International Journal of Innovation Management

Creativity is a vibrant field of scientific research with important applied implications for the management of innovation. In this article, we argue that the proliferation of creativity research has led to positive and less positive outcomes and discuss five relevant research themes. We first introduce our readers to the different proposed dimensions of a creative object. Next, we explain recent developments on the level of the creativity magnitude issue. Based on that, we review how researchers currently operationalize creativity. After discussing how creativity is conceptualized and operationalized, we outline how it might be enhanced. Finally, we present an overview of the wide variety of methodological approaches currently used in creativity research. We close by calling for more interdisciplinary research and offering other suggestions for future directions.

In this paper, I examine three questions: (1) how creativity and innovation in organisations are defined in the scientific literature, (2) which theories are applied and hence which explanatory factors have been discussed, and (3) what the empirical evidence is regarding these factors. I uncover an overlap between the definitions of creativity and innovation, which in my view are distinct but related concepts. Further, despite the significant overlap in their definitions, research has evolved in two almost separate streams. Moreover, I observe that the multiple theories used (even regarding the same factor) to explain organisational creativity are not always integrated and that the empirical evidence about factors concerning individuals seems to converge but is much more mixed in relation to factors at the organisational level. Finally, I propose a new definition of organisational creativity and organisational innovation to distinguish them and suggest some avenues for future research.

Companies develop co-creation platforms to collect innovative ideas generated by consumers. The idea competition model is traditionally used to organise such collective action and has been widely implemented by companies. In parallel, the development of collaborative platforms and social networks have led to the appearance of co-creation platforms based on a cooperation model with community features. In addition to these two classical models, a third model, a combination of competition and cooperation — the coopetition model — has emerged. Although there is growing interest in this model, no study to date has compared its performance to the other two models. Our research objective is to investigate and compare how these three models affect creative performance in terms of idea quantity and quality. We thus conducted an experiment with 177 students to generate ideas that were submitted to an established company. The results show that the coopetition model generates more ideas and more creative ideas than the other two models. We also offer insights on how a consumer co-creation platform should be designed to achieve better creative performance.

This paper analyses the determinants of different organisational techniques dedicated to creativity by stressing the crucial role played by the dynamic innovative capacities of firms in this process. In particular, we show that the impact of creativity methods varies with the type of innovator (product versus process; single versus complex). We use a bivariate probit estimation on a sample of 4,570 manufacturing firms drawn from the 2010 French Community Innovation Surveys (CIS 2010) to study how the innovation profiles of firms impact the propensity to use organisational creativity methods. The estimation results show a strong but differentiated impact of the innovation profiles of firms (products/process, single/complex) on the use of different creativity methods. These empirical results display the accuracy of modern research on the determinants of intra-firm organisation of creativity.

In several industries, competitive and societal factors have highlighted the need for incubating dedicated radical innovation (RI) capabilities. Traditional approaches to RI strategies have often emphasised either organisational or cognitive aspects, but tend to overlook how these dimensions interact within the organisation. This paper tackles the issue of these interplays by investigating the effects of a creativity-based collaborative method, the KCP Workshops, on the RI capability of a firm. We present an in-depth case study of a leading aeronautics firm that adopted the method to face its RI challenges. While being consistent with prior research and underscoring the impact of organisational settings on creative cognitive processes, our analysis empirically demonstrates a triple capability developed through the KCP Workshops: (1) collectively building a conceivable RI strategy, (2) deploying a monitoring process adapted to the exploration of cognitive breakthroughs, (3) collectively building “emerging creative organisations” at the ecosystem level to support the development of RI strategy. Beyond the performance of the RI capability for commercial applications, these findings underline how the collective design of an RI strategy also involves players in the exploration and establishment of organisational innovations.

This paper describes and discusses how innovation impacts creativity in the advertising sector. It points to the double meaning of creativity — as innovativeness and as artistic skills — and indicates a tension between the two. Empirical illustrations consist of two case studies from the advertising sector. These point to how innovations (in terms of adaptation of new technology) negatively impact artistic creativity. Contextual factors creating a need for new technology did have an impact, and meant that companies became increasingly competitive and roles became unclear. On the company level, innovation caused knowledge gaps, increased formalization, and expanded the division of work. Contribution is made to research on the management of creativity by suggesting how innovation impacts artistic creativity. Furthermore, the discussion on company level creativity contributes to research on the advertising sector, since the literature has foremost discussed creative processes of individual campaigns.

A significant part of management in creative organisations is the discovery, development, and engagement of the creative talents. These activities require practices at the intersection of talent management, knowledge management and HR management. In this paper, we observed a bootcamp held at Cirque du Soleil in order to experiment with new casting and training practices for a scarce and specific occupational creative community: clowns. Our study shows that this bootcamp provides context at the borders of distinct practices: recruitment, training, and exploration. This intermediary zone allows the emergence of a boundary practice: the co-construction of what actors of the organisation and members of the communities do, make and learn to connect, create and understand new meaning of their shared reality in performance and exploration. This concept contributes to an improved understanding of the management of scarce talents in knowledge-and-creativity intensive fields, as hi-tech industries, software development, engineering, or creative industries.

This study examined the influence of others’ smiles on individuals’ creativity. According to popular belief, individuals get motivated to be more creative when others smile at them. In contrast, we hypothesised that smiles would make avoidance-oriented (versus approach-oriented) individuals less creative, as they may lose the motivation to pursue further novelty once they gain social approval, as implied by a smile. Forty-two participants were paired with a same-sex stranger and randomly assigned to the role of either an “illustrator” or a “commentator.” The illustrators performed the Alien Drawing Task and the commentators gave feedbacks regarding the drawing, which were repeated six times and video-recorded. As expected, the results showed significant interaction effects between others’ smiles and avoidance orientation on creativity: participants high in avoidance orientation showed less creativity when others smiled at them. In addition, nodding had the same effect as a smile did, confirming that social approval decreases the creativity of avoidance-oriented individuals.