Increasing Creativity

Running head: INCREASING CREATIVITY

Increasing Creativity in

the Workplace

Management 340

July 4, 2010

Table of Contents

*

* Introduction 3

* Definitions 3

* Why Creativity is Important 3-4

* Training Methods 4-5

* Research Findings 6

* Recommendations 7

* Conclusion 8

* Reference List 9

* Appendix 10

Introduction

Do you want to increase ideas and or production within your organization and gain a leg up on your competition? Well, you may be under utilizing your best assets, your employees. Employees have the creative potential to drive companies into the forefront of their industries and all you may need to do is increase the creativity within the organization. Within this report you will be given the reasoning behind why creativity is so important to organizations, the research proving the validity of training methodologies, and the recommendations managers can take to increase creativity.

What is Creativity?

Creativity is the production of novel ideas that are made useful (Puccio, Firestien, Coyle, & Masucci, 2006). Workplace creativity is defined as a valuable, useful new product, service, idea, procedure, or process by individuals working in a complex social system (James, Brodersen, & Eisenberg, 2004). Creativity can flourish in the right environments, so managers need to be prepared to adapt companies to increase creativity. Organizations must know how different types of individuals respond to various work place conditions and tasks (James et al.).

Why is Creativity Important?

Creativity in the workforce is important to the survival of any organization because it enables companies to adapt and implore changes from within. Organizations today need innovation and creativity to remain competitive (Dickson, 2006). Increasing creativity is important for a business because it is a valuable and usable opportunity that helps to differentiate companies from their competition. New products ad new ideas are constantly needed to gain that competitive edge (Dickson, 2006). Creative thinking leads to an overall increase in a company's performance. Without a creative workforce everything would forever remain the same. Procedures would never change, new ideas would never be brought to the table, and products and services would never adapt to the changing market.

Ways to Increase Creativity

Many training methods are used by organizations to facilitate creativity and some examples are creative problem solving and six thinking hats. Using these methods has been proven to have positive effects on individual creativity and many organizations have integrated them into their businesses and truly believe them to be beneficial. Six thinking hat's allows a team to have productive discussions based on different perspectives (Lewis, 2004). Better decisions are the result of pushing the employees to move outside their habitual ways of thinking. It allows for a more full understanding of the decision which helps pinpoint the problem areas and opportunities which could have been otherwise over looked.

Creative Problem Solving Training Method

Creative problem solving (CPS) is a structured methodology that is used to enhance creative thinking in individuals and teams (Puccio et al., 2006). In the process, convergent thinking, which looks for the single best answer and divergent thinking, which looks for several good answers are combined. Employees get fixed on how they solved the problem before; limiting opportunities to explore new approaches (Cohen, 2002). CPS opens their minds so that they can come up with a variety of new workable solutions to implement.

In CPS, six steps work in tangent with each other and they are objective finding, fact finding, problem finding, idea finding, solution finding, and acceptance finding. Objective finding is the initial identification of a problem, goal, or challenge. Fact finding is the data retrieval step where all the information is combined on the subject. Problem finding is where all the facts are reviewed to make sure you are looking at the right problem. Idea finding is where all the ideas are laid out on the table free of criticism. Solution finding is where the solutions are selected and strengthened. And finally, acceptance finding is where a plan is derived and the idea is put into motion. By using this method people adapt their thinking patterns in ways that produce the most results.

Research Findings

Many research studies have been conducted to measure the validity of the CPS training method. One study found that individuals whose natural preference was to develop solutions, as opposed