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In-person meetings generate more ideas — and more creative ones — compared to videoconferencing.

In a virtual meeting, all eyes are focused on screens and ignore the environment, which "constrains the associative process underlying idea generation,".

The study only looks at the cognitive costs of collaborating virtually, and the authors note that there are "concrete and immediate economic advantages to virtual interaction," including reduced travel time and expenses, less overhead, and other factors, to be balanced.