(How) Can I Help You? Ai as Enabler and Preventer to Idea Generation in Innovation Workshops
Julian Ruf, Patricia Wolf, Florian Andresen, Hans Ulrich Koller · University of Southern Denmark Research Portal (University of Southern Denmark) · 2025
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) into innovation workshops has become increasingly relevant in recent years and is subject of intense debate scholarly research about whether AI supports or hinders idea generation in innovation workshops. However, the perspective of those involved in such innovation workshops on their perceptions of what role AI plays has been largely neglected. Therefore, this paper presents a case study to investigate the following question: What is, according to the perception of people involved in idea generation workshops, the role of AI in the idea generation process in innovation workshops? We find that AI can be perceived in multiple roles in the idea generation phase of innovation workshops and develop a typology of them. Further, we identify potential control variables and moderators of the relationship between humans, AI, ideation workshop outputs, motivation and group dynamics, and offer critical insights into the socio-technical dynamics of human-AI collaboration.