Creativity and Innovation in Organizations

Michael D. Mumford, E. Michelle Todd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351755542
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This volume presents a distinctly multilevel perspective on creativity and innovation that considers individual-level, team-level, and firm-level factors. In illustrating these factors, this volume presents both theoretical and practical implications to guide researchers and practitioners alike in the continued study and advancement of creativity and innovation in organizations.

Chapter authors not only discuss the abilities, personality, and motivational attributes that contribute to employee creativity, but they also address the impact of leadership and climate on creative performance in teams. Subsequently, firm-level influences such as planning, learning, strategy, and professions that influence the success of creative and innovative efforts are examined.

With contributions from leading scholars around the globe, this book offers a comprehensive review of creativity and innovation to assist researchers and practitioners in their quests to understand and improve organizational creativity and innovation. This is an essential resource for scholars, researchers, or graduate students interested in creativity, innovation, and organizational behavior.

1

Creativity and Innovation at Work

Michael D. Mumford and E. Michelle Todd

When one mentions the word creativity or asks about people who do creative work, the images that come to mind are of the “great” scientist (Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2013), the award-winning film director (Simonton, 2004), or the stunning new artist (Feist, 1998). As much as we might value the creative work done by scientists, directors, and artists, there simply seemed to be no place for these people in the modern firm. They were too individualistic, too nonconformist, and simply not conscientious enough to hold a job. Indeed, John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil (today’s Exxon Mobile) noted, “I have never felt the need for scientific knowledge… I can always hire them” (Chernow, 2007, p. 182). Many firms and many scholars interested in human behaviors in the workplace seem to have adopted the same attitude – creativity and innovation are not needed at work.

The evidence accrued over the last fifty years, however, indicates that creativity and innovation are critical to both the success of firms and the well-being of those who work in firms. The development and fielding of new products and services has been found to be the key determinant of the long-term survival of firms (Cefis & Marsili, 2005). Indeed, innovative new technologies often provide the basis for founding a firm in the first place (Audretsch, 1991). Firm growth and profitability appear tightly tied to a firm’s ability to continuously field viable and new innovative products and services (Cohen & Levinthal, 1989).

The production of innovative new products and services, however, ultimately depends on someone formulating the new ideas that provide the basis for innovation. Put differently, innovation depends on worker creativity. Indeed, those workers who think creatively on their jobs are commonly held by managers to be their best performers (Ng & Feldham, 2008). Well-led teams composed of especially creative workers are more likely to meet schedule and budget performance goals for assigned projects (Keller, 2006). Moreover, creative workers seem happier and more satisfied with work when their jobs allow them to do creative work of interest (Shalley, Gilson, & Blum, 2000).

The impact of creativity on firm innovation, work performance, and satisfaction with work underscores the need to understand the forces that encourage creativity and innovation in firms. Accordingly, in this volume, we examine creativity and innovation at work and in firms. In this regard, however, it is important to bear in mind a point stressed by Mumford and Hunter (2005). Creativity and innovation in firms reflect an inherently multilevel phenomenon. Yes, people must be creative (Vincent, Decker, & Mumford, 2002). However, they must also be working in a field ready for innovation (Wise, 1992). Creative people must be effectively led if their work is to prove of value (Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002). The firm must support the creative efforts both institutionally (Dougherty & Hardy, 1996) and operationally (Jelnek & Schoonhoven, 1990). Creative people must work with others as they pursue new ideas – people who provide both support and criticism (Gibson & Mumford, 2013).

The manifold, often contradictory, interactions occurring within and across different levels of analysis underscore the complex nature of creativity, and innovation, in firms. In recent years, however, substantial progress has been made not only in understanding creativity and innovation at a given level of analysis, but also at the cross-level interactions that arise as one attempts to explain creative performance. Accordingly, in the present volume, we examine creativity and innovation in firms from a distinctly multilevel perspective. We examine not only the attributes of creative workers and creative work but also how creative work occurs in teams and in certain contexts. Additionally, we examine how creative teams should be led and how firms should plan for innovation, as well as how professions, and the fundamental nature of the industry, act to shape creative work in firms.

Creativity

Before turning to the influences on creativity and innovation, it would seem well advised to define exactly what is meant by the terms creativity and innovation. Perhaps the most common definition of creativity holds that the creative person generates many new ideas. Indeed, this basic concept – that creativity requires idea generation – provided the foundation for much of the early work on creativity. This proposition provided the basis for Guilford’s (1950) work on divergent thinking measures. And, linking creativity to divergent thinking (the production of multiple ideas) provided the basis for many other scholars’ work on creative thought (e.g., Kim, 2006; Torrance, 1972).

Over the years, the works of many scholars (e.g., Acar & Runco, 2014) have provided us with a better understanding of how divergent thinking measures such as the Consequences or Alternative Uses measures of divergent thinking should be scored. Divergent thinking tests occasionally have been scored for fluency (the number of ideas generated), flexibility (shifts in the categories of ideas provided), and idea originality (idea novelty). Broadly speaking, the optimal procedure for scoring these measures involves identifying the three most original ideas from the total pool of ideas generated and scoring the average originality of those ideas (Silvia, 2011). In this regard, however, the findings of Mumford, Marks, Connelly, Zaccaro, and Johnson (1998) suggest that scoring ideas for manifestations of originality within the performance domain at hand may yield especially valid measures for predicting real-world creative performance. Work by Zaccaro et al. (2015) has indicated that when measures of divergent thinking are scored in this way, they strongly (R ≅ 0.40) predict not only real-world performance, but also real-world performance over substantial periods of time (e.g., career continuation among Army officers in an up or out system over a 20-year period). Divergent thinking measures result in the prediction of performance on jobs requiring creative thinking above and beyond more traditional predictors of job performance, such as intelligence and expertise (Vincent et al., 2002).

Although the evidence for the validity of divergent thinking measures is compelling – at least when appropriate tests are used – divergent thinking should not be arbitrarily equated with creative performance. The procedures used to identify divergent thinking are identical to the procedures used by Fleishman (1972) to identify key abilities underlying performance in various domains (Merrifield, Guilford, Christensen, & Frick, 1962). Thus, divergent thinking measures do not define exactly what is meant by the term creativity. Instead, they reflect an ability, one of many potential abilities, that might influence or contribute to creative performance in various domains of work where creative production is valued.

One early attempt to define creative performance was provided by Ghiselin (1963). He argued that creativity ultimately reflects an appraisal of performance. In his view, creative performance requires the production of a product evidencing two key characteristics – it must be original (something new and different), and it must be useful. Thus, production of a new drug, an Oscar-winning film, or a new business process may all be seen as creative work. Although students of creativity continue to debate exactly what the key characteristics of creative performance are (Weisberg, 2015), studies of creative products conducted by Besemer and O’Quin (1999) and Christians (2002) indicate that creative products evidence three key attributes: (a) originality, (b) usability or quality, and (c) elegance, which implies that the elements of the performance flow together seamlessly.

It is the person’s capacity to produce original, high-quality, and elegant products that we refer to when we say someone’s work is creative. Thus, creativity is defined with respect to a certain type of work product. Therefore, a journal article may be creative, a new business idea may be creative, and a new engineering design may be creative. Moreover, imposition of the term creative implies an appraisal of work, or work products, often by experts or supervisors. For example, actors and directors appraise films for the Academy Awards. Peers or supervisors might appraise the creativity of business reorganization proposals. Consequently, in studies of creativity, we must ask who is the judge being asked to appraise the creativity of the products provided (Redmond, Mumford, & Teach, 1993).

Although the attributes of a creative product (its originality, quality, and elegance) may seem clear, product attributes do not address a key issue: What are the characteristics of the tasks that allow people to produce original, high-quality, and elegant products? This issue has been addressed by Mumford and Gustafson (2007) and Mumford, Medeiros, and Partlow (2012). They note that original, high-quality, and elegant products emerge only when people are asked to solve novel complex, and ill-defined, or poorly structured, problems. Thus, creativity represents a form of complex, high-level cognition required to produce original, high-quality, and elegant solutions to novel, complex, and ill-defined problems people encounter in their work or day-to-day activities (e.g., hobbies).

Defining creativity as the production of original, high-quality, and elegant solutions to novel, complex, and ill-defined problems has several noteworthy implications. To begin, creative problems come in many forms. Thus, we see people speak of product versus process innovation, or radical versus incremental innovations (Anderson, Barker, & Chen, 2006). We also see people speak of social versus technical innovations (Mumford, 2002). These and other potential distinctions all reflect differences in the content of the novel, complex, and ill-defined problems people are attempting to solve to produce a problem solution of adequate quality, originality, and elegance.

The fact that creative performance is ultimately based on the solutions provided to a certain type, or class, of problem is noteworthy for four reasons. First, many types of creativity exist as people work on many different types of creative problems. Therefore, creativity is ultimately a domain-specific phenomenon (Baer, 2012). Accordingly, general conclusions about creativity across domains must be made cautiously and only after adequate evidence has been garnered. Moreover, assessments of creative production and creative potential should be made within a given domain.

Second, some jobs present many challenging, novel, complex, and ill-defined problems, while other jobs present very few of these problems. This observation may seem obvious. However, it implies that creativity can be studied effectively on some jobs (e.g., marketing, strategy, research and development) but not other jobs (e.g., accounting, logistics, customer service). Moreover, on any job when we study creativity, we must remember that we are studying only a part of a job – albeit a significant, high-value, part of a job – where people are presented with novel, complex, and ill-defined problems.

Third, in studying creative problem-solving, we must remember that we are studying complex, real-world performance. Yes, indi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• 1. Creativity and Innovation at Work
• 2. The Assessment of Creative and Innovative Performance
• 3. What Is Needed to Think Creatively at Work? Knowledge and Skills
• 4. Abilities that Contribute to Creativity and Innovation at Work
• 5. Personality and Creativity at Work
• 6. Temporal Dynamics of Creativity and Motivation: What We Know, What We Do Not, and a Few Suggestions for Filling the Gap
• 7. Integrating Creative Climate and Creative Problem-Solving
• 8. Cognitive and Social Processes in Team Creativity
• 9. The Leadership Role in Creative Problem-Solving and Innovation
• 10. Firm Strategy for Innovation and Creativity
• 11. How Do Leaders Plan for Firm Innovation? Strategic Planning Processes and Constraints
• 12. Creativity and Innovation in the Context of Firms
• 13. Institutional Supports for Innovation
• 14. Unleashing Creative Talent in Organizations – Linking Learning and Creativity through Creative Problem-Solving
• Index