Managing Creativity: Theoretical Approaches to Employees Creativity Development and Regulation
Igor N. Dubina
School of Economics and Management,
Altai State University,
68 Sozialisticheski pr., Barnaul 656049, Russia
E-mail: din@asu.ru
School of Business and Public Management
The George Washington University
2115 G St., NW, Washington, DC, 20052, USA
E-mail: din@gwu.edu
Abstract: Creativity management represents a new discipline. Despite accumulating significant practical experience on creativity management, its theory and methodology are still poorly developed. This paper discusses the problems of creativity development, control, regulation and optimisation. It suggests approaches to develop and use employees’ creativity more effectively. The author introduces and defines the term ‘innovativity’ as a complex index, characterising a firm’s capability to activate employees’ creativity and transform it into innovations. The paper suggests a theoretical model that links the performance of employees with their creativity and the innovativity of a firm.
Keywords: creativity; creativity management; creative and routine work; innovativity; creativity development; assessment; control; optimisation.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Dubina, I.N. (2005) ‘Managing creativity: theoretical approaches to employees’ creativity development and regulation’, Int. J. Management Concepts and Philosophy, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp.334–349.
Biographical notes: Dr. Igor N. Dubina is Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the School of Economics and Management at Altai State University,
Russia. Dr. Dubina has an educational background in the fields of computer sciences and economics. He received his PhD in Social Sciences from Omsk
State University in 1999. He has published more than 30 papers on interdisciplinary approaches to creativity, creativity management, creative decision support systems, innovation management and mathematical and computer modelling of creative work. He has also published a book entitled Creativity as a Phenomenon of Social Communication (Russian Academy of Sciences Publishing House, 2000). Currently, for the period 2004–2005, Dr. Dubina is Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Management Science at The George Washington University, USA.
1 Introduction
In today’s dynamic business environment, creativity represents a key factor for economic success of organisations interested in long-term competitive development. Companies such as 3M, General Electric, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Motorola, Proctor and Gamble and Sony use their employees’ creativity as an economic resource and effectively apply a ‘continuous creativity’ strategy (Carr, 1994; Ford, 1999; Rickards, 1999). Firms using their employees’ creativity had been shown to have conclusive advantages over those who neglect this factor (Carayannis and Gonzales, 2003). Therefore, more and
more companies participate in the race of creating new products, new markets and new ways of promotion. Thus, the companies that do so increase the velocity of the transformation of creative ideas into innovations, adding pressure to the competition. For example, 25–30 years ago, Sony Corporation could reap the fruits from a revolutionary innovation (such as the Walkman) for 3–5 years before competitors could produce a competitive product. These first-mover lead advantages declined to only six months by the end of the 1980s (Grachev, 1990).
As a result of an increased interest of business in creativity, the management of creativity appeared as a special theoretical and practical discipline some years ago. Creativity management has been developing on theoretical and methodological bases of such disciplines as Research and Development (R&D) management, creativity psychology, organisational behaviour and innovation management. Despite the fact that a distinct notion about the specific subject, role, methods and place of creativity management still does not exist, the term ‘creativity management’ is not metaphorical, but claims a scientific status at present (Ford and Gioia, 1996).
Many firms apply special programmes for the development of their employees’ creativity. Specialists in business creativity offer examples for the follow-up
cost-effectiveness of investment in creativity. For examples:
• A two-year creativity course has been instituted at General Electric, which resulted in a 60% increase in patentable concepts.
• Participants in Pittsburgh Plate Glass creativity training showed a 300% increase in viable ideas compared with those who elected not to take the course.
• Several thousand employees of Sylvania had a 40-hour training course in creative problem solving, and the company has received a $20 profit on each dollar spent for this training.
• Hewlett-Packard invested over $2 billion in R&D in 1999 and generated more than 1300 patent applications, as a result it had a $42.37 billion net revenue
(Naiman, 2000).
Training in methods of lateral thinking for employees of a European corporation has allowed it to increase profits from $7 million up to $60 million for only two and a half years, and sales volume increased from $60 million up to $1.2 billion (Grachev, 1990). Couger (1995), who compared the Return of Investment (ROI) of creativity improvement with other investments, found that the ROI of creativity in the typical company far exceeds that of R&D programmes and Total Quality Management (TQM) programmes and reaches 300%. In addition, Couger found that creativity improvement programmes provide approaches that also make other programmes more effective.
At the same time, many managers often consider creativity to be unpredictable and uncontrollable like the weather. Because of these features, they do not want to invest in creativity development programmes. They do not want their employees to be creative because, in their opinion, the employees must follow instructions to do their work on time and within the budget (Couger, 1995; Proctor, 1995; Kao, 1996). Previous research shows insufficient and inefficient use of employees’ creativity due to the lack of adequate management systems (Page, 1988; Jalan and Kleiner, 1995). However, employees can increase the efficiency and quality of their work if managers will listen to their ideas and suggestions. A complex management system theory for the effective and adequate
development and use of creativity, however, does not yet exist.
This paper focuses on the problem of creativity development control, regulation and optimisation in order to develop and use employees’ creativity in the most effective way. At present, this problem is not clearly formulated. Moreover, many researchers consider the terms ‘creativity’ and ‘regulation’ as incompatible. Hundreds of articles about the role of creativity in business have been written, and ideas about the necessity to study, use and develop creativity for successful businesses are widely distributed today. Significant practical experience in this field has been accumulated. However, the problems of creativity use in business are still poorly developed from theoretical and methodological perspectives. Management experience demonstrates that creativity has the potential to be extremely useful for business, although it can be detrimental sometimes. Currently, our knowledge about the principles of the relationship between the performance of firms and the extent of creative activities of their employees are still limited. Managers often make spontaneous and intuitive decisions about what creative qualification is required, what programmes should be carried out for creativity development and what results can be expected.
In this paper, we review the phenomenon of creativity in an organisational context and define the new term ‘innovativity’ to indicate organisational characteristics, which should activate the creativity of employees and transform this creativity into innovations. Here, we suggest a theoretical model for the relationship between an employee’s performance, his creativity and the firm’s innovativity. The paper explores the problem of investment in employees’ creativity development programmes and discusses some approaches and models for optimising the costs of these programmes. The construction of formal models that connect work performance and creativity is complicated by the absence of corresponding empirical references. Modern literature only offers fragmentary data and few examples of systematic comparative research about the influence of creativity on work performance.
2 Aspects of the problem of employees’ creativity management
The successful and efficient development of actual business systems implies both repetitive and creative functions in the working activities of employees. The paradox (and the problem) focuses on the opposition of creativity versus the cyclical repetition of some actions and results in the function of a business system. This is so because creativity supposes the alteration (violation) of routine repetitions and the introduction of new elements into the system. Creativity displays a disruptive nature. At the same time, the prolonged development of any business system is not possible without creativity and change.
In the case of repetitive activities, a labour agent operates within the rules established by the regulation system, whereas a creative agent transforms existing standards, combines assigned rules and produces new ones through creative. As a result, creative innovation appears in the managed system and changes its state and level. Therefore, creativity control and the regulation and optimisation of creative and routine elements of employees’ working activities are required (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Basic model of an employee’s creativity regulation
Managers often solve this problem by fostering a ‘creative climate’, which refers to a friendly atmosphere promoting the development of new ideas. But for businesses, first and foremost, a useful idea is important, not just an original one. Moreover, the uncontrolled creativity of employees may be harmful for a firm for the following reasons:
• If individual creativity is not adequately embedded in the organisational context.
• The results of creativity performance are not sufficiently controlled.
• The workplace environment for the employees’ creativity is not well organised.
In these cases, the benchmark results of the firm may worsen after the implementation of creativity development programmes (Figure 2, Curve 1). On the other hand, we can suppose that an employee’s performance depends on his creativity nonlinearly with a plateau, even in a good and well organised environment for creativity (Figure 2, curve 2). Such considerations make plausible the need for a search for an optimal level (or optimal range) of an employee’s creativity development (Copt), as well as an optimal programme for his creativity development and actualisation.
Figure 2 Hypothetical relationships between an employee’s performance and his creativity
Another important aspect of creativity management is associating the costs of creativity development with the obtained results. Robert Solow’s model of effective wages shows how wage levels influence the performance of employees (Figure 3, Curve 1). An employer can implement activities for the employee’s creativity development. These may include implementing special training programmes, purchasing specific software for creative decision support, changing an organisational climate to encourage employees to submit new ideas. When the employer does any of these, he may increase his employee’s performance with the same wage level (Figure 3, Curve 2) because the employee’s creativity is being leveraged. This approach induces additional costs, and here we face
the problem of cost effectiveness to ensure that the implemented programme is profitable.
Figure 3 Model of an employee’s performance dependence on wage with two levels of his creativity
Intuitive decisions and qualitative analyses, in our context, often do not work well, particularly for medium and large business structures that depend on more reliable and effective tools for decision-making. The development of mathematical models and numeric methods for solving these challenges is complicated by factors such as the wide spectrum of each subject’s motives and behaviour patterns, creative process formalisation and creativity measurements. The optimisation approach to creativity development calls for a multidisciplinary collaboration of managers, economists, psychologists, sociologists
and other specialists.
3 Creativity in an organisational context
Creativity, considered in the context of an organisation (organisational creativity), is understood as the generation of ideas which are simultaneously new (original) and potentially useful (valuable) for a given organisation (Csikzentmihalyi, 1988; 1999; Boden, 1994; Ford and Gioia, 1996; Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). This understanding assumes the obligatory presence of an idea evaluation system. Based on the approaches as suggested by Csikzentmihalyi (1988) as well as Ford and Gioia (1996), we define the phenomenon of organisational creativity by referring to the following elements (Figure 4):
• a creative subject who generates ideas and introduce variations (novel actions)
• a domain (a set of available ideas or rules in some field)
• experts who evaluate suggested ideas and select the variations.
Figure 4 Creativity in an organisational context
If an idea suggested by the subject is evaluated by the experts as being new and useful, it obtains creative status and is included in the set of rules. Thus, the domain becomes altered. The ‘new rules’ of the domain communicate back to the subject, and the cycle continues. In other words, creativity refers to generating original solutions for non-standard problems or more effective solutions for existing problems, and that these solutions (ways, methods and techniques) are accepted in the organisation as the rules of future activities.
According to this model, expert evaluation of employees’ creativity constitutes a basic element of creativity management. Advanced elements of creativity
management are the development of creative abilities of employees, the fostering of an optimal environment for their creativity activation and realisation, and the adjustment of creativity development programmes by assessing achieved results.
Creativity measurement represents one of the most complex problems for the management of creativity. There are hundreds of tools and techniques for the evaluation of ‘general’ creativity as well as creativity in specific fields (Amabile, 1996; Puccio and Murdock, 1999). However, these tools and techniques have not been used for the assessment of employees’ creativity because they were primarily developed for psychological and educational purposes. Currently, we have no valid or usable (uncomplicated, and easily and quickly administered) methods for the measurement of creative abilities in businesses. In addition, the majority of methods for creativity assessment have been developed for individual creativity and, therefore, cannot be applied for group creativity assessment because of their non-additivity feature. At the same time, however, as management experience demonstrates, group creativity expresses pivotal importance for the performance of a firm.
We can see that creativity is too much of a complex phenomenon to be measured by a global and single measurement tool. First of all, we must define the creativity aspects and variables that we want to assess. The traditional 4P model of creativity (Person-Process-Product-Press/environment) serves as the basic approach (Rhodes, 1961; Rothenberg and Hausman, 1976). When we speak about business creativity in an organisational context, we have in mind an individual or group ability to generate new and valuable ideas. Thus we have to use and develop approaches and instruments for creativity assessment according to the ‘Person and Product’ formula.
4 Innovativity as a factor of creativity actualisation
Creativity is a phenomenon of social communication and interaction (Dubina, 2000). Therefore, the alteration of a company’s environment for creativity represents the most important way to develop employees’ creativity and to regulate this process. For the maintenance of the ‘continuous creativity’ strategy, it is necessary to create a favourable organisational and psychological climate for creativity, not only for ‘creative employees’ (such as inventors, managers and engineers) but also for all workers. Japanese firms support and accumulate not only inventions but also all ‘fine’ ideas (‘secondary innovations’) as well (Grachev, 1990). These secondary innovations are the main source of competitiveness since they promote constant production update, cost reduction
and quality improvement. For example, Toyota Motor Company receives about 300 suggestions per employee per year, whereas the figure in a normal western company lies below ten (De Bono, 1992). The aggregated effect of secondary innovations is often greater than that of a few giant ideas because modern business depends on a continuous flow of ideas (Carr, 1994; Horibe, 2003; Michalko, 2003).
The metaphorical term ‘creative climate’ is often used in the literature to describe the psychological conditions necessary for creativity (the fourth P in the 4P creativity model – Press), paralleling meteorological conditions (‘warm’, ‘cold’, ‘storm’ and ‘calm’) and attributes of the social sphere. Researchers applying this term pay attention mostly to psychological and sociological aspects of creativity development. They often do not take into account some organisational, economic and management mechanisms for creativity regulation (Ekvall, 1996). It is very important for a firm not only to have a creative climate, but also to use effectively the creativity of their employees. The term ‘creative climate’ refers to the environment in which new ideas are being generated and supported.
This environment, however, does not necessarily consider any practical results of creativity development and the transformation of creativity into innovations.
On the other hand, the special term ‘innovativeness’ has frequently been used for characterising how innovative a company is. In contrast to the ‘creative climate’, innovativeness emphasises the intensity and results of a firm’s innovative activity more than the conditions for creativity, although both characteristics correlate closely and even overlap (Ekvall, 1996).
We propose to combine the above terms and to introduce a more universal term, which is ‘innovativity’. The meaning of innovativity will be clear if one follows the language-based logic of the analogy with ‘creativity’ in Table 1.
Table 1 The linguistic background for the term ‘innovativity’
The table shows a series of differing variations of the words ‘creative’ and ‘innovative’. The first word group (Create-Creation-Creative-Creativity) characterises individuals or teams, whereas the second group (Innovate-Innovation-Innovative) refers mostly to attributes of organisations. However, while creativity suggests a subject’s capability (see Table 1), there is no word (or group of words) that explains an object’s capability. Therefore, we can propose the word ‘innovativity’ to fill this gap. We consider innovativity as an organisational capability for actualising employees’ creativity and shaping it into innovations. This suggests a complex index, underscoring a firm’s dependence on innovations, its sensitivity to changes, conditions for the promotion of new ideas and support and encouragement of the creative initiatives of employees.
The measurement of innovativity is as complex as the measurement of creativity. Currently, surveys with 50–150 questions are being used as the only approach to assess creative climate and innovativeness (Rickards and Jones, 1989; Tampoe, 1993; Amabile, 1996; Ekvall, 1996; Puccio and Murdock, 1999), although alternative approaches or means may be possible. On the basis of the analysis of literature devoted to creativity in business, we allocated a number of factors which can be evaluated via surveys and observations and may be used for a comprehensive assessment of a firm’s innovativity. These are the following:
• total amount of new ideas suggested by employees
• number of realised ideas (in percent)
• density of the flow of new ideas
• results from realised ideas (financial, social, administrative)
• financial stimulation of new idea suggestions (according to their efficiency, novelty, amount)
• non-monetary stimulation of new idea suggestions (recognition of any creative contribution, increasing work status, public rewarding by honorary titles and letters, publications in a company’s newspaper)
• granting resources for creativity (time, technical, financial, technological, information)
• managers’ and employees’ sensitivity to new ideas and changes
• cooperation stimulation (collective work reduces inertia in thinking and raises the efficiency of non-standard problem-solving)
• different communication levels (informal contacts decrease the resistance to changes, raise the efficiency of the interaction between different departments, e.g., R&D and marketing, promote the suggestion and development of non-trivial ideas)
• vision (personnel’s understanding of a company’s strategy and tactics, each employee’s understanding of his own role in the strategy realisation)
• coordination of personal creativity and interests with a company’s goals
• employee’s participation in the decision-making process
• special programmes for creativity audit and development
• special centres for creative ideas generation
• tolerance to uncertainty, risk and ‘creativity mistakes’ (Employees’ creativity cannot be realised in a corporate climate where the main priority is to avoid mistakes. For example, in 3M there is a principle that the mistake of a manager in trying to force subordinates to follow instructions strictly is much more serious in the long-term than an employee’s mistake arising from his creative search (Grachev, 1990).)
• flexible conditions for work and personnel’s independence in decision-making (For example, IBM’s innovators are authorised to use up to 15% of money resources without management approval (Grachev, 1990). This does not mean the refusal of the order to maintain the constant flow of new ideas because such freedom should be focused on given areas of action. Actually, in a modern corporation, there are enough mechanisms for the control over the development of ‘chaos’. A good manager can control a situation and see the order in that ‘chaotic’ environment, whereas a bad manager sees only ‘chaos’.).
5 A theoretical model of the relationship between an employee’s performance, his creativity and a firm’s innovativity
Based on the understanding of creativity and innovativity as defined above, we assume that a firm’s performance depends on both the employees’ creativity and the firm’s innovativity. Despite the apparent importance of these two factors for business, however, there is almost no systematic research directed at the investigation of the combined impact of these factors on the performance of a firm. One of the few empirical confirmations of the hypotheses developed and discussed in our context is the research carried out by specialists from Emory University (USA) on the basis of a survey of more than 600 US companies (Bharadwaj and Menon, 2000). This research examined the relationship among a firm’s innovation performance, the intensity of the employees’ creative activity and some basic organisational mechanisms that support creativity. The research results indicate that individual creativity and organisational mechanisms of
creativity support lead to higher levels of innovation performance. However, the specific patterns of this interactive relationship still remain unrevealed.
We suggest a model connecting an employee’s work performance with his creativity and a firm’s innovativity. To construct such a model we must select a
parameter describing work productivity (e.g., efficiency, effectiveness, profitability or profitableness). For the given model, we define effectiveness as the degree of the achievement of the set work purpose, or it is the ratio of the expected output to the actual output (Sink and Tuttle, 1989). The assumption of the model’s nonlinear character is based on the results of psychological research of creativity (Sternberg and Lubart, 1995; Amabile, 1996) and the theoretical considerations of Volgin (1977), who investigated the influence of intellectual and psychological characteristics of a subject on his work productivity. We also take into account the management experience of employees’ creativity activation as presented in the literature. If it is accepted that work effectiveness
depends on an employee’s creativity, a firm’s innovativity and the type of work (i.e., the level of its ‘creative complexity’), the suggested model may be presented as follows:
where:
E – work effectiveness
C – normalised creative potential
I – organisational innovativity
k – parameter describing the degree of ‘creative complexity’ of work to be done or a problem to be solved.
In this model, E is a dimensionless parameter in the value range [0–1]. For expression of the effectiveness in real indicators (e.g., production rate, profit, number of patentable ideas), a corresponding factor can be used in the numerator. The dimensionless parameter C characterises personal creativity assessed by one of the existing methods and normalised by dividing by the mean of the group where the assessment is made. The value C = 1 corresponds to the average value in the group. Normalisation is used here for the following reasons: for a more evident interpretation of the model, for the partial reduction of subjectivity of creativity estimation and for better coordination of the results of creativity assessment by different methods. This parameter may also characterise the
collective creative potential of some teams or departments of a company (after the development of methods for the measurement of group creativity). In this case, the model may be adopted for the assessment of cooperative work performance. Parameter k characterises work activities on the spectrum of ‘absolute repetitiveness’ to ‘absolute creativity’. For example, k = 0 corresponds to absolute routine work (without any creativity) or standard problem, and k = 1 corresponds to the level of ‘usual complexity’. The graphic forms of this model are presented in Figure 5 and Figure 6.
Figure 5 Model dependence of an employee’s work effectiveness (E) on his creative potential (C) with different parameters I and k
Figure 6 Model dependence of an employee’s work effectiveness on his creative potential (x) and company’s innovativity (y) with k = 1
This model, after its empirical testing, may be useful for the continuous development of the theoretical and methodological bases for creativity and innovation management. The model may be applied to estimate the effectiveness of an employee’s and a firm’s performance and to make decisions concerning creativity and innovativity development in a firm.
To improve the model, it appears necessary to introduce a temporal factor since the influence of creativity and innovativity on work performance displays a dynamic process with time-lag effects. Also the relationship between creativity and innovativity should be taken into account. Creativity depends on the environment in which it is being activated and actualised. On the other hand, processes and results of the individual or group creative activities alter the organisational context. Consequently, a more sophisticated modelling approach brings us to a system of dynamic equations, which is shown as follows:
6 Approaches to the optimisation of investment in creativity development programmes
Comparing the estimated costs of the planned creativity development programme with the expected increase of the firm performance represents the most basic and obvious approach to the optimisation of investment in employees’ creativity development. This approach may be realised in different ways. For example, the employer’s profit (Y) may be expressed by using an elementary model for production function as follows:
Y=S(p−w−c)
where
S – volume of sales
p – price for production unit
w – employee’s wage per unit
c – cost of production unit
Let us suppose that after the employee’s creativity programmes have been deployed, his work performance provides sale (ΔS) and/or price (Δp) increases (e.g., as a result of quality improvement), and/or cost reduction (Δc). Then, the conditions of the profitableness of an employee creativity development programme may be given as follows:
([ p + Δp] −w− [c− Δc])ΔS>Z+b
where Z is the cost of the implemented programme and b = b(ΔS, Δc, Δp) is the bonus given to the employee for his creative suggestions, which resulted in quality improvement, price and/or sale increases and/or cost decreases. This extra payment is added to ensure the employee’s individual interest in his creativity realisation. To define b values, it is reasonable to recognise the nonlinear character of the relationship between a subject’s striving to reach the set goal and the level of his motivation and stimulation.
The use of this model is possible when we can evaluate the efficiency of the chosen programme of creativity development, that is when we can approximate the following functions: ΔS = ΔS(Z,b), Δp = Δp(Z,b), and Δc = Δc(Z,b). This represents the most complicated and specific problem in the process of employees’ creativity optimisation. For solving this problem, the model described in Section 5 may be used. At the same time, this simple approach does not acknowledge a subject’s activity and his behavioural uncertainty. The subject may make his decisions independently and use his creativity to reach his own goals, which can cause conflicts with his employer. This approach also omits consideration of the probable cooperation between the employer and employee.
For a more accurate approximation, game theory could be used as a theoretical basis for modelling the employer-employee relationship. The considered system is non-antagonistic (the interests of the agents are not directly opposite) and hierarchically organised. As an example of the realisation of this approach, let us assume that the objective of the employer is the maximisation of his profit increase (ΔY), whereas the objective of the employee is the maximisation of his individual utility function (U):
where R characterises resources (intellectual, emotional, time, material) spent by the employee on creativity performance.
Here we can see the following:
• w, b and Z are the variables controlled by the employer (the right to control these values determines a subordinate position of the other subject)
• ΔS, Δc, and Δp are the variables controlled by the employee (in some situations, those variables may be jointly controlled by the employer and employee).
The presented approach allows the combination of various possibilities in order to choose the best strategy of the participants’ behaviours and to find the optimal decisions based on the compromise of each participant’s interests. The determination of the optimal creativity development programme and the value of Z is possible after the R function approximation (the value of this function should be reduced to cost indices) is determined. This task of determining these values undoubtedly represents a specific and complex task. In our opinion, this task can be solved by evaluating the employee’s creativity, interests and motives. Such testing and assessment may be the basis for the creation of ‘indifference curves’, which can characterise the individual utility function. After ‘playing out’ different situations with the employee-employer interrelations, the optimal level of the investment in the employee’s creativity development can be targeted.
The presented models are developed under the assumption of homo economicus, a rationally thinking subject who plans and acts according to the principle of getting maximum profits for efforts. Such an abstraction may result in contradictions between models and real human behaviour especially in the ‘post-economic society’. Modern society has undergone serious transformations regarding goal motivations and priorities of individuals. These individual priorities include the decrease of utilitarian interest in work, a person’s orientation towards the ‘inner world’, the desire of self-realisation and personal improvement and participation in decision-making processes. In principle, non-material interests of individuals can be incorporated in the presented approaches and models.
7 Conclusions
The management of creativity refers not only to creativity development, but also addresses creativity assessment, regulation and optimisation. ‘Creativity regulation’ may sound like a paradox or an oxymoron. However, unregulated creativity may be dangerous for business because of the disruptive nature of creativity. On the other hand, very strict control blocks creativity. Organising and regulating creativity are, therefore, a complex problem, but are too important for businesses to leave unaddressed.
The improvement and development of the approaches and models suggested in the paper are possible with multidisciplinary integration. We believe that the further development and enhancement of creativity management is connected with the progress of models, methods and technologies in order to effectively include, develop and regulate individual creativity in an organisational context. In our opinion, primary research objectives in the future should be as follows:
• creativity and innovativity measurement
• influence of employees’ creativity and a firm’s innovativity on the firm’s performance
• assessment of the productivity and efficiency of different programmes for the development of employees’ creativity.
Undoubtedly, the statements of this paper and the proposed approaches require additional development and testing. However, the goals of this paper were, first, to identify the problems of creativity development, regulation and optimisation, and then to open a discussion about possible approaches to solving these problems.
Acknowledgments
Research for this paper was supported in part by the Junior Faculty Development Programme, which is funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the US Department of State, under the authority of the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961 as amended and administered by American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS. The opinions expressed herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily express the views of either the ECA or the American Councils.
The author wishes to thank David Campbell, Katherine Larsen, Kathalene Brackman and Janet Nixdorff for their help.
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