1.2 Culture for radical creativity

What does a culture that encourages radical creativity look like? How can organizations foster it?

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Let’s start by defining organizational culture. One definition is the shared beliefs, values, norms and practices that shape the behaviour of people within an organization. Think of it like an organization’s unique personality. It includes the expectations of everyone in the organization about what it takes to perform well. In a company, this would mean both the leadership’s and the employees’ vision.

An organizational culture of creativity acknowledges the centrality of creativity in how the organization functions. Creativity is reflected in the way the leadership treats the rest of the organization and its wider community, in the way the organization’s members treat one another, as well as in the extent to which autonomy is allowed in making choices, developing new ideas, and personal expression.

How can organizations encourage a culture of creativity? Teresa Amabile has explored this question over the last four decades. Amabile is renowned for her Componential Theory of Creativity, which draws attention to how the social environment influences personal factors relevant to creativity (Amabile, 2011).

According to Amabile, the social environment influences:

• An individual’s domain-relevant skills — the competencies they’ve mastered and the competencies they can acquire.
• An individual’s creativity-relevant skills and creative thinking abilities.
• An individual’s motivation to perform a specific task creatively.

The theory also includes two other components. The first is the importance of a team to the creativity of its members, the ‘group’s ability to work together and make the most of each member’s skill set’. The second component is the meaning that the person attaches to what they’re working on. People engage in creative problem-solving when they find their work meaningful. Amabile’s research showed that people become more persistent and are more motivated to turn the leadership’s statements into creative action when they feel their work is sufficiently meaningful.

Organizational creativity

How are individual and organizational creativity intertwined?

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We’ve seen that the social environment can make individuals more creative. Further work by Amabile and her colleagues examined precisely how creativity happens in organizations. They found that people’s perception of their organization as creative and supportive of creativity significantly affects their motivation to engage in behaviours conducive to innovation.

The researchers have produced models that show how individual and organizational creativity are intertwined. According to the dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations (see Figure 1.2.1. below) (Amabile, 2016) based on Amabile’s original theory, the creativity of individuals and teams organically enables innovation within organizations. Their creativity produces creative ideas that are the seeds of innovations. From there on, managerial practices and organizational hierarchy can foster or impede how these seeds grow. Organizational support is crucial both for individual and team creativity.

In the model, the factors that enable creativity at the individual level and that facilitate innovation at the organizational level are similar. Both individual and organizational creativity need three components: motivation, basic resources or raw materials, and a set of skills for combining them in new ways.

Summing up, the dynamic componential model emphasises how the processes of individual creativity and the process of organizational innovation influence each other. A culture of creativity must have both.

Creating a creative workplace

What exactly should a creative organization pay attention to?

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What organizational practices can support creativity? Teresa Amabile and her team created a detailed list of conditions that enable or hinder creativity (Amabile and Pratt 2016). This list works well as a checklist for developing creativity in an organization or team.

Creativity enablers

Motivational factors

• Clarity in organizational goals
• Valuing innovation
• Support for justified risk-taking and exploration

Resource factors

• Sufficient resources, such as materials, funds, infrastructure and facilities, as well as the right personnel
• Sufficient time but not too much
  

Management factors

• Clear project goals
• Autonomy in working toward the goals
• Support for new ideas and constructive feedback about them
  
• Work tasks fit to individual skills and interests
• Fair and generous rewards and recognition for creative efforts
• Learning from problems
• Collaboration and coordination between groups
• Open flow of ideas

Creativity inhibitors

Motivational factors

• Unclear or changing organizational goals
• Disinterest in new initiatives
• Attachment to the status quo
  

Resource factors

• Insufficient resources
• Insufficient or surplus time

Management factors

• Unclear or shifting project goals 
• Excessive constraints on how to work toward the goals
• Superficial evaluation of new ideas
• Making work difficult
• Ignoring problems or overreacting to them
• A competitive environment
• Restricted flow of ideas
  

Importantly, these factors aren’t just relevant in the broader organization but also in terms of managerial behavior — especially that of immediate supervisors. Even in organizations that are averse to creativity as a whole, immediate managers can still create a culture conducive to creativity within their team.

The influence of the physical environment

Are some places better for creativity than others?

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Creativity researchers agree that physical environments that are designed to be cognitively and perceptually stimulating can enhance creativity. There are at least three possible paths (see Ceylan & Dul, 2022, Dul, 2019, Dul & Ceylan, 2011, Amabile et al., 1996):

• Functionality – the extent to which the physical characteristics necessary for creative activities are perceived to be in place.
• Meaning – the symbolic significance embedded in the physical properties of the environment.
• Mood – the emotional responses to the physical items in the environment.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to spaces that foster creativity.  The suitable physical environment depends on individual tastes and needs as well as the phase of the creative process.

Another key feature of physical spaces that supports creativity is their ability to foster connections. Environments where people come into contact with each other, whether on purpose or by chance, foster the flow of creativity. This kind of environment can be deliberately designed. The most famous example might be the atrium of the animation studio Pixar.

While Steve Jobs was the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios in the late 1990s, he envisioned a workspace where the building would play a key role in fostering innovation and collaboration. The idea was simple: the headquarters has a central atrium which staff have to walk through to get to the meeting rooms, cafeteria or bathrooms. By intentionally designing the atrium as a central element in the headquarters, Jobs wanted to create a place where people would randomly meet and start unexpected conversations. Serendipity in practice!

And did it work? As with many radical ideas, it met with some resistance in the early stages, but it was accepted later. Here are some quotes from Pixar employees:

‘The atrium initially might seem like a waste of space… But Steve realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen.’

 ‘Steve’s theory worked from day one… I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.’

References

1. Amabile, T. M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J., & Herron, M. (1996). Assessing the work environment for creativity. Academy of management journal, 39(5), 1154-1184.
2. Amabile, T. (2011). Componential theory of creativity (pp. 538-559). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School.
3. Amabile, T.M. & Pratt, M.G. (2016). The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations: Making progress, making meaning. Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 36, Pages 157-183.
4. Ceylan, C. & Dul, J. (2022). The Place to Be: Organizational Culture and Organizational Climate for Creativity. In T. Lubart et al (Eds.). Homo Creativus: The 7 C’s of Human Creativity, pp. 137-171. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
5. Dul, J. (2019). 23 The Physical Environment and Creativity. A Theoretical Framework. In J.C. Kaufman & R.J. Sternberg (Eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity, pp. 481- 509.F1983
6. Dul, J. & Ceylan, C. (2011). Work environments for employee creativity. Ergonomics, 54(1), 12-20.