Destruction Through Collaboration: How Terrorists Work Together Toward Malevolent Innovation

Ligon, Derrick, and Harms focus on an aspect of team creativity that has not been extensively studied: destructive teams. Destructive teams, such as violent extremist organizations (VEOs), are similar to other creative teams in that their creative performance may be measured as products, processes, or press. Furthermore, though they are working toward destructive goals, the malevolent innovation of VEOs must be evaluated against the same criteria as other creative teams—relevance, effectiveness, novelty, elegance, and generalizability. VEOs require many of the same core team characteristics to be effective as other types of teams. However, unlike other creative teams, VEOs are less likely to see many of the problem constraints that may limit novel ideas in nonviolent teams. Additional similarities and differences between VEOs team creativity and team creativity in business are also covered.