Managerial Psychology Creativity

What Is Creativity? Definition: new and useful ideas ™ A process problem presentation preparation generation of ideas recognition/evaluation preservation/reproduction ™ “Front end” of innovation (implementation) ™ Resources For Creativity Amabile (1997) ™ Expertise domain-relevant skills, knowledge, talents ™ Creativity Skills playfulness, breaking set, independence, tolerance for ambiguity, questioning attitude, novelty-seeking, analogies and connections, model building, concentration ™ Task motivation intrinsic, self-efficacy CREATIVITY Personality and Environment ™ ™ ™ In Born to Rebel, Sulloway shows that first-born eminent scientists tend to identify with authority and produce incremental advances, whereas later-born scientists are more likely to “break out” with revolutionary ideas This “personality” is not inborn but is developed in the family as children find successful “niches” and carry that pattern later in life Einstein: “This coercion (in a militaristic classroom) had such a deterring effect upon me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful for an entire year.” How To Destroy Creativity ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ always pretend to know more than anybody else police your employees by every procedural means have your professionally-trained staff members do technicians’ work for long periods of time erect the highest possible barrier between commercial decisionmakers and your technical staff don’t speak to employees on a personal level, except when announcing raises be the exclusive spokesman for everything for which you are responsible say yes to new ideas, but do nothing about them call many meetings Machine put every new idea through channels Design, Inc. worry about the budget cultivate the not-invented-here syndrome Individual Conceptual Blocks ™ self-imposed constraints e.g., Pepsi fights the Coke bottle, nine-dot problem ™ cultural values e.g., ping pong ball problem ™ improper symbolic representation e.g., algebra-word problems Nine Dot Puzzle Draw four straight lines that pass through all nine dots without lifting your pen ™ If you get it, try three connected straight lines ™ Pepsi Fights The Coke Bottle 1950s hourglass bottle is Coke’s “most important competitive advantage” ™ 1958 Pepsi swirl bottle weakly imitates Coke’s bottle ™ 1970s John Scully, Pepsi’s V-P Mkt: “How should problems such as this be approached?” ™ Shift the ground rules: what do customers really want? ™ How To Get The Ball Out? Get the ping pong ball out without damaging the ball, tube, or floor ™ You have scissors, nails, thread, book, walkman radio, glasses, hammer, stick ™ Algebra Word Problems Bob has three times as many pine cones as Dan. Between them they have 28 pine cones. How many does each have? ™ If it takes 1 woman 9 months to have 1 baby, how many babies can 3 women have in 3 months? ™ A hobo can make 1 whole cigar from every 5 cigar butts he finds. How many cigars can he make if he finds 25 cigar butts? ™ Some Creativity Techniques ™ Brainstorming: generate ideas uncritically ™ Synectics: use analogies (e.g., biological) to join unrelated elements ™ Systematic combinations and crossimpacts of elements Generating Scientific Objectives For A NASA Space Program Action Phrase Target Feature Target Object Observe circulation in Measure tidal deformations of Establish the structure of Measure relativistic time dilations in photosphere of the sun surface of the moon interior of Jupiter the space environment Organizations and Innovation ™ Management practices: freedom, challenging work, supervisory encouragement, work group support ™ Organizational resources: workload, networks ™ Organizational motivation: oriented to being industry leaders, finding new ways/products Ideo Video ™ What techniques are used to encourage creativity? ™ How does this particular situation “rate” on Amabile’s three creativity resources? – expertise – creativity skills – task motivation