Work Environments

Research:
Can Fuel Asynchronous
Creativity Work
by Aruna Ranganathan
April 17, 2023

Marcel/Stocksy

Summary.   It’s a common misconception that working synchronously is better for

creativity. And while there are benefits for ideation, synchronous work is also
stifling a lot of people’s creativity. New research studying men and women Baul
folk musicians in India shows that... more

The vast majority of scholars and practitioners believe that

working synchronously is essential for creativity. With the rise of
remote work and flexible work schedules, however, team
members can often collaborate on the same project without being
in the same time zone — much less the same office. When team
members contribute to a joint outcome but work completely
separately — not even coordinating over Zoom or phone — we
call their work asynchronous. Asynchronous teamwork is rapidly
growing, and it has tremendous consequences for creativity in the
future of work.

It’s true that working synchronously can encourage individuals to

feed off of each other’s insights and energy, leading to more and
better ideas as well as the opportunity to build on each other’s
feedback. Furthermore, synchronicity enables workers to stay on
the same page as they contribute to a given project, decreasing
coordination costs that may already be high when working on
creative projects. Finally, in the course of working together
synchronously, team members may interact with a wider range of
individuals, gaining new insights and information that might
spur new ideas in synchronous work environments.

However, this assumption about creativity flourishing in

synchronous environments ignores variation in the team
members’ social status. Studies show that women and people
from marginalized communities are given fewer opportunities to
speak and are criticized more harshly when they do in a range of
synchronous work settings. Consequently, synchronous teams
may inhibit women and marginalized people’s expression of new
or risky ideas, ultimately making teams less equal and their
output less creative. To investigate this further, Aayan Das and I
looked specifically at the effect of asynchronous versus
synchronous teamwork on the performance of men and women in
a creative task.

The study
We chose to study Baul folk musicians in India, taking advantage
of the fact that studio recordings of music can be performed both
synchronously through live recordings and asynchronously with
the help of a click track. Baul music is an oral tradition preaching
mysticism through song, whose lack of notation means that each
song has many versions and interpretations. Studio recordings by
Baul ensembles were also an ideal case to study because generally
each member of the team has a distinct role, thus they can record
synchronously or asynchronously without changing their role.
Further, Baul singers are either men or women, but the
instrumentalists are primarily men, so it is easy and realistic to
compare the experiences of men and women singers performing
alone or alongside the men instrumentalists.

We followed a full-cycle approach, so we developed my theory

and hypotheses through qualitative observations and interviews,
then tested them with a field experiment. Initial interviews
revealed that women singers performing synchronously with men
felt constantly “corrected by [their] seniors” and sensed that their
fellow musicians “did not stand by [them].” They did not report
being offered the “encouragement” and “positive reinforcement”
that their men counterparts described receiving from their
colleagues. However, new technologies like the click track
enabled Baul singers to start recording asynchronously, making
women feel more comfortable and free to express themselves
creatively. One woman said she preferred recording
asynchronously because “no man musician is trying to assert
their dominance over me while I am singing…I have complete
creative freedom.”

Based on these observations, we hypothesized that women

singers recording asynchronously would perform better than
those performing synchronously, and that this performance
improvement would be driven by increased creativity.

The findings
We tested these hypotheses by bringing 49 women and 50 men
singers into recording studios and having them record both
asynchronously and synchronously, randomly assigning the
order in which they completed the recordings. We found that
women’s performances were rated 17% higher when they recorded
asynchronously, and that this effect was driven by the degree of
creativity in their singing, based on ratings by experts in Baul folk
music. (The experts assigned overall ratings to every track as well
as timestamped all creative choices made by the singer.)

This creative freedom when singing alone was further captured in

interviews with the experimental subjects. After recording
asynchronously, one woman said, “I was completely free. I could
sing as I wished. I missed some notes at a place, but then I caught
on with it later on. I had complete independence and it felt like I
was flying like a bird.” Men’s performances were not significantly
different in the two conditions, and thus asynchronicity seems to
help women without hurting men.

Although surprising to many, our findings are consistent with

other research on creativity. For example, some research
emphasizes the importance of “safe communication climates”
(similar to psychological safety) in order for creativity to thrive.
Similarly, some research has shown creative benefits of
asynchronicity for brainstorming: the largest quantity and best
quality of ideas are generated when people can work separately
first, then bring their ideas together.

This previous research has overlooked the value of asynchronicity

for low-status members of creative teams. Our expectation is that
women and marginalized people often do not feel that their
team’s communication climates are safe, and thus they cannot
take creative liberties without fear of being unduly criticized or
interrupted. Consequently, they are likely to express themselves
better creatively when they work asynchronously.

While these findings are relevant to creative fields ranging from

film crews to marketing teams, creativity is not synonymous with
innovation or product development. Improving business
processes or complex product development requires deep
knowledge of an organization and interaction with other teams
and team members; in such contexts, synchronicity might still be
valuable.

However, asynchronous restructuring of at least some tasks is an

effective and largely feasible solution to inequality in creative
teams at many organizations. In facilitating women and
marginalized people’s freedom of creative expression,
asynchronous work may not only improve short-term
performance, but have a powerful impact on the root causes of
workplace inequality. By enabling greater creative freedom,
asynchronicity may increase women’s motivation to continue
 working rather than exiting their field or the workforce altogether.
Furthermore, improving women’s performance may help to
extinguish the stereotypes that nourish gender bias. By
amplifying underrepresented voices in creative spaces,
asynchronicity can provide a way forward to a more equitable
future of work.

Aruna Ranganathan is associate professor of

management and organizations at the Haas
School of Business, UC-Berkeley. She received
her PhD from MIT’s Sloan School of
Management. Her research uses full-cycle
research methods to study the future of work,
identification with work and gender inequality
in the workplace.

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