An Agent-Based Simulation of Trust-Mediated Innovation

In the evolving landscape of organizational innovation, Co-Creative Cobots (3C-Bots) represent a transformative shift toward human–machine creative partnerships. However, the behavioral dynamics enabling successful creative cooperation in mixed communities remain poorly understood. This study investigates how human behavioral profiles and population ratios influence trust-mediated creative cooperation through an extended simulation-based approach combining trust, creativity, and agent behavior models. We developed a multi-agent simulation integrating Social Value Orientation theory, Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, and Guilford’s creativity framework across five population configurations. Our novel Cooperation-Creativity Index (CCI)–a composite metric integrating trust, creativity, and stability revealed significant differences across configurations. Counter-intuitively, robot-majority environments achieved optimal trust-mediated creative outcomes. Results demonstrate that trust serves as the critical mediating foundation for creative cooperation, suggesting innovation-driven organizations should prioritize reliable creative partnerships over balanced human-machine teams. These findings offer important implications for designing next-generation innovation ecosystems.