Sarah's research interests include creativity, innovation, dynamic processes, decision making, and diversity in small groups and teams. In particular, Sarah is interested in the processes through which interdisciplinary and cross-functional teams integrate members' knowledge to produce new ideas and make decisions.

Sarah's research examines how teams develop ways of understanding creative problems and evaluate creative responses to those problems, and the implications for group creativity. That research re-casts idea evaluation in groups as a generative activity that facilitates the integration and elaboration of novel ideas, whereas most research in this area focuses on divergent idea generation and assumes that evaluation disrupts this process. This provides a novel view of the process of group creativity.

A related stream of research investigates the effects of diversity and changes in diversity in cross-functional and interdisciplinary teams. It finds that diversity, although often assumed to improve creativity and decision-making, can also disrupt a groups' ability to converge around ideas.

Sarah's research focuses particularly on exploring the development of teams and team processes over time through qualitative research methods that examine the ongoing interactions between group members.