovation’ (Chamakiotis et al., 2020;
Frishammar et al., 2011; Raphael, 2017), team flow (Csikszentmihalyi,
1997; Hout & Davis, 2019; K. Sawyer, 2008), brainstorming (Collaros &
Anderson, 1969; Diehl & Stroebe, 1987; Mullen et al., 1991; Osborn,
1953; Taylor et al., 1958), idea management (Clark & Burt, 1980;
Connolly et al., 1990; Mikelsone et al., 2020), team innovation (Agrell &
Gustafson, 1996; Alexander & van Knippenberg, 2014; Gumusluoglu &
Ilsev, 2009; Hill, 2014; Von Hippel & Von Krogh, 2006; Minor et al.,
2017), social creativity (Adarves-Yorno et al., 2008; Amabile, 1983a;
Amabile et al., 1990; Elisondo, 2016; Hooker et al., 2003), intrapreneur-
ship (Gawke & Gorgievski, 2019; Guven, 2020; Brigić & Djonlagic,
2019), ideation (Bae et al., 2020; Basadur et al., 2000; Kurze et al., 2020;
Lamm & Trommsdorff, 1973; Paulus & Brown, 2003), electronic

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15


Switzerland AG 2022
L. S. Folk, The Hidden Barriers and Enablers of Team-Based
Ideation, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Innovation in
Organizations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16795-9_2
16 L. S. FOLK

brainstorming (Dennis et al., 1999; Dennis & Williams, 2003; Gallupe


et al., 1992; Pinsonneault et al., 1999), design thinking (Brown & Kātz,
2009; Chang et al., 2019; Kelley & Littman, 2004; Mootee, 2013),
organisational creativity (Amabile, 1988; DeFillippi et al., 2007; Pratt &
Amabile, 2016; West & Sacramento, 2012; Woodman et al., 1993), team-
level creative process (Allen, 2019; Bennis & Biederman, 1997; Bermudez
& Jones, 2016; John-Steiner, 2000; Luther & Bruckman, 2018; Schrage,
1995; Sawyer & DeZutter, 2009; Uzzi & Spiro, 2005; Wang et al., 2015),
and creative synergy (Kurtzberg & Amabile, 2001; Karpati et al., 2017;
Taggar, 2001).
Creative group research comes from several eclectic sources, with a
wide variety of fields (Cultural Studies, Psychology, Sociology, Economics,
Business Studies, Cognitive Science) having conducted research into the
intersection of Creativity and Teams (Bilton & Cummings, 2014;
Chechurin & Collan, 2019; Hennessey & Amabile, 2010; Lee & Chen,
2015; Mumford, 2011).
Notably, the terminology is often different—it might be ‘idea manage-
ment’ or the ‘fuzzy front end of innovation’ in STEM-subject-related
research (Chamakiotis et al., 2020; Frishammar et al., 2011; Raphael,
2017). In the social sciences, it is called ‘organisational creativity’ or ‘cre-
ative ideation’ (Amabile, 1988; Mumford, 2012; Valacich et al., 1994).
There has been some overlap between the two, specifically with research
on computer-aided brainstorming in the 1990s, then referred to as elec-
tronic brainstorming (Cooper et al., 1998; Dennis et al., 1999; Dennis &
Williams, 2003; Gallupe et al., 1992; Pinsonneault et al., 1999). While the
term electronic brainstorming is no longer widely used, there is a breadth
of research on creativity published to this day in the realm of computer
science, especially regarding the complexities and potential of human-­
machine interactions that might aid in the creative process (Chung et al.,
2015; Lee & Chen, 2015; Oldham & Da Silva, 2015; Wang et al., 2015).
Collaborative idea generation (often abbreviated as ideation) has been
described in the context of creative synergy (Kurtzberg & Amabile, 2001;
Karpati et al., 2017; Taggar, 2001) or team flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997,
2008; Hout & Davis, 2019; Sawyer, 2008; Sawyer & DeZutter, 2009).
Researchers in organisational settings have examined innovation activities
in groups and teams and their impact on organisational learning and inno-
vation (Amabile and Gryskiewicz, 1989; Amabile, 1996; Amabile, 1983)
but have focussed primarily on organisational and individual creativity.
2 IDEATION RESEARCH 17

2.1   The Debated Value of Team Ideation


Research into brainstorming suggested that at least this type of creative col-
laboration is less effective than the total creativity of the individuals taken
together (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987; Gallupe et al., 1991, 1992; Mullen et al.,
1991; Paulus & Dzindolet, 1993; Pinsonneault et al., 1999; Taylor et al.,
1958). This theory leaves the question open if there are other methods of
managing team-level creativity that can match or exceed the sum of indi-
vidual creativity a team offers. Recent research into team-level creativity has
often sidestepped that question (Paulus & Nijstad, 2019; Reiter-Palmon,
2018; Sawyer, 2008) and argued that simply the frequent use of teams in
organisations justifies the research interest. Nevertheless, determining if
teams ‘add value’ or offer potentially higher total creativity is helpful to
strengthen the research interest and, within organisations, improve business
interest in optimising the process. Professionals in the creative space fre-
quently self-report perceived increased creativity within teams (Kaminska,
2019; Schwab et al., 2018), but quantifying possible gains would likely
further benefit the case for a consciously designed ideation process.
Nominal team creativity is the combined individual creativity of the
team members (Dennis & Williams, 2003; Gallupe et al., 1991; Lamm &
Trommsdorff, 1973; Ziegler et al., 2000). Nominal creativity has been
used in brainstorming research to give a control group to the brainstorm-
ing exercise (De Dreu et al., 2011; Nijstad & Paulus, 2003; Paulus &
Dzindolet, 1993; Wang et al., 2015). It is the individual contributions of
all team members taken together, without any interaction between them;
however, that could be described as a shared or collaborative process
(Ziegler et al., 2000).
By seeing collaborative idea generation as part of both the entire team-­
level creative process and the overall organisational creativity (Dennis &
Williams, 2003; Diehl & Stroebe, 1987; Mullen et al., 1991), this analysis
acknowledges that team-level idea generation does not exist in a vacuum
and is strongly impacted by the micro/individual and organisational/
macro levels.

2.2  Not a Monolith
While there has not been an attempt to classify the different types of cre-
ative collaborations, the necessity has been acknowledged. Mumford et al.
(2018) note that it has been a significant limitation in the evaluation of
18 L. S. FOLK

their research data that they “have not drawn strong distinctions between
(…) teams working on different types of creative projects—radical versus
incremental or product versus process” (p.153), which, according to their
analysis, would have been necessary for them to draw more specific and
useful conclusions in their research. Indeed, they note, “these factors could
have a significant impact on their research results on creative leadership”.
Insights about creative collaborations are necessarily limited to the col-
laboration they research. While each team and process will differ, breaking
this monolith will allow for more precise insights. There are instances of
creative teams being labelled ‘paradoxical’ (Paulus & Kenworthy, 2018),
which might be explained by the fact that the insights won about one type
of creative collaboration cannot be applied to other forms (Mumford
et al., 2018). While leadership has been cited concerning creative collabo-
ration frequently, especially in business-school-based research (Bai et al.,
2016; Dong et al., 2017; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Lee et al., 2015;
Marion, 2012; To et al., 2015; Yoshida et al., 2014), these texts then
speak of the specific challenges of leading particular types of creative
teams—for example, the specific challenges of managing digital teams
(Lee et al., 2015; Luther & Bruckman, 2018; Yoshida et al., 2014).

Collaboration Goal
One element that distinguishes different types of collaborative idea gen-
eration as part of the creative process is the ultimate goal of said collabora-
tion. While the ‘problem finding’ aspect of the creative process proceeds
the idea generation (Lubart, 2001), there is idea generation that responds
to a specific problem—problem-solving creativity (Carmeli et al., 2013;
Hargadon & Bechky, 2006; Runco, 1994) and creativity that has a less
clear-cut goal, sometimes called the ‘fuzzy front end of innovation’
(Chamakiotis et al., 2020; Raphael, 2017) or open creativity.

Group Structure
Another distinction between different types of collaboration is the ques-
tion of ‘who’ is collaborating. The type of collaborators impacts how the
group will operate; therefore, this should be a factor when categorising
the collaborative idea generation (Chechurin & Collan, 2019; Collaros &
Anderson, 1969; Jiang et al., 2015). Similarly, the size of the collaboration
2 IDEATION RESEARCH 19

or the number of collaborators likely makes a distinctive difference in


terms of what the creative process looks like (Verbeke et al., 2008). For
example, advertising famously has two-person partnerships, so-called
dyads, that form the building blocks of larger teams (Horsky, 2006;
Moriarty & VandenBergh, 1984; Turnbull & Wheeler, 2015). Other proj-
ects, such as the making of a film, might require the collaboration of more
than a hundred people—an undertaking and type of collaboration signifi-
cantly different from a dyad in advertising. While it will likely not funda-
mentally change the modus operandi of a team of five to grow to a team
of six, there is significant evidence that the size of the team requires other
changes in the team-level processes to remain effective (Hülsheger et al.,
2009; Mumford, 2011; Peltokorpi & Hasu, 2014).

Collaboration Tightness
There also has to be a distinction in how close collaboration is. There are
examples of loose collaborations that toe the line between being inspired
by each other and working together—such as artist collectives (Hargadon
& Bechky, 2006), laboratories such as the Bell labs (Gertner, 2012), the
homebrew computer club, with infamous links to Apple and Pixar (Petrick,
2018; Levy, 2010), or literary circles (Brauer, 2013; Lilti, 2015). While
this loose collaboration is only distantly related to the type of collabora-
tion in an organisational team, these collectives have been associated with
breakthrough innovations (Gertner, 2012), and individuals within them
have spoken about having profited from this type of creative collaboration
and competition (Brauer, 2013; Petrick, 2018; Levy, 2010; Lilti, 2015).

Technology
Going back to the organisational context, however, there is also digital
collaboration (Chung et al., 2015; Lee & Chen, 2015; Oldham & Da
Silva, 2015), which, during the recent pandemic, became essential and
will, therefore, require more academic interest going forward (Bayram
et al., 2020; Chesbrough, 2020; Guest et al., 2020; Harris et al., 2020).
While every type of collaborative idea generation, when researched, will
likely offer interesting new knowledge and insights, this research is setting
its research focus on in-person collaboration within an organisational
context.
20 L. S. FOLK

2.3   Team Ideation Frameworks


When analysing team-level idea generation processes, one issue is how to
distil such a complex process into a more digestible format. One way to
achieve this is a formula describing how different components of team-­
level creativity combine.
Ivan Steiner (1972), in his seminal work on group productivity, intro-
duced the formula: Actual Group Productivity = Potential Group
Productivity − Process Loss. According to Steiner, potential group pro-
ductivity is determined by the group’s resources (e.g., knowledge, skills,
time) and the demands the group task makes of these resources. The
potential productivity is high if the resources possessed by group members
are sufficient for adequate task performance. Conversely, if the group does
not possess the necessary resources, potential productivity is low, and the
group will be unable to perform well.
However, even if the necessary resources are available to group mem-
bers, performance may still fall below optimal. This issue could be because
many group processes do not foster high performance. As a result, group
members may be unmotivated to contribute to the group product (moti-
vation loss), or coordination between group members may be suboptimal
(coordination loss). In both cases, groups fail to realise their full potential
due to a process loss.
Notably, productivity and creativity are different processes that require
a different approach to succeed. Nijstad and Paulus (2003, p. 328) pro-
pose that Steiner’s formula for group productivity could be easily adapted
to group creativity, with the equation changed to Actual Group
Creativity = Potential Group Creativity − Process Loss. The use of ‘poten-
tial team creativity’ is perhaps misleading, as the phenomenon referred to
could be interpreted as the nominal combined creativity of all team mem-
bers. Nevertheless, Nijstad and Paulus go on to write: “In some cases,
productivity gains may even be achieved (i.e. the group is more creative
than its separate members)” (Nijstad & Paulus, 2003, p. 329). To inte-
grate this into the equation, two changes to this equation are needed to
describe the phenomenon of team-level idea generation more accurately:

Team Idea Generating Potential  Combined Nominal Creativity


Process Losses  Process Gains
2 IDEATION RESEARCH 21

While Nijstad and Paulus (2003) write about these potential process
gains: “Even though groups have the potential for stimulated creativity,
the promise of high performance often will not be fully realized”, going
on later to say “much of brainstorming research shows that groups often
perform more poorly than individuals when it comes to idea generation
due to various group processes” (p. 329).

2.4   Combinations of Contributions Framework


Nijstad and Paulus (2003) propose that any group phenomenon, includ-
ing group creativity, can be understood through a combination of contri-
butions framework of group functioning and performance. The
combination of contributions framework identifies three aspects of group
functioning: group members, group processes, and group context
(Fig. 2.1).
Group members bring resources to the group, determining the group’s
creative potential or what the group can accomplish (Group creative
potential = potential creative person A + creative potential person B + …).

Fig. 2.1 Illustration of the combination of contributions framework after Nijstad


and Paulus (2003)
22 L. S. FOLK

The contributions of group members need to be combined with as little


process loss and as much process gain as possible.
Most important are how individual members’ contributions are com-
bined and enhance each other, which constitutes the relevant group pro-
cesses. It is the process that is central, not individual members. Context
largely determines which group processes will occur and how individual
contributions are combined. Eventually, this determines the quality and
creativity of the group response. The more effective the process in which
individual contributions are combined, the more likely the group will
reach its potential.
The figure below illustrates this framework. At the left is the individual
group member. Individuals have resources (knowledge, skills, abilities)
available but are also influenced by forces outside the group boundary.
The individual member’s resources are used to develop ideas, solutions,
preferences, estimates, and questions. The centre of the figure can be con-
ceptualised as the group information-processing space, in which the con-
tributions of group members are combined (Hinsz et al., 1997).
Individuals contribute information, preferences, ideas, arguments,
questions, proposals, goals, and evaluative statements to the group pro-
cess. Once contributed, the information, in principle, is available to the
other group members. Provided that members pay attention to the contri-
butions of others, the information is added to the individual’s knowledge
base and can subsequently be processed, leading to a shift in preferences,
new ideas, or a new argument (Nijstad and Paulus, 2003). While this new
knowledge has been called information, it might take many shapes, such
as new information, inspiration, guidance, or a new way of looking at the
task. The contributions of individuals need to be combined to produce a
coherent, feasible, sensible, and creative group response. This response
can then be implemented, transferred to other groups, and affect others
outside the team (Nijstad and Paulus, 2003).
Outside and environmental influences are easily recognisable as what
Rhodes (1961) has called ‘Press’. The Person experiencing Press from
outside forces is the beginning point of the group ideation process. The
person first goes through an individual idea generation process before
being able to contribute their idea or ‘individual Product’ towards the
‘Group Process’. In turn, the group process will result in a group creative
product, which then, in turn, be implemented, reminiscent of Wallas’s
four-stage model. Indeed, Wallas’s (1926) four stages are found to a
degree in the model still, with the incubation and, therefore, illumination
2 IDEATION RESEARCH 23

process happening between group and individual. This incubates ideas


together, and one ‘illumination’ or idea results in another. Divergent and
convergent thinking (Bachelor & Michael, 1990; Khandwalla, 1993;
Titus, 2018) is again present in the group process, as the process utilises
both divergent thinking (creating several ideas) and convergent thinking
(selecting a group idea as the group product, which in turn will be imple-
mented outside of the group)—thereby reaching the field and being eval-
uated by the domain—which both in turn are part of the press on person
and group.
A significant portion of team creativity research has been guided by the
process gains and losses framework (Hill, 1982; Steiner, 1972; Diehl &
Stroebe, 1987; Mullen et al., 1991; Stroebe & Diehl, 1994). Simply put,
the interactions and relationships between group members introduce new
factors into the team-level process that act to improve performance (pro-
cess gains) and factors that act to impair performance (process losses) rela-
tive to individuals who work separately without communicating but who
later pool ideas (Paulus, 2000; Paulus et al., 2012; Paulus & Dzindolet,
1993). In such nominal groups, neither process gains nor losses occur.
Research on brainstorming has explicitly zeroed in on how these processes
lower the actual team creativity below the nominal creativity of the cumu-
lative team members (Collaros & Anderson, 1969; Cooper et al., 1998;
Dennis & Williams, 2003; Dugosh et al., 2000; Lamm & Trommsdorff,
1973; Larey & Paulus, 1999; Taylor et al., 1958).
Several dozen credible sources of process losses and gains in group ide-
ation have been proposed (see Camacho & Paulus, 1995; Mullen et al.,
1991; Pinsonneault et al., 1999), which will be explored in greater detail
in the next chapter. However, for this analysis, the focus is on how to
boost creativity, which also necessitates an exploration of process losses,
such as groupthink, production blocking, social loafing, evaluation appre-
hension, cognitive interference, and communication speed, as these have
received the most research (Dennis & Valacich, 1999; Diehl & Stroebe,
1987; Pinsonneault et al., 1999).

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CHAPTER VI.
In the evening of April 6 a few of Gen. Buell’s troops had arrived and
were placed in position. During the night the boats brought the
balance of Buell’s army across the Tennessee River and they were
in line of battle ere the break of day.
Volumes have been written about the battle of Shiloh. Some think
Buell’s army saved us. Of course, they helped to win the second
day’s battle; still there is nothing to prove that Gen. Grant’s army
would not have won without their assistance on the next day.
Let me quote what I wrote over fifty years ago, when it was fresh in
my mind:
“Some think it was Buell’s army that saved the army of Gen. Grant
from total destruction. I think otherwise, and my reason is this: we
had been driven back so near the river that our lines were
concentrated as before they were scattered. During the night Gen.
Grant and his aides had perfected their line of battle, and Gen. Lew
Wallace’s division had arrived from Crump’s Landing, and every man
left in the line knew that to retreat another foot meant total
annihilation, and the words: ‘We must whip them in the morning,’
were upon every man’s lips.”
The enemy was badly hurt, and Gen. Grant knew it and felt confident
that victory must be ours on the morrow.
The morning light had scarcely come on the 7th of April when the
roar of artillery announced the opening of the second day’s battle.
The command, “Forward,” was given and the entire line moved
forward. We were the aggressors today, and made the first attack.
Fighting continued steadily, the enemy yielding every foot with great
reluctance, stubbornly holding their ground, until 12 o’clock, when a
general charge was made, and the tide of battle was turned in favor
of the Union forces. During this charge, Will fell to the ground,
thinking he was shot through the leg, for it hurt so badly he couldn’t
stand up; he pulled up his trousers to see where the minie-ball had
struck him, to find that the ball had only grazed his shinbone, cutting
a nice clean hole through his pants, but not bringing a drop of blood.
Will was disgusted, that he should fall out with just a bruised
shinbone, and jumping up he went limping after his company.
By 3 o’clock Gen. Beauregard, who was now in command of the
Confederate forces, gave the order for a retreat. They kept up a fight
to cover their retreat until night, but when darkness came we were in
possession of our old camps, where we bivouacked, filled as they
were with the dead of both armies. We had no difficulty in sleeping
well, even though the silent dead lay all about us. The dead do not
disturb us; it is the living we should be afraid of. We built fires and
cooked our frugal meal, and, after eating, we gathered ’round the
camp fire and recounted the deeds of valor done during the great
battle, speaking kind words of our brave comrades who had fallen.
A few Sibley tents, torn and riddled by shot and shell, were all we
had left. I lost my shirts, blankets, letters from home, my testament
(mother’s gift) and a picture of the “girl I left behind me.” I was more
indignant over the loss of my girl’s picture then I was over the other
articles.
On Tuesday I was detailed with others to bury the dead lying within
our camp and a distance of two hundred yards in advance. I had
charge of digging the grave, if a trench over sixty feet long and four
feet deep, can be called a grave.
The weather was hot, and most of the dead had been killed early
Sunday morning, and dissolution had already commenced. The
soldiers gathered the bodies up and placed them in wagons, hauling
them near to the trench, and piling them up like cord wood.
We were furnished with plenty of whiskey, and the boys believed that
it would have been impossible to have performed the job without it.
When the grave was ready, we placed the bodies therein, two deep;
the father, brother, husband and lover, all to lie till Gabriel’s trumpet
shall sound. All the monument reared to those brave men was a
board, nailed to a tree at the head of the trench, upon which I cut
with my pocket knife, the words: “125 rebels.”
We buried our Union boys in a separate trench, and on another
board were these words: “35 Union.” Many of our men had been
taken away and buried separately by their comrades. It was night
when we finished the task, some of the squad, “half seas over” with
liquor, but they could not be blamed, for it was a hard job. The next
day we burned the dead horses and mules.
A few words about the great battle of Shiloh, as an old veteran views
it, as well as some words deduced from history.
It has often been told that the enemy surprised us at Shiloh; that the
men were asleep in their tents and were even bayoneted there. This
most certainly is erroneous. The Confederate officers report that
early Sunday morning, while they were planning the attack, their
discussion was abruptly brought to an end by the Union out posts
commencing an attack on them.
Our soldiers were not surprised in the sense of being taken off their
guard.
It was a surprise in the sense, that Gen. Grant and his officers did
not expect an attack in force by the enemy, or if they did, they made
a great mistake in not being prepared. The fact remains, we were not
ready to receive the enemy; not a shovelfull of earth had been
thrown up for protection, and the several divisions were scattered so
as not to form a continuous battle line. If mistake it was on the part of
Gen. Grant, he profited by it, for such a thing did not happen ever
afterward. That the first day’s battle of Shiloh was a stubborn and
desperate battle cannot be denied. Badeau, in his military history of
Gen. Grant, says: “For several hours of the first day there was as
desperate fighting as was ever seen on the American Continent, and
that, in proportion to the number engaged, equaled any contest
during the rebellion.”
Gen. W. T. Sherman said: “I never saw such terrible fighting
afterward.”
Gen. Grant has said: “Shiloh was the severest battle fought in the
west during the war, and but few in the east equaled it for hard,
determined fighting.” Again he says in his Memoirs, speaking of
Shiloh: “I saw an open field the second day, over which the
Confederates had made repeated charges, so covered with dead
that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing in any
direction, stepping on dead bodies without the foot touching the
ground.”
Gen. McClernand and his division have never received their just
meed of praise for his and their part in the battle of Shiloh.
Gen. Grant in his later life says this: “The heaviest loss sustained by
the enemy was in front of Sherman’s and McClernand’s divisions.”
The official records show that on April 5, 1862, Gen. Grant had
39,830 men and officers for the first day’s battle, and Gen. Johnston
of the Confederates had 43,968 when we started the battle of Shiloh.
The loss of the Confederates was 24⅓ per cent; the loss of Grant’s
five divisions present for duty on Sunday was 26¾ per cent. The loss
of the Army of the Tennessee under Grant at Shiloh was 10,944; the
loss of the Army of the Ohio under Buell was 2,103. Only a few
regiments of Buell’s army got into action late in the evening of the
first day. Total Union loss 13,047, but this includes 2,314 Union
prisoners of Gens. Prentiss’ and Wallace’s divisions; the loss of the
Confederates was 10,699.
I remember no amusing incidents during the battle, save that of one
of my company, who was shot through the mouth in such a way as to
knock out all of his front teeth. He was a German, who spoke English
brokenly, and swore like a trooper; he would spit blood and then
curse the enemy with great vehemence, and loading his gun and
firing, would exclaim: “D— ’em, dey tinks dey vill spile me so I can’t
eat hard tack, d— ’em, I’ll show dem!” And so he fought while his
comrades cheered him on.
It has been said that war is grand and heroic; that fighting is a
glorious thing; so it is to read about, but the veterans of fifty years
ago have seen war; they know what a horrible thing it is, and I
believe that every old veteran who has stood in the battle front, has it
in his heart to say: “God grant that wars may cease, and that
universal peace may come to this world of ours.”
Shiloh was a terrible battle, and now after fifty years have slipped by,
I sit in my easy chair and occasionally dream of the past. I seem to
hear again as vividly as then, the booming of cannon, the rattle of
musketry and the whiz of the minie-ball, amid the cries and groans of
my comrades who touched elbows with me, and I ask myself: “Can it
be? Was I there, or is it a wild fancy of the brain?” The scenes come
too vividly before my memory to doubt it, and I thank God that I was
able with my comrades to bear a humble part in saving to those who
come after us, this grand nation, and in helping to perpetuate but
one flag, the Stars and Stripes—the “Heaven-born banner”—to float
over a reunited land and people.
CHAPTER VII.
Before leaving my story of the battle of Shiloh, it will interest the
reader to peruse the following account of a visit of some of the
participants in the battle, just 47 years after.
The National Association of the Survivors of the Battle of Shiloh held
their annual reunion on the battle field of Shiloh, April 6 and 7, 1909.
Sixty-six veterans, with their wives and sons and daughters, boarded
the steamer “Santillo” at St. Louis, Mo., April 2, 1909, and started for
Pittsburg Landing, Tenn. On the morning of April 6, 1909, we landed
at Pittsburg Landing, Tenn. Upon the bluff is the National Cemetery,
where 4,000 Union soldiers lie buried, most of the head stones
bearing the name “Unknown.” It is a beautiful cemetery, overlooking
the Tennessee River. The farmers from the surrounding country were
there with their hacks and carryalls ready to be engaged for a
reasonable sum to take the Northern visitors all over the battle field.
Our party secured a rancher with a big wagon drawn by a pair of lazy
mules (our objective point being the camp of the regiment of which
we were members), over fine made, drained roads, and although it
had rained heavily the night before, the roads were dry and clear of
mud. We found a National Park of nearly 4,000 acres, laid out with
roads in every direction; we found monuments everywhere, as well
as markers and tablets, denoting the camp of every regiment and
different positions held by each regiment and battery in the great
battle of April 6 and 7, 1862. Great credit is due the Park
Commissioners and Major D. W. Reed (of the 12th Iowa Regiment),
Secretary and Historian, for their magnificent work in making this
beauty spot in Tennessee. Monuments have been erected by the
different states in honor of their troops taking part in the battle. The
South have also erected monuments to the memory of the
Confederate troops. The Alabama state monument was dedicated
on April 7, 1909, both northern and southern men and women
participating. The Daughters of the Confederacy of Alabama had
sent flowers and a request that the ladies from the North would place
them upon the monument, which the Chicago, Iowa and South
Dakota ladies did. A prayer was offered and Capt. Irwin, an ex-
Confederate, made an address, and he was followed by a Union
veteran, eulogizing “Old Glory.” Then a young man from the South
spoke, saying among other things that he was glad he lived today
instead of forty-seven years ago, for now, if the United States were
called to a war, the North and South would go side by side,
defending their common country. And then the company sang
“Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
The two days at Shiloh battle field were filled with intense interest to
all who were present, especially the veterans who took part in the
battle; and where it happened that two or more members of the
same regiment were present they would hunt up their camp ground
and then find the different positions they held in the battle line of
those days, and standing on the same ground as then, live in
memory again the terrible scenes of the long ago. The battle line of
April 6 and 7, 1862, is about three miles in length and we visited
most every part of the field, including the most noted places, viz.: the
“Hornet’s Nest” and the “Bloody Pond.”
To those of our party who wended their way to Shiloh church, where
the battle began, a unique experience awaited us. On April 6 (there
being about twenty-five from the boat present), upon coming in sight
of the church, we beheld the citizens of the surrounding country, with
their wives and children, gathered from miles around. The Albert
Sidney Johnston Camp of Confederate Veterans were holding their
semi-annual meeting in the church, there being present probably
twenty-five veterans. We were met by the veterans of the
Confederate army with a glad shake and a cordial invitation to
remain to dinner with them, which was accepted, and we did enjoy
their fried chicken and all the other good things. The dinner was
eaten with the sauce of reminiscences and repartee between the
blue and the gray. We will give you one little incident in which the
Union veteran seemed to get the worst of it. Noticing the leanness of
the ex-Confederates, the Union veteran said: “Johnnie, how is it all
you fellows look so lean, as though you hadn’t enough to eat?” The
ex-Confederate, on a wooden leg, made quick reply: “Well, Yank,
you see it’s this way. You-uns shot us onto crutches and we-uns shot
you-uns on the pension roll.” After many a joke and story of the
battle, the people adjourned to the church for services, the church
being filled. Gen. Basil Duke, one of the Shiloh Park Commissioners,
gave a fine address, giving his experience in the battle of Shiloh,
where he was wounded. He was in Morgan’s command of the
Confederate army. Among other things he said:
“We fought in the Civil War for the cause we thought was right. We
believed the rights guaranteed to us under the constitution were
being taken away from us, and you must admit that our love for our
homes and property is as dear to us of the South as it is to you of the
North. The people of the North believed that to divide the United
States would destroy this Nation. Time has proved under the
providence of God that the judgment of the North was correct, for
had we succeeded in establishing the Confederate States of
America, no doubt later on other states would have felt aggrieved on
some question and would have seceded, and in time, had our cause
won, this nation would have been divided into a great many small
principalities governing themselves. Now the issues for the weal of
this great Nation are as dear to us of the South as you of the North.”
Gen. Duke closed his address by saying that: “We all rejoice at the
fraternal feelings now existing between the North and the South, and
hope that ever these bonds of love and good will between us may
grow and cement us together, stronger and stronger, and we shall
continue to prosper and enjoy the rights and privileges of this great
Nation.”
W. F. Crummer, of Chicago, Ill., on behalf of the boys in blue and
their friends, responded, contrasting the scenes of 47 years ago with
those of today. He said in part: “It was a beautiful Sabbath morning,
April 6, 1862. The birds were singing among the trees and nature
was putting forth her verdure of green, when suddenly the booming
of cannon, the shrieking of shells and the rattle of musketry heralded
the beginning of one of the most terrible battles of the Civil War. I will
not take the time to relate all my experiences of that battle, but
simply say this, that when, on Monday evening, we had regained our
camp, we found a few Sibley tents all riddled with shot and shell, and
while you, ex-Confederates here, had possession of our camp you
took my knapsack, blanket, the testament my mother gave me,
which I hope you read and profited thereby. You are welcome to that,
but one thing you took made me feel badly, and that was the picture
of the girl I left behind me, and I am here today to ask you to return
that picture. The scene of that awful field of carnage and bloodshed
changes. Today, after 47 years have rolled by, the birds are singing
in the trees and nature is putting forth its green as then, and all is
peaceful, and instead of cannon and bullets greeting us you meet us
with open hands and extend to us a cordial greeting and your
bountiful hospitality. Our hearts are moved and we thank you most
heartily. We rejoice with you that today we know no North, no South,
no East, no West, but a reunited country, with one flag and one
nation, the grandest Nation on the earth. We trust that we shall
always remain a happy and prosperous people, both North and
South, working together for the good of the entire country. The
feeling of good fellowship shown us today indicates that we are one
in spirit and love for our Nation. May we all so live that when the roll
is called up yonder we may answer ‘Here,’ and enter into the
heavenly land our God has prepared for us. Again thanking you for
your most kindly greeting and hospitality, I bid you Godspeed until
we meet again.”
The meeting was dismissed in a novel manner. All rose and, shaking
hands, sang as they marched around the church, to a Southern
melody: “It’s All Over Now; It’s All Over Now,” and with many a
“Come and see us again,” the veterans and their friends from the
North bade their Tennessee friends a hearty good bye.
VICKSBURG
CHAPTER VIII.
A half of a century has passed since the memorable Vicksburg
campaign of the Civil War began in the year 1863.
It was my lot to take part in the Vicksburg campaign, and, in giving
some reminiscences of that siege, I must speak from the standpoint
of a soldier of the 45th Illinois Regiment, Gen. Logan’s division in
Gen. McPherson’s 17th Army Corps, being a part of Gen. Grant’s
army. Before taking you to the actual siege we must carry you with
the army from Milliken’s Bend on the Louisiana shore above
Vicksburg round on the west side of the Mississippi River to
Bruinsburg, 70 miles below Vicksburg, and tell you of the marches
and battles we had before we entered the city. In the spring of 1863
we find Gen. Grant and his army of 30,000 men encamped at
Milliken’s Bend. We could not cross the river at that point and attack
Vicksburg from the north, inasmuch as a large portion of that country
was an impassable swamp. The first plan devised was to cut a canal
to the west, thereby changing the current of the river, by which it was
proposed to carry troops, forage and ammunition by transports south
of Vicksburg, but this scheme proved ineffectual and was
abandoned. Where Vicksburg stands, the cliffs rise abruptly from the
water’s edge 200 feet. Twenty-eight heavy guns were mounted on
the river front, all of which had a plunging fire. Our gunboats could
not elevate their guns to do them any damage. Vicksburg was
impregnable from the north and the river front. Jeff Davis said:
“Vicksburg is the Gibralter of America.” By the way, speaking of Jeff
Davis reminds me he had a plantation not far from Vicksburg. Soon
after the Yankees reached that vicinity, Jeff’s slaves deserted him,
bag and baggage, and a queer lot of contrabands they were, indeed.
Notice the daring plan of Gen. Grant, namely, to take his army
around on the Louisiana shore to a point south of Vicksburg, cross
the river, cut loose from his base of supplies and enter the enemy’s
country.
Gen. Grant devised the plan to have Admiral Porter’s gunboats and
several steamboats, loaded with rations and ammunition, run the
batteries at Vicksburg and be ready to transport the army across the
river. The first intimation the rank and file had of such a thing was a
notice that our Colonel received one day from the Commanding
General: that volunteers were wanted to man the steamboats; to act
as firemen, engineers, pilots, etc. The Adjutant called the regiment
into line, and the Colonel explained what was wanted. He told the
soldiers of the dangerous undertaking; that in all probability the
steamers would be riddled with shot and shell and many might
perish. Notwithstanding all this, if there were any who would
volunteer for this service, let them step three paces to the front.
Almost the entire regiment stepped to the front. There was one
Lieutenant who did not step to the front. Suffice it to say he was
never promoted. The reason is obvious. The Colonel then told the
Captains to select those who had had some experience on the river,
and enough men were found to man a hundred steamers. There was
one of those brave volunteers of our regiment—Charlie Evans—who
held to the pilot wheel, when a cannon ball went crashing through
the pilot house, driving pieces of timber against him with such force
that he never fully recovered, and a few years after we buried him at
Galena, Ill. Now the boats are loaded and manned by those brave
boys from the Northern prairies. All is ready, the night is propitious,
the signal is given and Admiral Porter’s flotilla of gunboats and
steamers start down the river on the 16th day of April, 1863, to run
that storm of fire and iron hail. The enemy endeavored to send those
boats and their heroic crews to “Davy Jones’ Locker” that night, but
with the exception of one boat, the “Henry Clay,” they finally passed
through. For two hours and forty minutes the fleet was under fire.
Every transport was struck and disabled. For eight miles the enemy’s
cannon hurled shot at them, but the loss of men was small in killed
and wounded. Now the gunboats and steamboats have run the rebel
batteries and are below the city ready to transport the troops and
cannon from the west bank of the river to the east.
Prior to the running of the batteries, many of the troops had marched
down on the Louisiana side of the river to Hard Times and
Bruinsburg, and were waiting for the boats to arrive, with much
anxiety, fearful that they would not stand the awful hammering the
enemy would give them. The first to show up was the burning wreck
of the “Henry Clay.” As it floated by an old southern man whose
magnificent mansion bordered the Mississippi River, rubbed his
hands in glee, exclaiming, “Where are your gunboats now?
Vicksburg has put an end to them all.” Not long after his jubilant
remark the gunboats appeared coming down the river, and presently
the whole fleet hove in sight; then the boys, turning to the haughty
Southerner, said: “Did Vicksburg put an end to them all?” The old
man was too mad to endure the taunts, and turning away, hid
himself. The next day he set fire to his own home rather than allow it
to shelter his fancied enemies.
About this time there was excitement in Richmond and Washington.
The Confederate government was amazed that their “Gibralter”
should have been passed by the “Yankee” fleet of gunboats. At
Washington, consternation took hold of the officers at the war office.
Gen. Grant had not informed Gen. Halleck of his plans as to the
capture of Vicksburg. Halleck was angry and sent a dispatch
ordering Gen. Grant to turn back, but the dispatch failed to reach its
destination. There had been a determined effort made at Washington
by some Senators and Governors and friends of other Generals, to
have Grant removed from his command; but President Lincoln said
to them: “I rather like the man; I think we’ll try him a little longer.” So,
because of the faith of Lincoln in Grant’s ability, it became possible
for him to make that most remarkable campaign and capture of
Vicksburg. I believe it is a fact, that now, in the military schools of
Europe, the military campaign of Gen. Grant at Vicksburg is studied
and considered by authorities as one of the most daring and
brilliantly executed movements in modern warfare.
Now for the campaign as seen from a soldier’s view. The army has
been conveyed across the river. The enemy falls back to Port
Gibson, burning the bridges across the Bayou Pierre. The loss of the
bridges does not delay the army very long, for we are supplied with
boats or pontoons; with these, in addition to lumber from fences,
houses and barns, a bridge is soon built. After crossing the pontoon
bridge we soon encountered the enemy at Thompson Hill or Port
Gibson. A sharp fight ensues, but the enemy is soon routed and
retreats. During our fight at Thompson Hill we had with us that day a
Congressman from the North. He had a horse and was riding with
our Colonel when the quick rattle of musketry in our front was heard.
The order was quickly given and we were moving forward in line of
battle. Presently the usual noisy introduction of the sharp crack of
the musket and the whiz of the minie-ball opened the exercises.
There was a deep ravine a little in our rear. The Congressman or his
horse was very tired and remained in the ravine until he heard the
wild cheer of our victorious charge, when he came out of that ravine
on the gallop, swinging his hat and shouting: “Give it to ’em, boys.” It
was safe then. But you couldn’t blame him much. He wasn’t getting
the enormous sum of $13 per month to be shot at. A Congressman’s
salary didn’t justify the sacrifice of being riddled with bullets.
Three days’ rations are issued to the soldiers and this we are told
must sustain us for the next five days. The march is then resumed.
On May 12th, at 11 o’clock, we meet the enemy, 5,000 strong, at
Raymond, and the fight is opened by the artillery and a sharp battle
is fought. The enemy charge our lines, but are repulsed, the lighting
continuing until about 2 o’clock p. m., when the order for a charge is
given and forward with a cheer the boys go, the enemy breaking and
retreating. We occupy the town of Raymond that night. The dead are
buried; the wounded are cared for and by daybreak the next morning
we are on the march, headed for Jackson, Miss., to clean out Gen.
Johnston, and his army that he has concentrated at that place. Our
rations are getting short, but the country affords us a fair supply of
some things, such as fresh pigs, chickens and vegetables, which we
take as a matter of crippling the enemy as well as to satisfy the
hungry boys in blue. Our march begins at 4 o’clock in the morning.
One day we marched all day in the drizzling rain and at night when
we camped we were wet to the skin, hungry and tired, but not one
word of grumbling could be heard. On May 14, 1863, we arrive at the
outskirts of Jackson and meet the enemy. During the battle at
Jackson a rather amusing incident happened. We were in line of
battle and had moved up to the vicinity of a plantation around which
were scattered a number of bee hives. Now, had we not been
engaged with the enemy, our boys would have liked nothing better
than to have despoiled those bees and supped on honey, but for the
present we had important work on hand. The bees were quiet
enough until the minie-balls went crashing through their hives, when
they came out and rushed at us with terrible ferocity. Men can stand
up and be shot at, all day, with the deadly musket, but when a swarm
of bees pounces upon a company of men in concert, it’s beyond
human nature to stand it, and so two or three companies retired from
the field. In fact, our lines were re-formed in that particular locality so
as to avoid those Southern bees. They had no “rebel yell,” but their
charge on us was a successful one. We sometimes captured things
we did not want. At Jackson we captured a smallpox hospital and its
inmates. We didn’t want it, you may be sure, for everybody kept at a
respectful distance from it.
The battle of Jackson is fought, the final charge is made and the city
is ours, Gen. Johnston and his army retreating to the north and east.
The final charge made by the Iowa boys under Gen. Crocker of
Iowa, was one of the most superb and gallant of the war. Gen. Grant
said that, with the exception of Sherman and Sheridan, Gen. Crocker
was the best division commander in the army. We are now 80 miles
from Grand Gulf and 50 miles east of Vicksburg. Immediately the
army is wheeled about and faced toward Vicksburg, and the march
commences to that city.
CHAPTER IX.
On May 16, 1863, at Champion Hill, the enemy was encountered,
strongly stationed, on a series of ridges or hills, naturally well
adapted for defensive purposes. Here we met Gen. Pemberton’s
army of over 40,000 men coming out of the entrenched position in
the city to make mince meat of Grant’s army. The battle opened early
in the forenoon and raged for half a day, in which only 15,000
soldiers, or a portion of Grant’s army, was engaged. It was one of the
hard-fought battles of the war and one of the most bloody. The battle
was mainly fought by McPherson’s 17th Army Corps and Hovey’s
division of the 13th Corps.
Gen. Logan’s charge on the extreme right, about three o’clock in the
afternoon, was one of the finest charges of troops that I witnessed
during the war, and I was in nine different battles. It has been said
that at the battle of Champion Hill for a time there was as fierce
fighting as any seen in the west. The colors of my regiment were
riddled with bullets and our color guards were all killed or wounded.
About three o’clock the enemy gave way and commenced a retreat
towards Vicksburg.
After driving the enemy from the field those engaged all day were
tired out and halted for a time on the battle field. I would like to
portray the scene that we gazed upon. It was a horrible picture and
one that I carry with me to this day. All around us lay the dead and
dying, amid the groans and cries of the wounded. Our surgeons
came up quickly and, taking possession of a farm house, converted
it into a hospital, and we began to carry ours and the enemy’s
wounded to the surgeons. There they lay, the blue and the gray
intermingled; the same rich, young American blood flowing out in
little rivulets of crimson; each thinking he was in the right; the one
conscious of it today, the other admitting now it were best the Union
should be maintained one and inseparable. The surgeons made no
preference as to which should be first treated; the blue and the gray
took their turn before the surgeon’s knife. What heroes some of
those fellows were; with not a murmur or word; with no anaesthetic
to sooth the agony, but gritting their teeth, they bore the pain of the
knife and saw, while arms and legs were being severed from their
bodies. There was just one case that was an exception to the rule.
He was a fine-looking officer and Colonel of some Louisiana
regiment of the Confederate army. He had been shot through the leg
and was making a great ado about it. Dr. Kittoe, of our regiment,
examined it and said it must be amputated; the poor fellow cried and
howled: “Oh, I never can go home to my wife on one leg. Oh, oh, it
must not be.” “Well,” said the gruff old surgeon, “that, or not go home
at all.” The Colonel finally said yes, and in a few minutes he was in a
condition (if he got well) to wear a wooden leg when he went home
to his wife.
The enemy are retreating to the city to get behind the breastworks,
and Grant’s army is pushing them right along every day. It is twenty
days now since the campaign began. In that time the army has
marched nearly 200 miles, beaten two armies in five different battles,
captured 27 heavy cannon and 61 pieces of field artillery; taken
6,500 prisoners and killed and wounded at least 6,000 of the enemy.
Starting without teams and with an average of three days’ rations in
the haversacks, we subsisted principally on forage found in the
country. Only five days’ rations had been issued in twenty days. Still,
neither suffering nor complaint was witnessed in the command. The
army was in fine condition, so Gen. Grant said. Since it had left
Milliken’s Bend it had marched by day and night, through mud and
rain, without tents and on irregular rations. Gen. Grant said then: “My
force is composed of hardy and disciplined men, who know no
defeat and are not willing to learn what it is.” Well, if marching day
and night in the mud and rain, on short rations, made us hardy, I
reckon he told the truth. I tell you today, after 50 years have passed,
I can remember the gnawing of hunger on that memorable march,
and I recollect one day spying a piece of bacon rind at the road side,
which some more fortunate soldier had thrown away, and grabbing it
as a great treasure I removed the dirt and ate it with a ravenous
appetite. Before we get to Vicksburg we must have another battle at
the Big Black River. The enemy were discovered in force, strongly
posted near the bridge. The day was hot and Gen. Lawler, who was
rushing around in his shirt sleeves, discovered that by moving one
portion of his brigade through the brush under cover of the river
bank, the remainder to push directly against the left flank of the
enemy, he could reach a position where he would be able to carry
the works by storm. As soon as his troops were properly placed,
Gen. Lawler led his boys in blue in a magnificent charge, capturing
one entire brigade of the enemy, and forcing the remainder to beat a
hasty retreat to Vicksburg.
On May 18, 1863, Gen. Grant’s army invested the enemy’s defenses
of Vicksburg and then commenced a siege that lasted for 47 days,
an account of which it is my purpose to give as concisely as
possible. The enemy’s breastworks encircled the city somewhat in
the shape of a horseshoe, being about eight miles in length. The
ground around the city is very rough; steep hills, deep gullies,
underbrush, cane and willows and everything to impede the army.
Gen. Grant, with about 30,000 men, had cooped up Gen. Pemberton
and his army of over 35,000 men. (Seven weeks later P. surrendered
30,000 men.) Soon after Gen. Grant had assigned his several Corps
Commanders to their places (Gen. Sherman being on the right, Gen.
McPherson in the center and Gen. McClernand on the left), several
charges were made at different points on the line, but owing to the
strong forts and entrenchments, the enemy repulsed us with heavy
loss. The union lines, however, are advanced, positions for artillery
are selected, and the daily duel of the sharpshooters is opened up in
the immediate front.
After so much marching and fighting, the boys in blue are weary and
hungry, and a few days’ rest is granted the men, that they may
attend to some washing and cleaning up. Very few of us had a
second shirt to wear. Toward the close of the war but few carried
knapsacks; it wasn’t necessary. It is related of an Irishman that, upon
being asked why he didn’t go to the Quartermaster and draw a
knapsack, replied: “An’ what do I want a knapsack for?” “Why, to put
your clothes in, Pat.” “Sure, an’ if I should go on dress parade wid
me clothes in me knapsack the Colonel would be after puttin’ me in
the guard house.” May 21st we are furnished with a good square
meal by Uncle Sam—if hard tack, sow bacon, beans and coffee can
be called a square meal. We so considered it after the hardships of
the last month. And having been strengthened in the inner man with
plenty of food, Gen. Grant proposes to carry Vicksburg by storm on
the morrow, May 22, 1863. Shall we ever forget that desperate
charge? No, and I believe had Gen. Grant known at the time how
strongly the enemy were entrenched and how valiantly they would
fight, he would never have ordered that charge. He thought, no
doubt, as we soldiers believed, that having been so successful in
meeting the enemy recently, we could whip any armed force that
opposed us. May 22, 1863, the order was given to commence the
attack at 10 o’clock. At that hour the battle opened; every piece of
artillery was brought to bear on the works; sharpshooters at the
same time began their part; nothing could be heard but the continual
shrieking of shells, the booming of cannon and the sharp whiz of the
minie-ball. At the time the assault was attempted our bivouac was in
a ravine just east of the “White House,” or “Shirley House.” Running
in front of the house was the main Jackson wagon road leading into
the city. For about five hundred yards the road had been cut down in
the ridge to a depth of a man’s head, then the ridge sloped a little
and the road opened out in plain view of the forts of the enemy not
200 yards distant. We marched in columns of four through this cut in
the road until we reached the point where we would be exposed to
the enemy’s guns, then we were to deploy to the left along the slope
of the hill, until the entire regiment was out of the road, when at the
word of the commanding officer—“By the right flank, charge”—we
were to go over the enemy’s works. As we came out of that road
Major Cowan gave the command, “double quick,” and we started
across that open space. Major Cowan, commanding the regiment,
fell at the first volley from the enemy, having only taken a step or
two.
The enemy was watching and the instant we appeared in sight they
opened into us an awful volley of shot and shell. There was no one
to give the command to halt, or right face and charge; the Major was
killed and the ranking Captain didn’t know it. We went as far in that
hail of death as we thought would be sufficient for the regiment to
form in line of battle, and then we dropped flat on the ground. Being
First Sergeant of Company A of my regiment, I was at the head of
the regiment with Major Cowan when we started across that deadly
piece of open ground, the Major falling by my side, but I kept right on
at the head of the regiment until space enough was given the
regiment to form in line under the brow of the hill. The ground sloped
down hill from the enemy’s parapet, and by flattening one’s self
about as flat as a hard tack, he was comparatively safe from the
musketry fire of the enemy. The regiment came through, but the
dead and wounded lay thick over that stretch of 200 yards. The order
to charge the works was, after a short time, given by the ranking
Captain, and we started up the hill, to be met by a sweeping volley of
musketry at short range, which mowed the men down in bunches.
We could not return the fire, for the enemy were safe behind their
breastworks. Some of our men reached the top of the parapet, but
fell as fast as they climbed up. No troops could face such a
destructive fire from a protected enemy. Presently the order is given
to fall back, and we retire under the brow of the hill and remain there
until after dark, when we took our usual place in the rear of the
“White House.” The charge of my regiment is but a picture of all
other regiments that took part on that day. The assault was no more
successful at other points of the line, and the Union army suffered
great loss. The works were strongly constructed and well arranged to
sweep the approaches in every direction; their position was too
strong, both naturally and artificially, to be taken by storm. Wherever
the assault was attempted, the hillsides were covered with the slain
and wounded, many of them lying in the hot sun during the day
crying for water, which could not be taken to them. Three thousand
Union soldiers were killed or wounded in this disastrous charge;
more men in this one charge were lost than were lost during the late
Spanish War. The army was now made sadly sure that over ground
so rough and with such strong forts and entrenchments it could not
hope to carry Vicksburg by storm. It clearly proved the great
advantage an army has in having breastworks and entrenchments to
cope with the enemy. Gen. Grant had had such wonderful success
so far that he really thought his troops could walk right up to and
inside those fortifications. But the fact has been demonstrated that
the loss of precious lives would be too great, and preparations for a
siege were begun and the pick and shovel were brought into
requisition. Saps and rifle trenches were constructed and in these
our sharpshooters were continually on the lookout for the hidden
enemy. Before we had constructed outer rifle pits so as to make
them comparatively safe, our boys with their bayonets and a tin
plate, dug little holes in the ground and on top of the earth placed a
few fence rails. Between these rails our men could pick off the
sharpshooters of the enemy and many a duel was had here between
the pickets of the two armies.

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