The study, the first of its kind in the accounting field to explore team creativity with neuroimaging, shows that while teams with differing skill sets and perspectives bring fresh, unique ideas to the table, they often struggle to create practical, workable solutions -- raising important questions for managers and businesses worldwide.

In an experiment, teams made up of members with different areas of expertise -- engineers and accountants -- were tasked with coming up with creative uses for an unused university space. The study found that teams with a mix of skills generated more unique proposals, but their ideas were often less useful compared to teams where everyone shared the same expertise.

"Our study challenges the trendy belief that teams with diverse expertise always boost creativity," said Adam Presslee, a professor from the School of Accounting and Finance at Waterloo. "While teams with differing skill sets and perspectives tend to come up with more original ideas, they also face friction when trying to turn those ideas into practical, implementable solutions."

The study, a collaboration between Drs. Presslee, Yasheng Chen and Sue Yang used cutting-edge brain-scanning technology, known as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), to measure how participants' brains responded during team collaboration. This powerful tool allowed researchers to peek inside the "black box" of the brain to understand why teams with differing skill sets and perspectives have mixed effects on creativity.

The experiment was comprised of 40 two-person teams who were each fitted with an fNIRS brain scanning cap to see how synchronized the team members' brain activities were. They found that when team members' brains were more synchronized in certain areas, it influenced their ideas' uniqueness or usefulness.

The study offers two scientific contributions that challenge the belief that varied skill sets within teams boost creativity and maximize efficiency. The first is that while diverse expertise enhances the uniqueness of team ideas, it reduces their usefulness -- leading to a complex balancing act for managers. Ultimately, skill diversity in teams can be a double-edged sword in terms of its effect on creativity.

Secondly, by using neuroimaging, the study demonstrated that teams with differing skill sets and perspectives trigger different areas of the brain associated with divergent and convergent thinking.

The study should significantly resonate for businesses, especially for managers where applying functional diversity isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

"For companies to get the most out of their teams, they need to think carefully about what kind of creative output they want," Presslee said. "Diverse expertise is great if the goal is innovative, 'out of the box' ideas. But if you need timely usable ideas, you may want a more focused, uniform team."