B3MIN1045 | Harnessing Creativity
Week 1. Understanding Creativity
Lecture Video 1. Creativity and Creative Ideas
Creativity: process of generating novel and useful ideas or solution
- Dimensions of creativity:
› Novel:
- Fluency: number of ideas generated
- Flexibility: cover a range of categories
- Originality: uniqueness/rarity
› Useful:
- Valuable: effective, worthwhile, successful
- Feasible: practical, able to be implemented
Dimensions of creativity: measuring creativity as…
1. Product: the what; something that is tangible
- Novelty, usefulness, relevance, complexity, understandability, pleasingness,
elegance, germinality
2. Process: the how; how do you generate ideas, creative thinking
- Fluency, problem, recognition, combination, elaboration, developing ideas
3. Motivation
- Risk taking, liking complexity, liking asymmetry, asking questions, crossing
borders
4. Personality: is a person creative?
- Flexibility, curiosity, independence, imagination
Uncreative vs. Creative organizations
Uncreative organizations Creative organizations
Select options likely to succeed then Select options likely to fail then become
convince everyone that success is comfortable with the uncertainty
certain
Seek people who will endorse work Seek people who will critically evaluate
work and value factors above money
Reward success; and punish failure Reward success and failure
Plan sound and practical things to do Plan ridiculous and impractical things to
do
Hire fast learners, people who make you Hire slow learners, people who make
comfortable, people you (probably) need you uncomfortable, people you
(probably) don’ t need
Hierarchy: encourage people to pay Hierarchy: encourage people to ignore
attention to and obey bosses and defy bosses at times
Past successes are replicated Past successes are forgotten
,Types of creative ideas
Incremental ideas Radical ideas
Small improvements to products such A product that appears to be doing
as fixing defects, making things faster, everything wrong, has defects and lower
cheaper, etc. performance
Fix issues that currently exist Do not fix any issues that currently exist
Low novelty, high initial usefulness High novelty, low initial usefulness
Sustains customers current needs Forecasts new needs
Guaranteed short term rewards Uncertain but potentially greater long-term
rewards
What kind of ideas you need depends on the product lifecycle:
Begins at technological discontinuity: a big shift from what currently exists; after this
the product goes into a lifecycle
1. Era of ferment: design competition, growth and activity, different versions
2. Convergence on a dominant design: selection of product features that are
considered optimal
3. Era of incremental change: elaboration of dominant design, competing, small
changes, e.g. making mobile phones flatter, screens bigger, etc.
Companies need both radical and incremental ideas:
› Incremental ideas are needed to progress along an S-curve; get the best out of
an existing innovation
› Radical are needed in the long run, because they have the potential to be
disruptive (start a new S-curve)
Examples of disruptive innovations:
– Smartphones rendered mobile phones obsolete
– smartphone cameras rendered traditional camera’s
redundant
– Wikipedia replaced encyclopedia’s
– Google maps replaced traditional navigation systems
– Airbnb drives hotel managers crazy
– Netflix upended video rentals, then changed TV
viewing and movie going practices
Achieving radical creativity
- The most reliable predictor of an idea’s creative quality (novelty and
usefulness) is idea quantity
- Generating a large quantity of ideas increases the likelihood that (1) one of
those ideas is truly novel and (2) after generating a few ideas you exhaust
conventional options and generation unconventional solutions
Preference for incrementalism: decision-makers tend to go with the first, most
obvious answer because these outcomes feel more rational, particularly when the
future is uncertain or you cannot predict how other will act
- People tend to become more committed to decisions they’ve made, even if
they stop working overtime, particularly when circumstances change
§ People tend to lack creative self-efficacy: the confidence to be creative
§ Institutions that we are part of, including schools and organizations tend to kill
creativity
, Cropley (2000) – Defining and Measuring Creativity:
Are creativity tests worth using?
Creativity tests measure:
› Specific cognitive processes: thinking divergently, making associations,
constructing and combining broad categories, or working on many ideas
simultaneously
› Noncognitive aspects: motivation (e.g., impulse expression, desire for novelty,
risk-taking), facilitatory personal properties (e.g., flexibility, tolerance for
independence or positive attitudes to differentness)
Dimensions of creativity
§ Creative products
§ Creative process: creative thinking
§ Creative person: biographical inventories, special personal properties,
motivation and attitudes
Because of the multifaceted nature of creativity as measured by tests, it is
recommended that assessments should be based on several different tests
Week 1. Understanding Creativity
Lecture Video 1. Creativity and Creative Ideas
Creativity: process of generating novel and useful ideas or solution
- Dimensions of creativity:
› Novel:
- Fluency: number of ideas generated
- Flexibility: cover a range of categories
- Originality: uniqueness/rarity
› Useful:
- Valuable: effective, worthwhile, successful
- Feasible: practical, able to be implemented
Dimensions of creativity: measuring creativity as…
1. Product: the what; something that is tangible
- Novelty, usefulness, relevance, complexity, understandability, pleasingness,
elegance, germinality
2. Process: the how; how do you generate ideas, creative thinking
- Fluency, problem, recognition, combination, elaboration, developing ideas
3. Motivation
- Risk taking, liking complexity, liking asymmetry, asking questions, crossing
borders
4. Personality: is a person creative?
- Flexibility, curiosity, independence, imagination
Uncreative vs. Creative organizations
Uncreative organizations Creative organizations
Select options likely to succeed then Select options likely to fail then become
convince everyone that success is comfortable with the uncertainty
certain
Seek people who will endorse work Seek people who will critically evaluate
work and value factors above money
Reward success; and punish failure Reward success and failure
Plan sound and practical things to do Plan ridiculous and impractical things to
do
Hire fast learners, people who make you Hire slow learners, people who make
comfortable, people you (probably) need you uncomfortable, people you
(probably) don’ t need
Hierarchy: encourage people to pay Hierarchy: encourage people to ignore
attention to and obey bosses and defy bosses at times
Past successes are replicated Past successes are forgotten
,Types of creative ideas
Incremental ideas Radical ideas
Small improvements to products such A product that appears to be doing
as fixing defects, making things faster, everything wrong, has defects and lower
cheaper, etc. performance
Fix issues that currently exist Do not fix any issues that currently exist
Low novelty, high initial usefulness High novelty, low initial usefulness
Sustains customers current needs Forecasts new needs
Guaranteed short term rewards Uncertain but potentially greater long-term
rewards
What kind of ideas you need depends on the product lifecycle:
Begins at technological discontinuity: a big shift from what currently exists; after this
the product goes into a lifecycle
1. Era of ferment: design competition, growth and activity, different versions
2. Convergence on a dominant design: selection of product features that are
considered optimal
3. Era of incremental change: elaboration of dominant design, competing, small
changes, e.g. making mobile phones flatter, screens bigger, etc.
Companies need both radical and incremental ideas:
› Incremental ideas are needed to progress along an S-curve; get the best out of
an existing innovation
› Radical are needed in the long run, because they have the potential to be
disruptive (start a new S-curve)
Examples of disruptive innovations:
– Smartphones rendered mobile phones obsolete
– smartphone cameras rendered traditional camera’s
redundant
– Wikipedia replaced encyclopedia’s
– Google maps replaced traditional navigation systems
– Airbnb drives hotel managers crazy
– Netflix upended video rentals, then changed TV
viewing and movie going practices
Achieving radical creativity
- The most reliable predictor of an idea’s creative quality (novelty and
usefulness) is idea quantity
- Generating a large quantity of ideas increases the likelihood that (1) one of
those ideas is truly novel and (2) after generating a few ideas you exhaust
conventional options and generation unconventional solutions
Preference for incrementalism: decision-makers tend to go with the first, most
obvious answer because these outcomes feel more rational, particularly when the
future is uncertain or you cannot predict how other will act
- People tend to become more committed to decisions they’ve made, even if
they stop working overtime, particularly when circumstances change
§ People tend to lack creative self-efficacy: the confidence to be creative
§ Institutions that we are part of, including schools and organizations tend to kill
creativity
, Cropley (2000) – Defining and Measuring Creativity:
Are creativity tests worth using?
Creativity tests measure:
› Specific cognitive processes: thinking divergently, making associations,
constructing and combining broad categories, or working on many ideas
simultaneously
› Noncognitive aspects: motivation (e.g., impulse expression, desire for novelty,
risk-taking), facilitatory personal properties (e.g., flexibility, tolerance for
independence or positive attitudes to differentness)
Dimensions of creativity
§ Creative products
§ Creative process: creative thinking
§ Creative person: biographical inventories, special personal properties,
motivation and attitudes
Because of the multifaceted nature of creativity as measured by tests, it is
recommended that assessments should be based on several different tests
