creativity in management

Creativity in Management

Creativity in management

Tudor Rickards (2007)

Creativity quiz

• (1) How would you define creativity• (2) Can you name a theory which explains

creativity• (3) What proportion of people would you

say are creative?• (4) What has madness, mystery, and

magic to do with creativity• (5) Name an industry famed for its creative

discoveries for over a century

Creativity quiz

• (6) Where does creativity fit into Tuckman’s model of team development?

• (7) How was Tuckman’s model modified to explain creative teams at work?

• (8) Which industries are growing the most rapidly in the 21st century?

• (9) Whose work helps explain intrinsic motivation?

• 10 Whose work helps explain creative clusters?

Creativity has been allied to ..

• Madness• Mystery• Muses• Magic

Definitions of creativity

• Discovery processes leading to new and unexpectedly valuable ideas

• ‘Looking where all have looked, and seeing what no one has seen’

Creativity invades all walks of life

Creativity in management

Person Process

Place(or ‘Press’)

Product

Theories of creativity

• Insight theories • Self-actualization • Transcendence • Cognitive reframing• Darwinism• Information processing• Problem-solving• Experiential learning

Insight theories: Scientific discoveries

• Preparation (Knowledge, experience)• Incubation (‘Gestation’) • Insight (large or small)• Validation (Design and testing actions)

Intal and Dr RogerAltunyian

Self-actualization theories

• Creativity is an important concept within humanistic psychology

• Carl Rogers has had particular impact (Maslow also important)

• Rogers considered each individual to have a potential for creative achievement that could be developed through a nurturing environment

Information processing and systems theories

• Theories are based on complex patterns achieved (‘created’) with simple underpinning rules

• Information theories are used to study and explain creativity in many animal species

Theories of creativity overlap

TranscendenceInsight

Problemsolving

Systemstheories

Creativity: The big questions

• How can I become more creative?• How can my team become more creative?• How can my organization become more creative?• How can my society or culture become more creative?

The Creative Individual

• The elitist view: Special and gifted people are born creative (The gifted and talented school)

• The developmental view: Everyone has the potential to fulfil their creative abilities (Carl Rogers)

Creativity in business

• Creative leadership• Creative strategy• Design, discovery and

innovation• Problem-solving• Organizational

change and transformation

• Entrepreneurship

The creative team

• Teamwork is increasingly seen as the organizational structure for focusing and targeting collective creativity

Team development: Tuckman’s model

Form

Storm

Norm

Perform

Unanswered questions of Tuckman’s model

• What if a team never escapes from the ‘storm’ stage?

• What if team performs beyond the norm (beyond targets and expectations?)

• Where does creativity come into teamwork?

Answering the questions

• Researchers at MBS have studied a modification to Tuckman’s stage model

• It proposes two barriers to creativity which teams must overcome

• Only a minority of teams do so

The Two-barrier model of team development (MBS)

Form

Storm

Unexpectedly good (creative) performance

Performance barrier

Behavioral barrier

Norm and Perform

The Creative Team

• Recently the idea of distributed leadership suggests that a team may collectively act as a ‘superleader’ (Manz & Sims)

The creative organization

• Creative industries, and their organizations have increased in importance

• They are fast-growing economically• They include architecture; arts & antiques: Design,

Performing Arts, Electronic games and media

The creative organization: Toyota

The creative organization: Haier

The creative organization: WordPress

• WordPress is a good example of an entrepreneurial and creative organization …supplying an easy-to-use service for bloggers

• Its growth supports ‘infection’ theories of creativity

The creative organization: Ideo

• IDEO created Apple's first mouse; Microsoft's second mouse, and the Palm V PDA. Other major clients include Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, and Eli Lilly

The creative culture

• Culture has always developed around creative hotspots of artistic and scientific discovery

• Athens, London, Cambridge(s), Silicon Valley, ‘Madchester’ ..

The creative climate and Intrinsic motivation

• Teresa Amabile proposed a theory of intrinsic motivation.

• A creative climate allows intrinsic motivation to flourish. • ‘The play’s the thing’ (contrary to economic theories).

The Creative Culture

• ‘A key driving factor in the divergence or flow of human capital is … the openness of a given location. The more open a place is, the more it will be able to capture the talents of its own people and to attract those from elsewhere.’ (Richard Florida)

Creative Clusters*

*Source: Richard Florida

Creative Clusters

And finally

• When all else fails ..

• there must be other ways..

• there might be better ways

To go more deeply• Journals• Creativity Research Journal• http://www.questia.com/library/jp-creativity-research-• Creativity and Innovation Management

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0963-1690&site=1

• Journal of Creative Behavior http://www.creativeeducationfoundation.org/jcb.shtml

• On Line reference sources http://leaderswedeserve.wordpress.com/ explores creativity and creative leadership

• http://www.buffalostate.edu/creativity/pucciogj.xml?username=pucciogj (‘The international center for studies in creativity’)