Text 1
Organizational psychologist Elaine Park studied brainstorming teams that used digital platforms to solicit ideas from employees. Park argues that such platforms can broaden participation, but she maintains that inclusion alone is insufficient for innovation. Unless teams subsequently hold meetings in which members combine and refine the suggestions, the increased number of perspectives may remain disconnected and do little to improve the final designs. For Park, soliciting ideas from a wide share of employees is necessary but not sufficient; synthesis determines whether those perspectives produce innovation.
Text 2
Sociologist Marcus Lowe examined firms after they adopted platforms for collecting ideas asynchronously. Departments soliciting ideas from a wider share of employees generally submitted more conceptually varied proposals. However, several departments that solicited ideas from a relatively small share of employees but included contributors from multiple specialties produced equally varied proposals. Among departments with comparable proposal variety, those that held structured synthesis sessions produced more novel patents, regardless of whether participation had been broad or narrow; departments with broad participation but no such sessions did not. Because departments selected their participation levels and meeting formats before Lowe began collecting data, other differences could have contributed to the patent outcomes.
Which choice best describes how Lowe would respond to Park’s claim that wider participation is necessary but not sufficient for innovation?
For cross-text questions involving necessary and sufficient conditions, divide the first author’s position into separate logical claims. Then test each claim against every relevant result in the second text, and apply study-design limitations narrowly rather than treating them as reasons to disregard all observed evidence.
Hints
Divide the claim
Identify separately what Park calls necessary and what she says cannot produce innovation by itself.
Examine the narrow-participation departments
Compare their proposal variety and patent outcomes with those of departments that solicited ideas more broadly.
Interpret the limitation carefully
Distinguish an inability to prove causation from an inability to use observed cases to assess a categorical necessary-condition claim.
Step-by-step Explanation
Separate Park’s claims
Park makes two distinct claims: soliciting ideas from a wide share of employees is necessary for innovation, and doing so is not sufficient without synthesis.
Test the necessity claim
Some departments with relatively narrow participation nevertheless gathered ideas from several specialties, produced equally varied proposals, and—when they used synthesis sessions—produced more novel patents. These cases give Lowe reason to question whether participation breadth itself is necessary.
Test the insufficiency claim
Departments with broad participation but no synthesis sessions did not produce more novel patents. That pattern is consistent with Park’s claim that broad participation alone may be insufficient.
Apply the design limitation precisely
Because departments selected their own practices, Lowe cannot establish that synthesis caused greater novelty. However, this limitation does not make the observed narrow-participation cases irrelevant to evaluating Park’s categorical necessity claim.
Choose the complete response
The best response must both question the necessity of broad participation and acknowledge that the no-synthesis results fit Park’s insufficiency claim.