A growing stream of research has emphasized the importance of idea selection for team creative success. We examine whose ideas are selected in teams, and how this relates to team creativity. From the perspective of social influence, we suggest that members need visibility for teams to select their ideas, and that such visibility may result either from their structural position (centrality in the intra-team network) or from their creative prestige (being the most creative member) within teams. Using multi-source data from 49 organizational teams, we found using mixed-effect modeling that (1) centrality in the intra-team social network predicted idea selection, and that this effect was stronger for more creative members; and (2) that creative prestige predicted idea selection, especially in teams with high creativity disparity. Moreover, we found that team creative performance is higher when teams select members’ ideas based on their creative merit. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
