Publications

2019
Article

Creativity from Paradoxical Experience: A Theory of How Individuals Achieve Creativity while Adopting Paradoxical Frames

By: Goran Calic, Sébastien Hélie, Nick Bontis and Elaine Mosakowski

Purpose: Extant paradox theory suggests that adopting paradoxical frames, which are mental templates adopted by individuals in order to embrace contradictions, will result in superior firm performance. Superior performance is achieved through learning and creativity,... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Creativity; Learning

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2011
Book

Managing Knowledge Assets, Creativity and Innovation

By: Dorothy A. Leonard

This book pulls together for the first time works on knowledge and innovation, including the implementation of new processes and products, written by Dorothy A. Leonard over more than two decades. It consists of articles from journals in diverse fields (e.g. the... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Innovation and Invention

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

The Creativity Maze

motivation, will indeed get him out of the maze. But the solution that arises from the process is likely to be unimaginative. It won't provide new insights about the nature of the problem or reveal new ways of looking at it. The rote... View Details

Keywords: by Teresa Amabile

Research Summary

The Process of Managing Business Transformation

By: Richard L. Nolan

Richard L. Nolan is examining the process of business transformation, which he characterizes as the creative destruction of industrial economy management principles and the evolution of a set of workable management principles for the information economy. According to... View Details

2007
Chapter

Creativity in Product Development

Managing new product development is a key area of management, straddling strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship and macro-organizational behaviour. All of the contributors in the Handbook of New Product Developmet Management are well-known and leading exponents to... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Product Development; Problems and Challenges; Research; Creativity

26 Aug 2024
Research & Ideas

Can AI Match Human Ingenuity in Creative Problem-Solving?

When ChatGPT and other large language models began entering the mainstream two years ago, it quickly became apparent the technology could excel at certain business functions, yet it was less clear how well artificial intelligence could handle more creative tasks. Sure,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Information Technology; Information; Technology

June 2009 (Revised March 2011)
Module Note

The Creative Industries: Managing Products and Product Portfolios

By: Anita Elberse

This module note examines the way in which professional content producers in the creative industries approach product and product portfolio management, and explores the underlying reasons for their strategies. View Details

Keywords: Entertainment; Management Practices and Processes; Marketing; Product Development; Production; Creativity

22 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

Getting to Eureka!: How Companies Can Promote Creativity

wins were more frequently associated with the positive emotions and intrinsic motivation that in turn generated the creativity needed to develop innovative approaches to problems. That doesn't mean that managers don't have some control... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

23 May 2000
Research & Ideas

Minding the Muse: The Impact of Downsizing on Corporate Creativity

challenging assignments, adequate resources, supportive work groups, management that places a premium on creativity, and project leaders who understand the creative process and have strong communications... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs

September–October 2024
Article

The Crowdless Future? Generative AI and Creative Problem-Solving

By: Léonard Boussioux, Jacqueline N. Lane, Miaomiao Zhang, Vladimir Jacimovic and Karim R. Lakhani

The rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) open up attractive opportunities for creative problem-solving through human-guided AI partnerships. To explore this potential, we initiated a crowdsourcing challenge focused on sustainable, circular economy... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Models; Generative Ai; Crowdsourcing; AI and Machine Learning; Creativity; Technological Innovation

December 1999
Article

Changes in the Work Environment for Creativity during Downsizing

By: T. M. Amabile and Regina Conti

This study examined the work environment for creativity at a large high-technology firm before, during, and after a major downsizing. Creativity and most creativity-supporting aspects of the perceived work environment declined significantly during the downsizing but... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Situation or Environment; Creativity; Resignation and Termination; Employees; Business or Company Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Crisis Management; Groups and Teams; Communication; Announcements; Interpersonal Communication

05 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

Understanding the Process of Innovation

pull this off? Focus instead on Big Idea Group's "process of innovation and value creation," says Christensen. Lack of creativity is rarely the reason for lackluster products and services coming out of the pipeline.... View Details

Keywords: by Loren Gray

2016
Article

The Dynamic Componential Model of Creativity and Innovation in Organizations: Making Progress, Making Meaning

By: Teresa M. Amabile and Michael G. Pratt

Leveraging insights gained through a burgeoning research literature over the past 28 years, this paper presents a significant revision of the model of creativity and innovation in organizations published in Research in Organizational Behavior in 1988. This... View Details

Keywords: Progress; Meaningful Work; Affect; Creativity; Organizations; Innovation and Invention; Motivation and Incentives

2020
Article

Subjective Semantic Surprise Resulting from Divided Attention Biases Evaluations of an Idea’s Creativity

By: Goran Calic, Nour El Shamy, Isaac Kinley, Scott Watter and Khaled Hassanein

The evaluation of an idea’s creativity constitutes an important step in successfully responding to an unexpected problem with a new solution. Yet, distractions compete for cognitive resources with the evaluation process and may change how individuals evaluate ideas. In... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Cognition and Thinking

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Bright Ideas: The Creative Power of Groups

Business School Press), a new book by HBS professor Dorothy Leonard and Professor Walter Swap of Tufts University. The authors not only disprove the stereotypical perception of group creativity as an oxymoron but show how the group View Details

Keywords: by Laurie Joan Aron

February 2007 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals: Spurring Scientific Creativity with Metrics

By: Robert S. Huckman, Gary P. Pisano and Mark Rennella

Describes the reorganization of the drug discovery organization at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and focuses on the decisions to: (1) centralize decision-making within drug discovery and (2) institute numerical metrics--jointly affecting all R&D scientists--for the progression... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Measurement and Metrics; Business Processes; Organizational Structure; Research and Development; Science-Based Business; Creativity; Pharmaceutical Industry

Educators

1998
Article

Looking Inside the Fishbowl of Creativity: Verbal and Behavioral Predictors of Creative Performance

By: J. Ruscio, D. M. Whitney and T. M. Amabile

This study set out to identify specific task behaviors that predict observable product creativity in three domains and to identify which of those behaviors mediate the well-established link between intrinsic motivation and creativity. One-hundred fifty-one... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Cognition and Thinking; Behavior

August 2016
Article

'Meso'-Foundations of Dynamic Capabilities: Team-Level Synthesis and Distributed Leadership as the Source of Dynamic Creativity

By: Ikujiro Nonaka, Ayano Hirose and Yusaku Takeda

This article examines the theoretical foundations of an organization's dynamic capabilities—sensing, seizing, and transforming—from the perspective of organizational knowledge creation. Making a distinction between the creative and adaptive aspects of dynamic... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory; Dynamic Capabilities; Middle-up-down Management; Wise Leadership; Phronesis; Multinational Enterprise; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Multinational Firms and Management; Management Practices and Processes; Creativity; Organizational Structure; Knowledge

November 2007
Article

The Accidental Entrepreneur: The Emergent and Collective Process of User Entrepreneurship

By: Sonali K. Shah and Mary Tripsas

We develop a process model of how users, an understudied source of entrepreneurship, create, evaluate, share, and commercialize their ideas. We compare and contrast our model to the classic model of the entrepreneurial process, highlighting the emergent and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Valuation; Business Model; Commercialization; Adoption; Adaptation; Product; Civil Society or Community