Publications

August 2002
Article

Creativity Under the Gun

By: Teresa Amabile, Constance N. Hadley and Steven J. Kramer

If you're like most managers, you've worked with people who swear they do their most creative work under tight deadlines. You may use pressure as a management technique, believing it will spur people on to great leaps of insight. You may even manage yourself this way.... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Innovation and Invention; Time Management; Working Conditions; Performance Evaluation

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09 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Cultural Disharmony Undermines Workplace Creativity

In today's global work environment, it's a given that companies need culturally diverse teams to succeed. Both scientific studies and common sense tell us that having people with different viewpoints onboard increases the View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

06 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

How Small Wins Unleash Creativity

to recent research, the single most important factor is simply a sense of making progress on meaningful work. But creating an environment that fosters progress takes some careful effort. In their new book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

22 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

Getting to Eureka!: How Companies Can Promote Creativity

We tend to think of the moment of insight and creativity in sudden and shocking terms: the bathtub overflowing (Archimedes), the apple beaning off the head (Newton), the bolt of lightning shivering the key at the end of a kite (Franklin).... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

August 3, 2022
Article

Why NFT Creators Are Going cc0

By: and Scott Duke Kominers Flashrekt

Strategies for building brands, communities, and content through intellectual property (IP) vary greatly across NFT projects. Some maintain more or less standard IP protections; others give just NFT owners rights to innovate upon the associated intellectual property;... View Details

Keywords: Non-fungible Tokens; NFTs; Video Games; Merchandising; Creative Commons; Intellectual Property

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12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Bright Ideas: The Creative Power of Groups

and execute truly creative solutions. Perhaps the traditional image of the creative genius working alone to create great breakthroughs is not so accurate after all. To shatter conventional wisdom about group... View Details

Keywords: by Laurie Joan Aron

19 Sep 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Say Again? Uncommon Advice for Common Business Problems

Miles Davis Theorem: Radical Simplicity Allows Creative Minds to Shine How business can benefit by relying on radical simplicity to free and empower employees. When Not to Trust Your Gut Most of us trust our intuition more than we should,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

04 Feb 2014
Working Paper Summaries

From Crowds to Collaborators: Initiating Effort and Catalyzing Interactions Among Online Creative Workers

Keywords: by Kevin J. Boudreau, Patrick Gaule, Karim R. Lakhani, Christoph Riedl & Anita Williams Woolley

2017
Article

High-Stakes Innovation: When Collaboration Undermines (and Sometimes Enhances) Innovation

By: Johnathan Cromwell and Heidi K. Gardner

Organizations must constantly innovate, or else they may suffer consequences that range in severity. In low-stakes situations, they may lose a small opportunity for growth; and in high-stakes situations, they may lose significant market share that threatens their... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Collaboration; Teams; Creativity Teams; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Groups and Teams; Creativity

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October 2018 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Safecast: Bootstrapping Human Capital to Big Data

By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton

On March 11, 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.1-on-the-Richter-scale, six-minute long earthquake unleashed a tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku region of Japan, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power facility and releasing sufficient radioactive material into the air and ocean... View Details

July 2016
Case

Spotify

By: Anita Elberse and Alexandre de Pfyffer

In November 2014, Spotify's chief content officer Ken Parks learns that record label Big Machine Records has requested the immediate removal of superstar artist Taylor Swift's entire catalogue from Spotify's music streaming service. Is it time for Spotify to reconsider... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment; Marketing; Superstar; Music; Entertainment Marketing; Media; Digital Technology; Creative Industries; Product Portfolio Management; General Management; Management; Strategy; Internet and the Web; Open Source Distribution; Creativity; Music Entertainment; Product Marketing; Music Industry

March 2012
Article

The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest

By: F. Gino and D. Ariely

Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and a creative mindset promote individuals' ability to justify their behavior, which,... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Ethics

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2011
Working Paper

The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest

By: Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely

Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and creativity primes promote individuals' motivation to think outside the box and... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Behavior; Creativity; Motivation and Incentives; Personal Characteristics

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January 1995 (Revised June 1995)
Background Note

Ways of Thinking About and Across Difference

Examines some of the habitual ways of thinking that are applied to so-called "diversity" questions to reveal the commonalities and limitations of these models--the way they can reinforce unexamined assumptions and destructuve emotional reactions--and to suggest an... View Details

Keywords: Identity; Diversity Characteristics; Cognition and Thinking

15 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 15

generation moving up the corporate ranks. Stimulate Creativity by Fueling Passion Authors:Teresa Amabile and Colin M. Fisher Publication:In The Blackwell Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior. 2nd ed. London: Wiley-Blackwell,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

Collaborating Across Cultures

man to emperor Xuanzong and his consort. “To the extent that creativity is about the recombination of existing ideas, then combining ideas that haven't been connected before creates the potential to produce something new and useful" The... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

31 May 2004
Research & Ideas

How Team Leaders Show Support–or Not

positive. How does negative behavior affect creativity and perceptions of leader support? A: For whatever reason (and there are several possibilities), reports of negative leader behavior were more common in... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2024
Working Paper

Pitch Perfect: Investing in Transportable Presentation Skills to Support Poly-vocal Personae

By: James Riley and Susan S. Silbey

For organizations requiring independent and creative thinking skills for complex problem-solving, especially within a multi-disciplinary pool of collaborators, conventional socialization practices flattening individuality for the sake of uniformity is not necessarily... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Identity; Competency and Skills; Groups and Teams