The Six Myths of Creativity

[D]espite all of the attention that business creativity has won over the past few years, maddeningly little is known about day-to-day innovation in the workplace. Where do breakthrough ideas come from? What kind of work environment allows them to flourish? What can leaders do to sustain the stimulants to creativity -- and break through the barriers?

[Teresa] Amabile, who heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School and is the only tenured professor at a top B-school to devote her entire research program to the study of creativity, is one of the country's foremost explorers of business innovation.

Working with a team of PhDs, graduate students, and managers from various companies, she collected nearly 12,000 daily journal entries from 238 people working on creative projects in seven companies in the consumer products, high-tech, and chemical industries. She didn't tell the study participants that she was focusing on creativity. - The Six Myths of Creativity, Fast Company

Here is my summary of the findings from that research (the complete The Six Myths of Creativity article at Fast Company magazine is definitely worthwhile):

[Everyone has the capacity to produce novel and useful ideas.] The fact is, almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Intrinsic motivation -- people who are turned on by their work often work creatively -- is especially critical. Over the past five years, organizations have paid more attention to creativity and innovation than at any other time in my career. But I believe most people aren't anywhere near to realizing their creative potential, in part because they're laboring in environments that impede intrinsic motivation.

[Money isn't the primary motivator.] [T]he handful of people who were spending a lot of time wondering about their bonuses were doing very little creative thinking... People want the opportunity to deeply engage in their work and make real progress... People are most creative when they care about their work and they're stretching their skills.

People were the least creative when they were fighting the clock... Creativity requires an incubation period; people need time to soak in a problem and let the ideas bubble up.

[W]e found that creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety.

[W]e found that creativity takes a hit when people in a work group compete instead of collaborate. The most creative teams are those that have the confidence to share and debate ideas. But when people compete for recognition, they stop sharing information.

Taken together, these operating principles for fostering creativity in the workplace might lead you to think that I'm advocating a soft management style. Not true. I'm pushing for a smart management style. My 30 years of research and these 12,000 journal entries suggest that when people are doing work that they love and they're allowed to deeply engage in it -- and when the work itself is valued and recognized -- then creativity will flourish. Even in tough times.

Reading these through what keeps popping up consistently seem to be: we're all innately creative, intrinsic motivation is the key, a collaborative (internal competition often fosters fear which shuts down creativity) environment is supportive, emotional states of joy and love and flow yield great results, and allow time for the incubation of breakthrough ideas.

Comments

[jbr]

another really good commentary on creativity to read by Hugh...tap into Change This! - a very good site for reading the latest from several thought leaders...

http://www.changethis.com/6.HowToBeCreative

[Norman]

I am excited about some of the ideas. We seem to have all of the myths in place in our schools. Schools depend on competition, time constraints, feedback of information, performance bonus and individuality. Schools don't realize that they are in the knowledge construction business and not the knowledge transfer business.