Fostering creativity through critical thinking: The case of business start‐up simulations

Research suggests a positive link between critical thinking and creativity. However, this relationship has not been measured in an empirical study. This study aims to explore whether critical thinking can serve to enhance creativity and whether creativity positively mediates the relationship between critical thinking and business performance. In this study, we analyse these relationships within the entrepreneurial context of a web‐based business start‐up simulation. We examined data from 26 teams of three to four senior business students and found partial support for our hypotheses. Critical thinking positively influenced creativity, measured as the total number of unique product designs. Creativity (unique product designs) also positively mediated the link between critical thinking and performance. This effect, however, did not exist when creativity was assessed through advertisement designs. This research contributes to entrepreneurship and innovation management by demonstrating the importance of critical thinking as a basis for creativity and testing this relationship in a business start‐up simulation context.     

Attention! Cosmopolitans ahead – They may not be as creative as they think!

Research on cosmopolitanism and creativity has received significant attention in recent years; however, the connections between these constructs are still ill‐defined. This study uses the creative cognition model to explore the relationship between cosmopolitanism and creativity using both self‐report and expert ratings of a qualitative task. Quantitative data support the assertion that cosmopolitanism is significantly and positively related to self‐expectations of creativity and creative work involvement. However, creative performance on a productive solutions task coded by creativity experts failed to replicate the self‐reported findings. We describe the practical and theoretical implications of these results for future research into cosmopolitanism and creativity.     

Employee Goal Orientation,Work Unit Goal Orientation and Employee Creativity

For employee creativity to occur, organizations must build a context conducive to creativity, in addition to identifying employees with creative potential. Complementing and extending earlier research, we develop and test a cross‐level model about how work unit goal orientation might relate to employee creativity. We also theorize and examine the mediating role of employee information elaboration linking work unit goal orientation and employee creativity. We conduct a questionnaire survey based on multi‐source data from 340 employees comprising 53 teams in eight Taiwanese organizations. The results indicate that the work unit goal orientation is positively, whereas the work unit performance‐avoidance orientation is negatively, related to employee creativity through employee information elaboration. Furthermore, work unit goal orientation also plays a cross‐level moderating role: the positive relationship between individual‐level learning orientation and information elaboration is stronger when work unit learning orientation is higher, but weaker when work unit avoidance orientation is higher.     

Understanding the Role of Value‐Focused Thinking in Idea Management

In a couple of classical studies, Keeney proposed two sets of variables labelled as value‐focused thinking (VFT) and alternative‐focused thinking (AFT). Value‐focused thinking (VFT), he argued, is a creative method that centres on the different decision objectives and how as many alternatives as possible may be generated from them. Alternative‐focused thinking (AFT), on the other hand, is a method in which the decision maker takes notice of all the available alternatives and then makes a choice that seems to fit the problem best. The impact of these two methods on idea generation was measured using a sample of employees. The results revealed that employees in the value‐focused thinking condition (VFT) produced fewer ideas. Thus, value‐focused thinking (VFT) is not only able to facilitate ideation fluency but also to constrain it. Factors such as cognitive effort and motivation may play a part here. However, the quality of the ideas was judged to be higher in terms of creativity and innovativeness. Hence, value‐focused thinking (VFT) seems to have a positive impact on the quality of ideas in terms of creativity and innovativeness regardless of ideation fluency. Implications for the design of idea management systems are discussed.     

Individual Creativity and Team Climate in Software Development Projects: The Mediating Role of Team Decision Processes

This study investigates how individual creativity is related to the quality of team decision processes and team climate, and the mediating role of team decision processes between individual creativity and team climate. A multi‐level theoretical model was proposed and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS‐SEM) was conducted on a sample of 139 software development projects. The results suggest that: (i) individual creativity improves the quality of team decision processes, (ii) team decision processes are positively associated with four dimensions of team climate (organizational support, innovation orientation, goal orientation and informal structure), and (iii) team decision processes partially mediate between individual creativity and team climate. In particular, the obtained results stress the role of individual creativity in the formation and evolution of a positive climate by means of team decision processes. The study implies that managers should recognize the value of creative individuals as the basic source of competitive advantage and success. It further discusses the managerial implications of the findings as well as limitations and constructive new directions for future studies to improve software development team performance.     

Dialogue‐Based Evaluation as a Creative Climate Indicator: Evidence from the Pharmaceutical Industry

This paper examines how different forms of performance evaluation relate to aspects of the creative climate in a major pharmaceutical company. The study was based on a large employee‐attitude survey that was distributed to all company employees. The study analyses survey results from 5,333 employees at five R&D sites. The results indicate that management's evaluation of employees (either dialogue‐based or control‐based) relates to the type of motivation (intrinsic or extrinsic) that drives employees, to their style of thinking (value‐focused thinking) and on their attitudes to organizational creativity. The paper then discusses implications of these findings for HRM.     

Why is Your Team More Creative Than Mine? The Influence of Shared Mental Models on Intra‐group Conflict,Team Creativity and Effectiveness

In competitive and dynamic contexts team members need to be creative to ensure that teams achieve high levels of performance and feel satisfied with their work. At the same time, team members need to have a shared understanding regarding relevant aspects related to task accomplishment and team interaction. In this study we investigate the mediating mechanisms of intra‐group conflict and creativity in the relationship between shared mental models and team effectiveness (team performance and satisfaction). We tested our model in a sample of 161 teams (735 individuals) performing in a management simulation. We collected data at three time points. Our results suggest that high shared mental models are related to low levels of intra‐group conflict, foster creativity, and in turn improve team performance and satisfaction. These findings contribute to a scarce thematic – the relationship between shared mental models and creativity – emphasizing the importance of a shared understanding for creativity and team effectiveness.     

Does a Creative Designer Necessarily Translate into the Creative Design of a Product? Exploring Factors Facilitating the Creativity of a New Product

Product creativity is a rarely studied topic in the area of new product development; nevertheless, its importance has been recognized by many researchers in a variety of fields. In this research, two studies were conducted: the first was quantitative and the second was qualitative. These studies examined the relationships among five variables: analogical thinking ability, creative self‐efficacy, length of experience, team climate for creativity and product creativity. The results of a multiple regression indicated that analogical thinking ability is an antecedent of design creativity, and that creative self‐efficacy is a mediator between them. The results also showed that length of experience and team climate for creativity have significant moderating effects. These findings indicate that both person‐based (i.e., ability, self‐efficacy and length of experience) and situation‐based (team climate) variables are key factors in developing the creative design of a new product.     

Creativity of student information system projects: From the perspective of network embeddedness

Many companies have pursued innovation to obtain a competitive edge. Thus, educational reform focuses mainly on training creative students. This study adopted the concept of an affiliated network of projects to investigate how project embeddedness influences project team creativity. This work surveys 60 projects in a Management Information Systems Department of a University. Validity of the specific study hypotheses is tested by using moderate hierarchical regression analysis to determine how project embeddedness affects project team creativity and assess how the team innovation climate moderates the relationships between project embeddedness and project team creativity. Analytical results indicate a positive association between structural embeddedness and project team creativity, a negative relationship between positional embeddedness and project team creativity, and a positive influence of team innovation climate on the relationships between network embeddedness and project team creativity. An attempt is also made to understand the role of positional embeddedness by classifying the interactions based on the content of interactions. According to those results, positional embeddedness is positively related to project team creativity during problem–identification interaction; during solution–design interaction, positional embeddedness is negatively related to project team creativity. Results of this study explain the phenomena of divergent thinking and convergent thinking during creative development.     

Creativity in non‐routine jobs: The role of transformational leadership and organizational identification

An increasing number of individuals work in jobs with little standardization and repetition, that is, with high levels of job non‐routinization. At the same time, demands for creativity are high, which raises the question of how employees can use job non‐routinization to develop creativity. Acknowledging the importance of social processes for creativity, we propose that transformational leaders raise feelings of organizational identification in followers and that this form of identification then helps individuals to develop creativity in jobs with little routinization. This is because organizational members evaluate and promote those ideas as more creative, which are in line with a shared understanding of creativity within the organization. To investigate these relationships, we calculated a mediated moderation model with 173 leader–follower dyads from China. Results confirm our hypotheses that transformational leadership moderates the relationship between job non‐routinization on employee creativity through organizational identification. We conclude that raising feelings of social identity is a key task for leaders today, especially when working in uncertain and fast developing environments with little repetition and the constant need to develop creative ideas.     

Adapting Creative Problem Solving to an Organizational Context: A Study of its Effectiveness with a Student Population

Owing to company time restrictions and concentration on project development, we began to reduce the duration of creative problem solving (CPS) sessions, and to give more emphasis to the action planning stage. Several changes in our CPS protocol, as well as in its duration, begged the question as to whether these changes were jeopardizing efficacy. To examine this question, six groups of ten university students, working under two different CPS protocols (a five‐step method and a four‐step method), and three control groups (using no CPS method), were given the same objective and similar conditions. This exploratory experiment compared group performance by change in team commitment, divergent thinking preferences, productivity and the participants' evaluation of the different methods. Results show that the CPS methods were both effective in changing participants' perspectives regarding divergent thinking and team commitment. In the control groups, however, there were no changes as a consequence of the sessions. Results also suggest that the same problem‐solving effectiveness can be attained in a shorter time than that traditionally used, and without prior training in CPS. These findings open the door to developing new problem‐solving techniques and team work processes, and to more efficient organizational creativity and innovation methodologies.     

The Integration of TRIZ with Other Ideation Tools and Processes as well as with Psychological Assessment Tools

When TRIZ is introduced into an organization setting, it invariably encounters a host of processes and tools already in place. These can include enterprise tools such as Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), QFD and Lean Manufacturing. It is fairly easy to combine TRIZ problem‐solving and technological forecasting with these processes and tools, because most of these enterprise tools are problem‐identifying processes that couple easily with the strong problem‐solving capabilities of TRIZ. What is more difficult is to integrate TRIZ thinking with other psychologically based creativity and assessment tools. Users and trainers for these various tools tend to be very protective about each process and do not spend sufficient time thinking about ways to integrate the best of all tools. Organizations also frequently use psychological assessment tools to assist employees in career development, but they are seldom used in a proactive way to improve group problem‐solving. These assessments can be used proactively within the use and implementation of TRIZ. This paper will review suggested ways to effectively integrate TRIZ innovation and problem‐solving principles with these other tools.     

Individual Creativity during the Ideation Phase of Product Innovation: An Interactional Perspective

Although there is increasing acknowledgement that employees' creative ideas are fundamental for product innovation, and many companies use cross‐functional teams to increase employee creativity, there has been little empirical testing of how individual personality and group context interactively affect individual creativity. The purpose of this study is threefold: to examine the relationship between personality and individual creativity; to assess how this relationship interacts with group diversity; and to determine whether the interaction effects between personality traits and gender diversity are mediated by individual knowledge sharing. The results of an experiment based on a sample of 142 working adults show that openness to experience and extraversion are positively related to individual creativity, whereas neuroticism and conscientiousness are negatively related to individual creativity. Furthermore, the impacts of openness to experience and extraversion on individual creativity, respectively, are moderated by both functional diversity and gender diversity. In addition, these interaction effects are mediated by individual knowledge sharing. Interestingly, this study also finds that the direction of functional diversity's moderating effects depends on the level of group diversity.     

Design Dialogue Groups as a Source of Innovation: Factors behind Group Creativity

Sif – a Swedish national trade union for white‐collar workers in Industry – has recognized the importance of enhancing its service innovation processes through careful listening to its members. This article will discuss the Design Dialogue Group (DDG) methodology that has been developed through collaborative research between Sif and the Fenix Research Program, in order to enhance group creativity and organizational learning. The emphasis of this paper is restricted to the issue of enhancing group creativity, and literature and empirical data will be used in order to discuss the factors enabling and restraining creativity. The major assumption behind this study is that many factors behind group creativity can be controlled. Thus, a careful design of the group creativity process would increase the likelihood for success since measures to enhance creative behaviours and to avoid pitfalls can be planned and/or taken by a group moderator. In short, the aims of this study are twofold: (1) to relate prior research contributions to DDG experiences in order to augment our understanding concerning factors enhancing and threatening creativity in DDG settings and (2) to systematize these findings into a set of proposed design principles related to domain‐relevant skills, creativity‐related processes, and task motivation. These propositions concern the recruitment of participants, group characteristics, and group processes.     

How do Individual‐Level Factors Affect the Creative Solution Formation Process of Teams?

The generation of creative solutions involves nonlinear dynamic procedures that can only be achieved through the creativity of individual team members. Thus, it is important to understand how the formation of individual‐level creativity factors influence the creative solution formation process. The creative solution formation process can be divided into four phases: idea generation, idea screening, idea development and solution verification. Prior research suggests that the creative process may be affected by motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic), knowledge stock (explicit and tacit), individual creativity (intelligence and divergent thinking), and pressure (challenge and time). We tested the effects of these eight factors on performance in the idea generation and idea development phases by conducting an experiment. Our results indicate that intrinsic motivation, intelligence and divergent thinking have a significant positive effect on both idea generation and idea development. Tacit knowledge and challenge pressure have a significant positive effect on idea generation. Time pressure has a significant negative effect on idea development. We also show that both idea generation and idea development have a significant impact on the quality of the final creative solution.     

Psychological capital and self‐reported employee creativity: The moderating role of supervisor support and job characteristics

Although the positive effect of psychological capital (PsyCap) on employee performance is well documented, the conditions under which PsyCap exerts the most influence on creativity warrant further research. Complementing and extending prior studies, we theorize and examine how two critical contextual factors (supervisor support for creativity [SSC] and job characteristics) effectively activate PsyCap associated with self‐reported employee creativity. Drawing on an interactional perspective, we use trait activation theory to examine the moderating effects of SSC and job characteristics on the relationship between PsyCap and self‐reported employee creativity. Through rigorous hypotheses testing (N = 356 individuals from multiple industries in Chinese firms), our results demonstrate that both SSC and job characteristics positively moderate the PsyCap–creativity relationship. Additional analyses reveal that PsyCap is most effective at enhancing creativity when both SSC and job characteristics are high. Implications of these findings for theory, future research and practice are discussed.     

Subject Positions and Power Relations in Creative Organizations: Taking a Discursive View on Organizational Creativity

In this paper we take a discursive view on organizational creativity and examine subject positions and power relations produced within a discourse on creativity in two different kinds of creative organizations, an opera house and a games company. In particular, we focus on the ways in which the discourse is practised in creative production processes. The two cases illustrate how the macro‐level discourse on creativity can be enacted in a more micro‐level construction of subjectivities. In the study we identified several subject positions that were shared by both organizations, and examined how they were embedded in the organizations' formal and informal hierarchies. By taking a discursive approach to creativity, we have also been able to explore some unwanted consequences of emphasizing creativity in organizations.     

‘Resisting Creativity,Creating the New’. A Deleuzian Perspective on Creativity

Create/Innovate or die. This is the taken‐for‐granted ‘truth’ in the social, political and economic context in which we currently live. In fact, so accepted is this mantra that criticism seems foolish; mere evidence of the entrenched conservatism that needs to be challenged. This article posits an alternative view of creativity, drawing in particular on the thinking of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The writing of Deleuze is used to explore our understanding of creativity, in terms of what ‘creativity’ is (and what it is not), and the destructive (and sometimes pointless) nature of creativity. In doing so it is hoped that this article challenges clichéd representations of ‘creativity’, the typical ‘creativity is wonderful and we need a lot more of it . . .’ type arguments and assist scholars to become more creative (or at least more reflective) in their own practice.     

“StoryWeb”: A storytelling‐based knowledge‐sharing application among multiple stakeholders

The research objective of this paper is to develop a storytelling‐based knowledge‐sharing application that enables users to co‐create their own stories for both individuals and groups. To address this, a design science research methodology was applied for elucidating users' requirements. As empirical evidence, a case study was conducted on the children's book industry to synthesize a knowledge‐sharing design application named “StoryWeb”. Usability tests were conducted to reconfigure users' feedback and suggestions after two StoryWeb prototypes were developed. This study makes three main contributions. First, it empirically tests individual's or group's creativity and co‐creation by a view of knowledge sharing. Second, it methodologically applies a design thinking approach into a knowledge‐sharing study. Third, it also practically suggests feasible guidelines for the creativity and innovation research community on which features of storytelling‐based applications can be configured.     

Human‐knowledge resources and interorganisational systems

This paper analyses how human‐knowledge resources affect interorganisational systems (IOS) capabilities and subsequently attainment of operational and strategic benefits. A conceptual model is constructed combining the transaction cost economics (TCE) view, resource‐based view (RBV) and insights from IOS literature. The model is tested through a triangulation approach combining two qualitative case studies and a quantitative field study within the logistics sector. This sector is chosen due to its need for high reliance on information technology. The findings indicate that human knowledge positively influences IOS capabilities related to cross‐organisational business processes and transfer of knowledge. Findings also show that strategic benefits are the consequence of knowledge transfer, when the transfer supports business processes resulting in operational benefits. The main theoretical contribution of this paper is that it combines a TCE view and RBV to analyse the effect of relationship‐specificity of human‐based knowledge resources in IOS.