On Repeat: Does Iteration Drive Innovation?

TL;DR

This study demonstrates through experiments that iterative workflows enhance innovation and performance by encouraging broader search and exploration, especially in complex tasks, but their benefits diminish over time and depend on task structure.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that iterative workflows promote innovation by facilitating broader search, with insights into boundary conditions affecting their effectiveness.

Findings

Iterative workflows lead to better outcomes than sequential ones in creative tasks.

Frequent task switching in iterative work encourages broader solution search.

Sequential work tends to cause more myopic, local maximum solutions.

Abstract

Motivated by the widespread adoption of iterative project management techniques, we study the effects of workflow -- iterative or sequential -- on innovative behavior and performance. We conduct a series of laboratory experiments. Our first experiment shows that, in an open-ended creative challenge, iterative task completion leads to better outcomes than sequential task completion. In the second experiment we show that the advantage of iterative workflow further extends to innovation settings that do not involve idea generation. A key mechanism driving the advantage of iterative work is that it leads to frequent task switching, prompting workers to perform a broader search for the best available solution. In the third experiment we delve deeper into the search process and show that sequential work indeed leads to more myopic idea refinement behaviors, often ending in a (suboptimal) local maximum. Our results suggest that iterative workflow improves performance across multiple, structurally distinct innovation settings. We also identify three boundary conditions. First, iterative workflow helps achieve quick gains, but its performance advantage narrows over time. Therefore, workflow effects are stronger when balanced performance across project components is required, but weaker when excellence in one component can offset poor performance in others. Second, workflow has minimal effect on performance in tasks that do not require the worker to perform broad exploration. Third, workflow effects are minimal when workers complete the easier component first.