Creativity Theory - TRaining MAterial in Creativity and InnovaTion ...

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A. ESSENTIALS
derstand creativity in a social context necessitates an exploration of creative
processes, creative products, creative persons and creative situations. A useful
theory of organizational creativity must provide a framework of sufficient
complexity and richness to integrate these four creative components.
6. Characteristics of Creativity
People differ in their level of creativity as well as in the manner in which they express their
creativity. Micheal Kirton [11] suggests that there are two types of creative persons: Adaptors,
whose preference is to work within the system to improve things, and Innovators
who ignore or challenge the system and come up with more radical proposals for change.
Adaptors are conforming, efficient and like to deal with ideas a few at a time, while Innovators
are non-conforming, inefficient, and like to propagate ideas. The Adaptor’s motive is
towards doing things better, whereas the Innovator’s is towards doing things differently.
Adaptors Innovators
Prefer to do things better;
Seek professions that encourage stability and
order such as accountability and production;
Formulate ideas without changing the initial data
of the problem very much.
Prefer to do things differently;
Are found in departments such as marketing
which demand interaction with changing
environments (who deal with uncertainty);
Would rather produce ideas by introducing new
elements in the context of a problem and also by
changing the relationship between the elements
of a problem.
Table 01: Differences between Adaptors and Innovators (Source of table: http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/contents.html)
Despite this assumption we have to underline the main characteristics of creativity:
Motivation is the measure of the emotional investment it takes for people to break
natural inertia and to move from their current circumstances toward what they want.
The distance between circumstances and desire, creates emotional pressure that
activates somebody to make something new. This activating desire is the dynamics
that starts a person on the creative process. In other words, to begin a creative process,
every individual and every company needs motivation. Once you are motivated,
your curiosity follows and along with it comes fear. Curiosity consists of a search for
possibly useful information and transforms the unknown from something potentially
dangerous into something manageable, interesting and beneficial. However, such an
unknown is often frightening. In moments of fear, curiosity becomes hard to sustain
and so, some individuals, if sufficiently frightened, lose most of their capacity for creative
curiosity. Furthermore, if faced with new potentially risky tasks they tend to avoid
beginning them. The solution could lie in an individual having such strong intrinsic
belief and commitment to the work that any possible discouragement is negated.
Breaking and making connections is where most of the work of creativity gets done.
Destruction means destruction of rigid sets of assumptions about what can and can
not be done in a particular situation. In relation to connections, most day-to-day creativity
occurs when people have over time, gained large amounts of interconnected
knowledge in select areas. But if it is true that people are more creatively prolific in
their particular discipline, it is also true that this could often be a hindrance to discovery.
Looking at patterns of information from different disciplines helps break up current
lines of thinking and old assumptions. It is a useful way to start new connections.