Argumentative

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Creativity, Innovation & Design

Creativity at the Individual and Team Levels

=> How to unleash your individual creativity

Prepared by Dr Gerrit de Waal

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Can creativity be taught?

Although creativity can’t be taught directly, it can be absorbed and ‘the skills for accessing it acquired by osmosis’, through immersion in creative activity with other people. It can also be nurtured through experiential training, through the acquisition and application of tools and techniques, and the practice of attitudes conducive to creative behaviour.

(Byron, 2009)

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The Creative Process Model (Wallas, 1926)

PREPARATION

• Understand the problem/ opportunity

• Investigate information that seems relevant to the issue

INCUBATION

• Period of reflective thought

• Non-conscious or low-level awareness, not direct attention to the issue

• Active divergent thinking process

• Sudden awareness of a novel, although vague and incomplete, idea entering one’s consciousness

• May include an initial period of ‘fringe’ awareness

VERIFICATION

• Detailed logical and experimental evaluation of the illuminated idea

• Further creative thinking

ILLUMINATION

Source: McShane et al. 2017, p. 228

Should we view creativity as a process?

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Arguably, a more useful approach to enhance your own creativity is to systematically condition yourself for creative behaviour

Which side do you want to operate? The choice is yours

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Aim to add creative ingredients into your Creativity Melting Pot each day

Discover your ‘way of operating’ John Cleese

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Ingredient : Imagination

Equivalent to a firm’s VISION

• Imagination conceptualises new ideas and approaches within the human brain; giving

'mental form' to thoughts and ideas

• It shapes the outcome, and from there you can work backwards to find the solution

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there will ever be to know and understand.” Albert Eistein

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Be sure to watch the animation about the role of imagination in fostering creativity on Canvas

It’s the story of a farmer whose goat fell into a dry well. How did he use his imagination to come up with a creative solution to save his goat?

https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/77197/p ages/conditioning-yourself-for- creativity?module_item_id=3036529

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Ingredient Awareness

You first become aware of a field of study, or a particular topic or situation. For some reason it

grabbed your attention

Use all of your senses Be ‘awake’

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Ingredient Interest

Read about it Read around it Spend time on it

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Ingredient The happiness factor

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/neurochemistry-of-happiness.htm

Brain releases chemical Dopamine in frontal lobe which controls the flow of information to other parts of brain, thus opening up connections between concepts

People are more likely to come up with creative ideas when they feel happy.

Teresa Amabile

Humour is fastest way to get you from closed to open mode

John Cleese

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More ingredients…

Desire is the wish for something

positive to happen (setting goals)

Passion is having a powerful

emotion or feeling for something

Motivation - those

factors that stimulate desire and

drive creative

outcomes

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Creativity tools &

Hard Work (persistence / sweat)

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Toolbox

Tools are any structured aids, managerial or technical in nature, used for influencing the management and effective execution of the innovation process and associated activities

(de Waal and Knott, 2012)

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Ingredient Creativity playmates

 Can trust each other

 Can share ideas

 Encourage each other

 Inspire one another

 Build on each others ideas

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Ingredient Space-time oasis

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED https://speakola.com/arts/john- cleese-creativity-lecture-1991

You have to create some space for yourself away from those demands. And that means sealing yourself off. You must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed for some time – John Cleese

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Ingredient Incubation

The easy part… Trust your unconscious to do

its job

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Ingredient New experiences taking you out of your comfort zone

Break established cognitive patterns

New or unexpected experiences can enhance your creativity

School of Management 17

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Constantly put yourself in the “place of most potential”

Dewitt Jones

Conditioning for creative behaviourThe place of most potential

Ponder this: How can we make the workplace “the place of most potential”?

Dewitt Jones

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED WATCHING https://www.media-partners.com/motivation/everyday_creativity.htm

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References • Amabile, T. M. (1997), ‘Motivating creativity in organizations: Doing what you love and loving what you do’, California Management

Review, vo. 40, no. 1, pp. 39-58. • Byron, K. (2009). The Creative Researcher. In. Retrieved from https://www.scribd.com/document/135659128/The-Creative-

Researcher-Dec09 • de Waal, G.A., Knott, P. (2012). Product innovation tool adoption behaviour in technology-based new ventures. Special Issue,

International Journal of Innovation Management, 16(3) 1240001-12400026. • Hennessey, BA & Amabile, TM 2010, ‘Creativity’, Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 61, pp. 569-598. • Hughes, DJ, Lee, A, Tian, AW, Newman, A & Legood, A 2018. “Leadership, creativity, and innovation: A critical review and practical

recommendations”, The Leadership Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 5, pp.549–569. • Interaction Design Foundation n.d, Brainstorming, Interaction Design Foundation, viewed 17 July 2020, https://www.interaction-

design.org/literature/topics/brainstorming • McShane, S, Olekalns, M, Newman, A & Travaglione, T 2017, Organizational Behavior, 5th edn, McGraw-Hill Education, Australia. • Wallas, G. (1926). The Art of Thought. New York: Harcourt.