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The aim of this article is to study the selection process and to recognize the factors that affect the selection of creative ideas. To study the matter of selecting ideas, we carried out a study during a creativity session bringing together 110 professionals in the tourism sector. We studied used three dependent variables: the voting procedure, creativity of individuals, experience of participants and gender. We measured the dependent variable: the score of voting. Our research confirmed that the method of voting did not have a significant impact on the evaluation of ideas in groups and teams during creative sessions. However, the characteristics of the participants, the gender and the creative capacity had a impact on the evaluation of ideas. Finally, this paper points out the necessity of designing the phase of evaluation in order to obtain the most valuable ideas and avoid the bad side of evaluation. Creative individuals are necessary, but not too much so, otherwise the quite original ideas that are feasible and relevant will be discarded. A balance is necessary between the sexes to neutralise the differences in evaluation between men and women. It is also necessary to envisage a phase of training on the method, to let them evaluate the ideas beforehand individually, and to leave time for discussion before the collective evaluation.
INTRODUCTION
Creativity is dependent on individual and contextual factors (Shalley, Zhou, et Oldham, 2004). In teams and groups, its production process can be divided into four stages: the identification of the problem, the preparation, ideas generation and the validation of the ideas (Amabile, 1988). The factors in this process, that stimulate or hinder the production of ideas, have already been well studied. On the other hand, more uncertainty exists concerning the factors that affect the phase of idea validation. It has been recognized for a long time, particularly during brainstorming sessions that the participants in creativity sessions have to be also capable of identifying the most creative ideas. But, individuals have difficulty in identifying the most creative ideas (Faure, 2004 ; Putman et Paulus, 2009). The research on the validation of ideas needs to be studied more deeply. There was no clear result on the impact of the method of voting (Faure, 2004 ; Putman et...