Factors influencing creativity and innovation--- creativity

1. Factors influencing creativity and innovation--- creativity B.V.L.NARAYANA SPTM

2. Definitions (Amabile et al 1996) • Creativity is defined as • Production of novel and useful ideas in any domain • SEE ORDER IN DISORDER • Innovation is defined as • Successful implementation of creative ideas in any organisation • Creativity of individuals and teams is the starting point for innovation • Creativity and innovation are important • Life is becoming increasingly complex, fast and changing at a faster pace • Allows adaptation, maintain flexibility and is part of decision making • Creativity requires originality and flexibility • Contributes to physical and psychological health and optimal functioning

3. Factors influencing creativity • Factors • Individual level • Group and organisational level

5. Factors affecting creativity

6. Factors at individual level • Age – • creativity decreases with age unless individual is intentionally creative • Intelligence- • certain level required for certain measures of creativity only. • Personality- • high valuation of aesthetic qualities in experiences, interests, attraction to complexity, independence of judgment, autonomy, intuition , self confidence, ability to resolve conflicting traits in self and belief that self is creative • Dispositions- • high level of intrinsic motivation, follow intrinsic interests, free from evaluations and constraints • Capabilities • Insight is a result of integration of previously learned behaviors • potential

7. Processes influencing creativity • Associative process is involved in divergent thinking and problem solving • Cognitive flexibility-process by which obvious patterns of thinking are discarded and new higher order rules are adopted • Intrinsic motivation –process where people feel motivated by interest, challenge and satisfaction of work itself • Creative thinking is capacity to put existing ideas in new combinations and is facilitated by diversity of experience and learning • Divergent thinking –process by which one extrapolates many possible answers to an initial stimulus or target data • Intuition of flash intelligence- flash of a recognition that problem is solved • Flow- when person is fully immersed in what is being done and has a feeling of energized focus, shows full involvement and success and excludes other stimuli

8. Pressures or impediments • Two types-alpha and beta • Alpha is objective • Beta is based on individuals interpretations • Positive pressures • freedom, autonomy, good role models and resources (including time), encouragement specifically for originality, freedom from criticism, and “norms in which innovation is prized and failure not fatal” • Inhibiting pressures • lack of respect (specifically for originality), red tape, constraint, lack of autonomy and resources, inappropriate norms, project management, feedback, time pressure, competition, and unrealistic expectations

9. Resources influencing creativity • Time • Original ideas are remote with respect to original problem • Creative ideas require time for incubation

10. Demographic factors • Birth order • Middle born children are more creative • family size • Number of siblings • Interval among siblings • Family and school atmosphere • Large families have authoritarian structures • Freedom and autonomy facilitates creativity

11. Neurological factors • Creativity reflects originality and appropriateness, intuition and logic. It requires both hemispheres • Requires consistent communication among many areas in brain and increased emotional expression • Defocused attention • Knowledge –declarative, factual, tactics or procedural knowledge • Intuition, ability to consider two different perspectives simultaneously, incubation, imagination

12. Cognitive neuroscience of creativity • Creative thinking is the result of ordinary mental processes • Human information processing is hierarchically structured and creative mentation lies at the highest—prefrontal cortex • Two different types of neural systems • Emotional brain-attaches a value tag to incoming information and enables evaluation of its biological significance—does “Me-relevant computation” • Perceptual brain- performs detailed feature analysis of incoming information enabling construction of sophisticated representations that form basis for cognitive processing • Both the systems can be dissociated anatomically and processually.

13. Cognitive neuroscience of creativity • Executive function—consisting of integrating of processed information, formulation of plans and strategies for appropriate behavior and instruction of adjacent motor cortices for execution-requires both systems • Emotional Process of evaluating the significance of complex social situations—Me-relevant emotions • Cognitive process of Selective attention and Feature analysis leading to mental models • Each have separate memories which track their activities • Full reintegration of these systems occurs in the pre-frontal cortex • At all levels of functional hierarchy neural structures have direct access to activation of the motor system

14. Cognitive neuroscience of creativity • Pre-frontal cortex performs executive functions and thus is central to creative thinking • Enables higher cognitive functions such as self construct, self reflective consciousness, abstract thinking, complex social functions, cognitive flexibility, planning, and willed action • Other cognitive functions are working memory, temporal integration and sustained and directed attention • Two main parts • Ventero-medial –connected to higher order emotional processing system—does social function through “me-relevant” assessment • Dorso-medial- connected to higher order information and cognitive processing systems—does working memory, cognitive flexibility, temporal integration, ordering and sequencing and directed attention

15. Process of creativity • Every neural circuit can compute specific information and also produce novel combinations • More integrative the neural structure more combinational novelty can occur • Appropriateness is a function of higher order structures that assess a complex and changing set of rules or values implicit in persons culture. This generates a selection process which selects the appropriate idea out of many • Four types of creativity based on types of structures and processing modes

16. Types of creativity Deliberate Spontaneous Emotional Cognitive

17. Impediments to business creativity (Amabile 1998) • Business creativity-requires both originality and appropriateness • Six set of factors impede business creativity • Challenge—match work to persons capabilities • Freedom- autonomy to choose process not ends • Resources-appropriate time and money • Work group features—mutually supportive with diversity of perspectives and backgrounds • Supervisory support—in form of extrinsic rewards, praise, foster collaboration, communication • Organisational support- leaders who put in place systems and processes which support creativity-support failures

19. Intrinsic motivation CREATIVITY Creative thinking skills Expertise THANKS-ANY QUESTIONS