Abstract
In times of a global pandemic physical meetings become rare. An accelerated digitalization of meeting modalities takes place. Formal and informal communication largely takes place virtually, especially in service-orientated knowledge work industries. Especially knowledge generation in creative processes is challenging without physical presence. Inventing innovative solutions or product ideas requires trust and physical closeness. Therefore, our research question is to what extent virtual reality environments can offer an improvement in knowledge creation processes compared to online meetings. Hence, we compare Design Thinking workshops in VR with conventional collaboration tools, to identify potential benefits and further application scenarios for knowledge creation in VR. Thereby, the measurement of the quantitative effect of virtuality on factors like team-cohesion, creativity, communication and idea generation is the center of attention. Furthermore, we analyze qualitative aspects like potential for improvement and possible preferred use cases for each form of virtual collaboration.