Creativity and Innovation Management最新文献

In this article, we study how a luxury fashion engineering company strategically introduced sustainability-oriented innovations (SOIs) over time through an in-depth longitudinal analysis of a leading Italian business-to-business (B2B) firm. We apply a strategic management perspective to this first-tier engineering manufacturer to bring new insights into how upstream firms deploy SOIs and to what effect, thus determining long-term technological choices in the industry. We observe that such innovations evolved dynamically from the process dimension to the supply chain and, lastly, to the product dimension, thereby spanning explorational, procedural and communicational practices. We find that the company sustained significant growth over a decade while implementing its sustainability transition, thanks to three elements: a broad and wide-ranging experimentation in all areas of the company, a continuous dynamic process of learning-by-doing and a commitment of the top management to prioritize new sustainable practices. The propositions developed from this case study can inform future strategic analysis and management of SOIs in other firms/industrial sectors.

Creativity training involves instruction to improve learners' capability related to the generation of new and useful ideas. Although prior meta-analyses have examined training's effectiveness, the studies included are almost solely with children or many organizational samples are excluded. Authors of notable reviews on creativity in organizational settings have noted that they were unable to find adequately conducted and reported studies using genuine intervention designs at the individual, team, or organizational level, raising the question: is creativity training research in organizational settings lacking rigor, visibility, or just lacking? In this meta-analysis, we examine creativity training effectiveness using Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation (reactions, learning, behavior, results) and moderators reflecting study rigor and training delivery/content. Results indicate that training is effective overall (g = 0.68) and for learning outcomes (g = 0.73). However, effects are nonsignificant for on-the-job behavior/transfer outcomes (g = 0.34). All moderator analyses were nonsignificant except for timing of outcome evaluation. Studies with a delayed assessment showed a significantly smaller training effect (g = 0.40) than did studies with an immediate assessment (g = 0.86). These results indicate that rigorous creativity training research in organizational settings with behavioral outcomes measured after a delay is lacking. We discuss implications for future research and practical implications for creativity training.

This study indicated the role of conflict and idea acceptance on the relationship between feedback and team creative behaviour. We focused on the team's contextual factors affecting team creative behaviour instead of the behaviour of individuals between the specific hierarchical level in the organizations. We surveyed 535 practitioners in Japanese firms and quantitatively examined the result through hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The results show the positive direct effect of feedback on team creative behaviour and the mediation effects of conflict and idea acceptance on the relationship between feedback and team creative behaviour, which were identified regardless of the creative process. On the other hand, conflict negatively moderated the feedback-team creative behaviour relationship only in the idea-generation phase. This study contributes to team creativity studies by clarifying the effect of conflict, which had contradictory findings in the previous research. In addition, shedding light on idea acceptance within the teams is another contribution since limited studies are focusing on it. The results offer implications to practitioners by giving suggestions to effectively provide and react to feedback within the teams by managing conflicts that have both positive and negative effects on creativity and accepting each other's ideas, which move the idea forward.

In the healthcare sector, sense of calling has raised increasing attention for its crucial role in fostering nurses' motivation and dedication to their work. Despite the fact that individuals with a sense of calling are more likely to go beyond their duties, the potential influence of this calling on their innovative behaviour remains largely unexplored. Drawing on work as a calling and self-determination theories, this study aims to establish a link between a sense of calling and innovative work behaviour in the healthcare sector and investigate the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions. Questionnaires were distributed through field and online surveys to collect the responses of 350 nurses in China. Structural equation modelling was adopted to test the research hypotheses. The results showed that sense of calling had a positive effect on nurses' innovative work behaviour and the relationship was mediated through meaning of work and employee resilience. Moreover, psychological safety was found to strengthen the positive impact of sense of calling on nurses' innovative work behaviour. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed along with the direction for future research.

Industrial PhD students, affiliating to industrial firms and academic institutions, hold unique boundary-spanning positions as they engage in knowledge co-creation through university–industry collaboration (UIC). Despite much research on knowledge transfer processes and boundary spanners in inter-organizational contexts, firms who engage in UIC remain uncertain about how to reap the benefits of co-creating knowledge through industrial PhD projects. This paper investigates the enablers of knowledge dissemination for PhD students in industrial firms. Based on a qualitative case study in Sweden, our study identifies enablers and mechanisms related to individual and organizational actions in the internal knowledge dissemination process. Based on the findings, the paper presents a model that distinguishes between surface and deep knowledge dissemination and elaborates on the symbiotic nature of enablers, with middle management mediating between the individual and organizational levels. The paper enhances research on knowledge dissemination in UIC by specifically addressing industrial PhD students' dissemination of co-created knowledge. The findings inform organizations in managing their expectations, making more informed decisions and improving dissemination conditions for boundary-spanning industrial PhD students in UIC.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how we work. Even after the pandemic, many companies offer their employees the option of working from home. Although working from home may offer several benefits, our understanding of whether employees are more creative when working from home or in an office is limited. To address this research gap, we conducted an experimental study with a German company whose employees usually work in an activity-based workspace consisting of open, closed and informal spaces that can be used by employees depending on the task at hand. Employees self-assessed their creative performance for different creative tasks (individual vs. team) and in different work environments (office vs. home office). Our findings reveal that for individual creative tasks (e.g. creating a presentation), employees are more creative when working from home (vs. in the office) because they experience higher levels of perceived psychological freedom (mediating effect). By contrast, for team creative tasks (e.g. developing ideas for a new product), employees reported being more creative when working in the office (vs. from home) due to higher levels of perceived psychological safety (mediating effect). Taken together, these findings enhance our understanding of when and how working from home (vs. in the office) may be beneficial for employees' creativity.

Future-making, the act of imagining and producing the future, is becoming increasingly relevant in scholarly and practitioner debates. In a constantly evolving society where the future is difficult to navigate, there is an urgent need to explore new and innovative ways of imagining plausible futures that are more desirable to people. The future-making literature proposes different practices, tools, options and possibilities for envisioning futures and advancing the debate on issues that affect society. To explore how different future-making approaches influence the generation of future scenarios, we conducted an experiment in which we asked 64 practitioners participating in teams to anticipate and imagine futures using two different future-making approaches: predictive and imaginative. The resulting future scenarios were then evaluated by 227 practitioners in a postexperiment survey measuring their plausibility and desirability, as well as their similarities and differences in terms of future scenario generation. Our study contributes to both theory and practice. In particular, we contribute to the future-making debate and enrich current understanding of the different processes and tools adopted in predictive and imaginative future-making using an experimental approach. Our study also supports practitioners in unpacking the potential of adopting different types of future-making, from predictive to imaginative.

Everyone seems to have something to say about creativity, thus participating in the reproduction of persistent myths about creativity that may influence creative behaviour. This research explores the influence of Laypeople's Implicit Theories of Creativity (LIToCs) regarding the drivers of creativity on creative performance, to ascertain whether having strong convictions about the drivers of creativity either enhances or hinders creative productivity when these convictions align with the actual methods of stimulating creativity. An experiment randomly involved 69 subjects who were invited to drink the exact same fruit juice before performing a creative task. In one condition, they were told this was indeed juice; in the other condition, they were told that it was mixed with Red Bull. Analyses showed an interaction effect with the subjects' LIToC, such that among subjects displaying strong LIToC, individual creative performance was lower when they perceived the conditions to stimulate creativity were activated, than otherwise. These results suggest that having strong beliefs in the effects of some creativity drivers might then trigger a complacent attitude and reduce the invested effort in generating creative ideas. This research contributes to rethinking how we use specific drivers to stimulate creativity, as strong LIToCs about those drivers may have a counterproductive effect on creative performance.

Technological innovations are becoming increasingly systemic in the complex and interconnected world. The initiation and evolution of systemic innovations take time and include numerous challenges, and the mechanisms through which systemic innovations emerge in the interaction between different technologies represent a research gap. This paper explores the emergence of ceramic additive manufacturing as an example of a systemic manufacturing technology innovation. We implemented an event history analysis of four ceramic-material additive manufacturing technologies. We traced the initiation and evolution paths of each of the four technologies over time and showed a pattern of activities within and across the technologies. The study contributes by revealing that systemic innovations emerge as a result of parallel and sequential development paths of within-technology system components as well as the interaction between multiple technologies. The timing of the coalescing development paths of the system components and technologies appears crucial but serendipitous instead of coordinated. The findings open new pathways for speeding up the emergence of systemic innovations and forthcoming research to support the evolution of additive manufacturing.

Creativity is a crucial skill for future engineers. Hence, it is becoming increasingly important for higher education (HE) engineering educators to foster and enhance engineering students' creative abilities. Simultaneously, online learning has found a place in engineering education. Nevertheless, we find that HE engineering educators in all domains continue to express a sense of inadequacy when it comes to fostering creativity in hybrid and online learning environments. This sentiment persists despite the existence of scholarly work that suggests strategies for addressing these challenges. In this paper, we assume that the rationale behind this is that the proposed pedagogical approaches are primarily established through conceptual reflections, whereas the perspective of the HE engineering educators on the perceived barriers has thus far been largely neglected. Therefore, we present a study that uses data from experience interviews and focus group techniques involving 71 HE engineering educators from Ireland, Germany, Denmark and Turkey to identify the common challenges that HE engineering educators perceive when facilitating creativity in online and hybrid classroom environments. These are used to extend theory by developing a four-field conceptual model organizing the eight overarching challenges encountered. This model can be used as a basis for defining measures to support HE engineering educators in facilitating creativity online and serves as a guide for future research studies.