Creativity →
- 02 Apr 2015
- Research & Ideas
Digital Initiative Summit: Who Has the Power in the Music Industry?
With inexpensive recording technology and distribution, today's musicians can push their work in front of many new audiences. But to make money, they must learn the instruments of business. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 23 Jul 2014
- Lessons from the Classroom
Innovation Is Magic. Really
When Stefan Thomke teaches students how to manage innovation and creativity, he turns to an unexpected source: Magician Jason Randal. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 18 Jun 2014
- Research & Ideas
Book Excerpt: ‘Collective Genius’
Leaders of innovation teams are successful when they collaborate, engage in discovery-driven learning, and make integrative decisions. Read an excerpt from the book Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation, by Linda Hill and coauthors. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 18 Jun 2014
- Research & Ideas
Leading Innovation is the Art of Creating ‘Collective Genius’
As Linda Hill sees it, innovation requires its own brand of leadership. The coauthor of the new book Collective Genius discusses what's been learned from 16 of the best business innovators. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 04 Mar 2014
- Sharpening Your Skills
Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Innovation
Sharpening Your Skills curates a wide range of Harvard Business School's research and ideas around vital topics in business management. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 04 Feb 2014
- Working Paper Summaries
From Crowds to Collaborators: Initiating Effort and Catalyzing Interactions Among Online Creative Workers
Online "organizations" are becoming a major engine for knowledge development in a variety of domains such as Wikipedia and open source software development. Many online platforms involve collaboration and coordination among members to reach common goals. In this sense, they are collaborative communities. This paper asks: What factors most inspire online teams to begin to collaborate and to do so creatively and effectively? The authors analyze a data set of 260 individuals randomly assigned to 52 teams tasked with developing working solutions to a complex innovation problem over 10 days, with varying cash incentives. Findings showed that although cash incentives stimulated a significant boost of effort per se, cash incentives did not transform the nature of the work process or affect the level of collaboration. In addition, at a basic yet striking level, the likelihood that an individual chooses to participate depended on whether teammates were themselves active. Moreover, communications among teammates led to more communications, and communications among teammates also stimulated greater continuous levels of effort. Overall, the study sheds light on how perspectives on incentives, predominant in economics, and perspectives on social processes and interactions, predominant in research on organizational behavior and teams, can be better understood. Key concepts include: An individual's likelihood of being active in online collaboration increases by about 41 percent with each additional active teammate. Management could provide communications channels to make the efforts of other members more visible. This is important in the design of systems for online work as it helps members to confirm that others are actively contributing. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 16 Dec 2013
- HBS Case
D’O: Making a Michelin-Starred Restaurant Affordable
Under the leadership of Chef Davide Oldani, the Italian restaurant D'O balances Michelin-star-level quality with affordable prices. In the following story and video, Professor Gary Pisano explains how Oldani does it. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 09 Dec 2013
- Research & Ideas
Cultural Disharmony Undermines Workplace Creativity
Managing cultural friction not only creates a more harmonious workplace, says professor Roy Y.J. Chua, but ensures that you reap the creative benefits of multiculturalism at its best. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 25 Nov 2013
- Research & Ideas
Hiding From Managers Can Increase Your Productivity
Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Ethan S. Bernstein explains why decreasing workplace transparency can increase productivity. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 09 Jul 2012
- Research & Ideas
The Unconscious Executive
Postdoctoral fellow Maarten Bos investigates how unconscious processes improve decision-making. Conscious deliberation, it turns out, does not always lead to the best outcomes. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 25 Jun 2012
- Research & Ideas
Collaborating Across Cultures
Learning to collaborate creatively with people from other cultures is a vital skill in today's business environment, says professor Roy Y.J. Chua, whose research focuses on a key measure psychologists have dubbed "cultural metacognition." Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 23 May 2012
- Research & Ideas
Five Ways to Make Your Company More Innovative
How do you create a company that unleashes and capitalizes on innovation? HBS faculty experts in culture, customers, creativity, marketing, and the DNA of innovators offer up ideas. From HBS Alumni Bulletin. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 22 May 2012
- Working Paper Summaries
Componential Theory of Creativity
The componential theory of creativity is recognized as one of the major theories of creativity in individuals and in organizations, serving as a partial foundation for several other theories and for many empirical investigations. It was first articulated by Teresa Amabile in 1983 and has undergone considerable evolution since then. In essence the theory is a comprehensive model of the social and psychological components necessary for an individual to produce creative work. The theory specifies that creativity requires a confluence of four components: Creativity should be highest when 1) an intrinsically motivated person with 2) high domain expertise and 3) high skill in creative thinking 4) works in an environment high in supports for creativity. Key concepts include: Many managers have relied on tools and techniques developed from the theory to stimulate creativity and innovation within their organizations. According to the theory, domain-relevant skills include knowledge, expertise, technical skills, intelligence, and talent in the particular domain where the problem-solver is working. Creativity-relevant processes include a cognitive style and personality characteristics that are conducive to independence, risk-taking, and taking new perspectives on problems, as well as a disciplined work style and skills in generating ideas. The third central tenet is the intrinsic motivation principle of creativity: People are most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself - and not by extrinsic motivators. The social environment can stimulate creativity through offering a sense of positive challenge in the work; work teams that are collaborative, diversely skilled, and idea-focused; freedom in carrying out the work; supervisors who encourage the development of new ideas; and so on. Of the three intra-individual components, intrinsic motivation should be the most directly influenced by the work environment. However, it is also important to note that the work environment undoubtedly has effects on domain-relevant skills and creativity-relevant processes, in addition to its effects on intrinsic motivation. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 07 Dec 2011
- Research & Ideas
Are Creative People More Dishonest?
In a series of studies, Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely found that inherently creative people tend to cheat more than noncreative people. Furthermore, they showed that inducing creative behavior tends to induce unethical behavior. It's a sobering thought in a corporate culture that champions out-of-the-box thinking. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 06 Sep 2011
- Research & Ideas
Cheese Moving: Effecting Change Rather Than Accepting It
In his new business fable, I Moved Your Cheese, Professor Deepak Malhotra challenges the idea that change is simply something we must anticipate, tolerate, and accept. Instead, the book teaches readers that success often lies in first questioning changes in the workplace and, if necessary, in effecting new changes ourselves. Q&A plus book excerpt. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 06 Sep 2011
- Research & Ideas
How Small Wins Unleash Creativity
In their new book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, authors Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer discuss how even seemingly small steps forward on a project can make huge differences in employees' emotional and intellectual well-being. Amabile talks about the main findings of the book. Plus: book excerpt. Key concepts include: Of all the factors that induce creativity, productivity, collegiality, and commitment among employees, the single most important one is a sense of making progress on meaningful work. Seemingly small signs of progress will induce huge positive effects on employees' psyches. On the other hand, seemingly small setbacks will induce huge negative effects. The catalysts that induce progress include setting clear goals; allowing autonomy; providing resources; giving enough time-but not too much; offering help with the work; learning from both problems and successes; and allowing ideas to flow. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 22 Aug 2011
- Research & Ideas
Getting to Eureka!: How Companies Can Promote Creativity
As global competition intensifies, it's more important than ever that companies figure out how to innovate if they are going to maintain their edge, or maintain their existence at all. Six Harvard Business School faculty share insights on the best ways to develop creative workers. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 21 Jul 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
Collaborating Across Cultures: Cultural Metacognition and Affect-Based Trust in Creative Collaboration
Creative solutions often are born when two unrelated ideas come together for the first time. That's more likely to happen when the collaborators come from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, thus diminishing the likelihood of redundant ideas. In this paper, via a series of studies, Roy Y.J. Chua, Michael W. Morris, and Shira Mor examine the factors that make intercultural creative collaboration happen. Key concepts include: An individual's cultural metacognition (i.e. reflective thinking about intercultural interactions) is directly linked to success in intercultural creative collaborations. Affect-based trust, but not cognition-based trust, is positively associated with cultural metacognition. In order to further intercultural creative collaboration, managers need to do more than simply passively learn about other cultures. Rather, they need to develop their cultural metacognition in anticipation of possible intercultural encounters. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 20 Jul 2011
- Research & Ideas
Five Discovery Skills that Distinguish Great Innovators
In The Innovator's DNA, authors Jeff Dyer, Hal Gergersen, and Clayton M. Christensen build on the idea of disruptive innovation to outline the five discovery skills that distinguish the Steve Jobses and Jeff Bezoses of the world from the run-of-the-mill corporate managers. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
Corporate Field Researchers Share Tricks of the Trade
In a panel discussion, several professors shared practical findings and tricks-of-the-trade from recent field research. Among the discoveries: how to prompt employees to get a flu shot. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.