3.2 Creativity enablers

What enablers and barriers affect creativity and its implementation? What makes creativity more likely to happen?

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Creativity is often thought of as being related to art and design, but creativity is an element of work in a variety of domains. Innovation is highly sought after in many fields, and it’s intrinsically linked with creativity.

In creativity research (e.g., Runco, 2014), innovation refers to the intentional introduction and application of ideas, processes, products or procedures that are new to a job, work team or organization. In organizational literature, a distinction is often made between creativity and innovation. Anderson, Potočnik and Zhou (2014) offer the following insight:

‘Creativity and innovation at work are the process, outcomes, and products of attempts to develop and introduce new and improved ways of doing things. The creativity stage of this process refers to idea generation, and innovation refers to the subsequent stage of implementing ideas toward better procedures, practices, or products. Creativity and innovation can occur at the level of the individual, work team, organization, or at more than one of these levels combined but will invariably result in identifiable benefits at one or more of these levels of analysis.’

Creative efforts are often defined as self-expressive and intrinsically motivated, and innovation is often said to be driven by extrinsic incentives. Regardless of the motivation, creativity is necessary for innovation. If creativity is the development of ideas, thinking and doing, innovation is the application of those ideas. Creativity is the core of every innovation.

But creativity itself can’t be managed (Hill et al., 2014) or delivered on order. Instead of trying to force creative or radically creative activities, the best option for people and organizations is to manage for creativity (Hill et al., 2014).

Creativity can have enablers and barriers, and these are the factors that can be managed. There are different ways to remove obstacles to creativity, as well as to purposefully create space for it. The enablers and barriers to creativity can be social or material. In this sub-chapter, we will look at what organizational literature says about the topic, and extrapolate from there towards managing radical creativity—in ourselves and others.

A creative climate

What is a creative climate? What does it mean in practice?

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One way to operationalize the social enablers and barriers within an organization is in terms of an organizational environment. In sub-chapter 1.2, Culture for radical creativity, we learned that the surrounding social and material environment affects the creativity of individuals. Let’s examine this idea a little more closely.

Researchers in organizational studies have created the concept of creative climate, which refers to a climate where creativity happens inside organizations. In this context, climate is defined as people’s perceptions about the environment that shape their interactions and the outcomes in the work environment. In other words, the creative climate is how the organizational environment affects the people’s willingness to be creative and to innovate. Hunter, Bedell and Mumford (2005) said:

‘Climate may be a critical aspect of innovation to the extent that it provides a work context that ultimately facilitates the innovation process.’

To look at ways to cultivate or boost a creative climate, we summarize the five factors for a creative climate presented by Hunter, Bedell and Mumford (2005). These can be considered enablers of creativity.

The first aspect is collaboration. This refers to having a supportive and stimulating group of colleagues that trust and respect each other, openly share and support ideas, and engage in constructive discussions and debate. Encouraging collaboration between professionals from different fields also supports a creative climate. In many kinds of creative projects, team members regularly meet for creative ideation sessions and collaborate on projects, offering each other constructive feedback.

Another enabler of creativity is supportive leadership. Leadership can encourage more innovative and out-of-the box ideas by being approachable and open to suggestions. In such an organizational culture, new ideas are encouraged and rewarded. Risk-taking is supported. Experiments and the accompanying risks are tolerated. Risk is viewed as a part of the creative process. An example might be a manager who actively listens to their teams’ ideas and gives them the freedom to experiment with new approaches.

To flourish, creativity also needs resources. Such resources can be financial, material, or immaterial, such as time. A creative mindset and skill-set can also be considered necessary human resources. For example, allocating time for thinking about and doing new things can be a valuable resource for creativity.

The organizational climate challenges people with tasks, goals, and institutional operations. Meaningful challenges provide opportunities for experimentation and creative problem-solving. For example, an employer can assign their employees complex, interesting and engaging projects. Such projects require them to think outside the box and tackle novel challenges.

Autonomy and participation also play an essential role. In an environment that fosters creativity, people have initiative and opportunities. For example, enabling a designer to have the flexibility to choose their software or other tools for a project can enable them to explore creative solutions independently.

While these five factors can contribute positively to promote a creative climate in an organization, we can also look at them as barriers to creativity. Think about these five factors as levers that you can pull in two directions: up or down.

When you pull up, meaning that your organization makes an effort to promote the factor, the creative climate improves. When you pull down, your organization reduces the effort for that factor, resulting in a less creative climate.

The image above shows two examples of these creativity levers. On the left side, collaboration is high and encouraged in the organization: teams have freedom and are encouraged to collaborate across departments in projects. On the right side, collaboration is low, and staff work individually or in their own departments.

Managing for personal creativity

Questions for nurturing your own creativity.

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As you probably noticed while doing the reflection assignment above, when it comes to fostering your individual creativity, there are aspects you can influence and others you can’t. For example, if you’re not in a leadership position, there is a limit to your ability to make the leadership supportive. You might be able to get away from unsupportive leadership by switching teams or workplaces — but that’s not always feasible. Likewise, the availability of resources can be highly dependent on your financial situation. So the key to fostering your personal creative climate often comes down to managing for the things you do have power over. This means that the question of what, when, and how changes from person to person.

You are the one who can define what works for you. One tool to help with personally fostering the creative climate around you is to ask questions. Here are some example questions you could consider when thinking of ways to encourage collaboration:

• How essential do you consider collaboration for your own creativity?
• Do you generally share or like to share your creative interests and ideas with others?
• Are you able and willing to discuss your work with your peers with an open mind to get constructive feedback and input?
• Do you participate in networks in which you’re able to share ideas, inspiration, and knowledge?
• In what other ways could you engage in collaboration that would enable your creativity?

The questions are only suggestions. You could also focus on other factors and ask questions like ‘what kind of tasks do I personally find meaningfully challenging?’ or ‘do I find my current creative climate meaningfully challenging? Why or why not?’.

Thinking about how the five factors for creative climate relate to you personally can open up new ways for you to enable your creativity by influencing your environment.

Atmosphere for radical creativity

Is it OK to have conflicts?

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Within organizational studies, there is conflicting literature on whether creative teams should be very diverse, with people from many kind of backgrounds and demographics, or if they would benefit from having more homogeneous membership. It seems like both view are right—or maybe the right answer is to find a sweet spot between the extremes.

While diversity adds breadth to the scope of thinking, perceiving and the variety of useful connections, similarity encourages sharing and feelings of familiarity, which also foster creativity.

But it seems that radical creativity is different in this respect. To produce radically creative outcomes, there should be more diversity, even if that compromises social intimacy and harmony. Conflicts and differing perspectives should be tolerated. To manage this, radically creative teams need more emotional skills (Eloranta et. al 2024).

References

Anderson, N., Potočnik, K., & Zhou, J. (2014). Innovation and creativity in organizations: A state-of-the-science review, prospective commentary, and guiding framework. Journal of management, 40(5), 1297-1333.

Eloranta, V., Hakanen, E., Shaw, C. (2024). Teaching for paradigm shifts: Supporting the drivers of radical creativity in management education. Educational Research Review 45,  100641. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2024.100641

Hill, Linda A., Brandeau, Greg, Truelove, Emily & Lineback, Kent. 2014. Collective Genius. In Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/2014/06/collective-genius.

Hunter, S. T., Bedell, K. E., & Mumford, M. D. (2005). Dimensions of creative climate: A general taxonomy. The International Journal of Creativity & Problem Solving, 15(2), 97-116.

Runco, Mark A. 2014. Creativity. Theories and Themes: Research, Development and Practice. 2nd edition. Elsevier Inc.